What some people have said and done since 9/11/01

[Guest MarvinisaLunatic]

Here

 

My father was one of those people who was supposed to be in the city that day but didn't go in that morning due to a freak coincidence. I hate him.

 

I wish he'd died in the attacks, because then memorializing him would have been easy. I wouldn't have ever had to hate him again because he would have been one of the people lost in 9/11. As we waited to get in touch with him, I prayed we'd never find him. No one knows this.

 

-- Name withheld

 

A friend of mine noted, as all the flag bumper stickers and crap started getting slapped up all over houses, cars and work cubbies, that some people weren't even really sticking the stickers on their cars -- they were scotch-taping them to the inside of their car windows. It was as if they knew that their surge of patriotic feeling would fade, and they wouldn't want to be left looking like a hick with the stupid flag sticker left on their car. Totally cynical, but I think that's true.

 

-- Maggie, Massachusetts

 

I knew a guy who narrowly escaped getting hit by a falling body. The first e-mail he sent out, two hours later, was, "Hey, how do we get ahold of all the new 212 cell numbers that'll be available?"

 

I had another friend who watched the towers go down from Brooklyn, didn't know what to do to get out his sudden rage against Arabs, so he opened his refrigerator and started throwing out all his Middle Eastern food, yelling as he tossed items one by one into the garbage: "Fuck this baba ghanoush! We don't need their fucking pita bread!" I won't even tell you what he did to the hummus.

 

--Name withheld

 

When I heard there was a terror attack downtown, I hoped the situation would degenerate into urban guerrilla warfare. I was really psyched to go out and kick some Islamist ass.

 

-- Dave Gottlieb, student

 

Also, in thinking about the possible end of the world, one of the thoughts I was most upset by went something like this: "FUCK. If we're all barricaded in bunkers we won't be able to go to the movies anymore."

 

-- Lisa B., 34, writer and professor

 

Within 12 hours of the tragedy, it occurred to me that they'll never, ever show that great episode of the "The Simpsons" where the family goes to New York and Homer has to take a whiz in the World Trade Center.

 

-- Daniel Price, 31-year-old writer, born in Manhattan, corrupted in Los Angeles

 

Q: What's Osama bin Laden's favorite football team?

 

A: The New York Jets.

 

-- Terry Forte, who says the joke was conceived on Sept. 12

 

When there was an outpouring of grief and donations from every corner of the United States, I said to myself, If those planes had flown into a housing project and the victims were poor blacks and Latinos, people in Missouri wouldn't give a damn. When I heard that there had been over $1 billion in private donations, I asked myself where was this money before? Why hadn't it been donated to help the homeless, children who do not have access to an education, people who do not have access to healthcare? Here we have people rushing to write checks to people whose families will be taken care of by insurance or their employers.

[Guest EricMM]

Not all of those sentiments are horrible.

 

especially the last one.

 

And I downloaded the simpsons episode. I thought it was a great episode, I really love new york and I love it's treatment of it. I thought it was a shame that they were going to take it off rotation.

[Guest bob_barron]

I have the Simpsons episode DLed as well and as a New Yorker I found it hilarious and touching as well.

 

I'd love to see it rerun

[Guest Retro Rob]

I also love that episode, especially the end when they are driving out of the City. It's a shame just how far people will go to erase all memory of the WTC in entertainment, yet shove it down out throats in the form of the media.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Re: original post

 

I really don't think it accomplishes anything to dwell on the most petty, sordid, and ultimately meaningless aspects of people's reactions to 9/11.

[Guest hardyz1]

I liked the person who was playing Jenga and started to call it North Tower.

 

I read this article when it was posted on Fark, and I think it's pretty funny. Tasteless jokes rock.

[Guest NoCalMike]

I agree with the last "thought" Oh and when that season of the Simpsons comes out on DVD, there better not be ANY GROUP demanding that the Twin Towers be taken out.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

I did something similar to the calculations the "Jen" woman did. Not quite as in-depth as calculating how many kilocalories or anything, but I did roughly figure up the temperature of the fire, using estimates and advanced chemistry. I lost that piece of paper though. Yeah, call me sick or whatever, but I do that kind of stuff for all sorts of things.