Tiny 9/11 stories

Everybody has 9/11 stories. With the coming of the anniversary, I have been thinking a lot about mine. They are tiny, tiny snapshots of what happened that day. Here are a few of the stories I have, and the stories I heard from others.

Riding the train across the bridge into Manhattan that morning, we could see from the window that both towers were on fire and shaking. A man seated in front of me said, "Those towers will never fall. I'm an engineer, I know."

The office secretaries at my son's school started going through the emergency contact cards for every kid, looking to see if any parents worked in the trade center. Some did. One died.

I had just recommended my dentist to a friend. His offices had picture windows looking over NY Harbor, with a clear view of the tower. As she sat in the chair, she saw a plane hit a tower and later saw one collapse. They terminated the appointment. As she rode home, she recalled, the streets were completely deserted. She rode her bike through the middle of a normally busy avenue. It reminded her of something that happened in Toronto, where she spent her childhood. The Queen Mother was due for a visit and streets had been cleared of traffic, and she and her brother rode their bikes ahead of the royal entourage, cops whistling at them to stop, but they just kept going.

An elderly neighbor was having her home renovated. The painters abruptly departed that morning, leaving drop cloths and supplies all around. She slipped, fell, broke a hip, went into a nursing home and never came back.

I asked my son, who was 8 at the time, what he remembers from that day. He said he remembers that one of the dads who came home from work early took all the kids to the park to play football.

The party's over

My husband and I noticed a few years ago that when you are at a dinner party in Manhattan, one of the first things everyone talks about is real estate. But when people run out of things to talk about, they start talking about where they were on 9/11.

And we decided that when that happens, the party's over.

It's really astonishing how often this happens. I suppose it is a symptom of a really pervasive problem, that we were all so deeply scarred by the events of this day that whenever we are given a chance to just empty our minds, it all comes down to that: Where we were on Sept. 11th, 2001.

For the most part, these stories are banal, and I include my own stories in that category. Unless you lost someone that day, what is there to say, really? And not surprisingly, I have found that the people who lost someone that day never want to talk about it.

So tonight we were eating dinner at someone's house and a 9/11 story did get told. After a few minutes, I realized that I didn't want to leave yet, but I couldn't stop thinking, "The party's over! Someone's telling a 9/11 story!"

So I did what might have been a rude thing, but I couldn't help it. I explained our little rule and asked the person to stop telling the story. It worked, seemed fine, we moved the conversation along, and stayed for another half-hour. Person who was telling the story, please forgive me if you're reading this! I just couldn't help it!