The World Trade Center in New York City was first attacked by terrorists on February 26, 1993.
Six people were killed when a bomb detonated in a van parked in the North Tower garage. The terrorists, financed by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and trained by al-Qaeda, had expected the South Tower to collapse as a result of the explosion.
This attack occurred five weeks into President Bill Clinton's first term. The standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco began two days later. Two years after that siege ended, an American terrorist used a truck bomb to attack the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City - the deadliest attack in American history before 9/11.
All of these events seemed to happen when I was on vacation from school. I didn't watch the news as a young teen but I caught enough to know that bad things were happening. After a while I began to feel a sense of dread, waking up on what should have been an enjoyable spring morning, and thinking - fearing - another tragic event would occur.
Nineteen years ago this morning I was standing outside a Blockbuster Video with my co-worker, waiting for the manager to arrive. Another co-worker parked her car and informed us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Based on the information she heard, it sounded like an accident. (I pictured something like the Cory Lidle crash.)
Once the manager arrived the whole staff knew it was much worse. He opened the store, turned on the DirecTV that was supposed to run ads all day, and turned on the news. We watched the second plane fly directly - deliberately - into the South Tower. We watched the smoke billow out of the towers. We watched them collapse.
Tuesday was new release day. I can remember one title in particular hit shelves on September 11, 2001: Blow.
Obviously we had far fewer customers than we would have on a normal Tuesday, though a fair amount of people walked through the doors. Most of them returned their rentals, commented on the tragedy, and left. Only one or two customers asked to rent something that day. None of us felt like doing any work, we were all mesmerized and horrified and frightened.
At around Noon my mother came by the store to pick me up and take me home. I hadn't called her and we hadn't been dismissed. My sister and nephews were in the car, she'd taken them out of school. The feeling was that if the world was going to end, we were going to be together.
The world didn't end nineteen years ago today. If it had we wouldn't have Billie Eilish or Millie Brown or Jasson Dominguez. That sense of dread I had every April in the 1990s is a near-daily occurrence now. But on this day, while my thoughts are with the victims of the World Trade Center attack and my heart breaks for their families, I am grateful for the first responders and those who protect our country from foreign terrorism.
I promise we'll have some fun topics on this blog next week. Thanks for reading.
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