Confetti

September 11, 2001

What can I possibly say about 9/11 that hasn't been said already? The TV keeps showing programs about it, the bumpers in between commercials say America Remembers as if any of us can forget, and almost every day for last ten years politicians have used it as a talking point for some agenda--good or bad.

I watched something yesterday where one of the survivors of the World Trade Center said that, when people at work complain about their jobs, and then ask him why he smiles so much, he tells them, Any day that I come to work and a plane isn't flying into my building is a good day.

That's what I want to write about.

I've watched the footage from that day a million times since then. When the first plane hits, you see the explosion and then a bunch of papers falling to the ground. The same goes for the second plane: Explosion, papers raining down. When both towers collapsed, amid the dust and ash was a lot of papers--completely intact--raining down like confetti. I'm sure some of them were faxes. Some were memos. Others were employee records. Time cards. Legal documents. Termination letters.

Not to get overly poetic here, but something tragic happened to cause all of those papers to go flying. Each time a piece of paper left a desk or a file cabinet or a briefcase to begin its descent toward the ground, it was set in motion by the same force that ended the lives of the very people who probably dedicated so much of their time and energy to the contents on those pieces of paper. Faxes. Memos. Employee records. Time cards. Legal documents. Termination letters.

Every year since 9/11 there have been stories published about how the country has changed, how the people's opinions on foreign affairs have changed and how the world, in general, has changed, but I haven't seen anything that asks how our views towards life itself have changed. I want to read that story.