The dual big days of our parents lives were when Kennedy got shot, and when man landed on the moon. For us, it was when the Berlin Wall fell and 9/11. On 9/11, I was lying in bed at my dad’s house in Virginia when a friend of my sister’s called and said, “Did you hear that planes flew into the World Trade Center?” My first thought was, “How could a plane get so far off course that it ended up in downtown Manhattan?” I got up out of bed, ran downstairs and turned on the news. Once it became evident that it was a terrorist attack, I totally wigged, convinced that the world was getting ready to end.

My sister and her boyfriend at the time had just flown in to visit from Hawaii, where she was living at the time. She called there the next day, and her friends told her to not bother to return. Everything was closing, as everyone in Hawaii realized that with nobody flying the fall and winter seasons were going to be disastrous.

I had been in New York two weeks before looking for a job and an apartment. I had found neither. I had been planning on moving there, but the lack of prospects coupled with the fear of another attack ensured that I would not, and I moved to Philadelphia a month later. I remember being absolutely convinced that this was merely the first in a multipronged attack, and every day for weeks, I just waited for the other shoe to drop. I swore I would never step foot on a plane again, and in fact it was several years before I flew again.

It sounds crazy now, but that morning I wondered if the two planes were merely the opening volley in an all out attack on the United States, and a couple of my friends and I decided to go to our favorite restaurant, The Exmore Diner, for lunch, since we thought the meal might be our last (I lived near an enormous naval base, so I thought they might be wiped out next.) I’m curious as to where you were on 9/11 and what your remembrances are of it. Please post below.

Hey kids, just came across a cool site I thought you guys might dig. It’s called Librarything, and you enter what books you have in your bookcase and it introduces you to books you might like and people who like the same books. I just started composing a short list yesterday. If you decide to start one, please share it with me. I haven’t spent enough time on the site to really play with the bells and whistles, but we can check out each others bookshelves, essentially, which I think is pretty cool.