9/11

I have been crying for two days. This is such a hard day to remember.

I was at work and I remember I did not do my best that day. I was in charge of French citizens and a junior tech in one of the biggest assembly plants in the U.S. I remember junior was constantly on the phone as we were working in the bowels of the plant and he was just babbling about whatever. We were in trouble with the customer, bad trouble, and I was trying to make the French people fix it.

Finally something he said made me pause and I asked him what the fuck he was talking about. What he told me was insane. He told me he was on the phone with his mom, who was on the phone with her sister, who was looking for her son in NYC. But all the information just seemed ludicrous. I remember walking back to the center of the plant and asking Ray if there was any Internet service in the plant. He sent me to the canteen where on the television we all saw it happen. My French people, only one spoke English, asked me what was happening. I told her we were at war. And then I told them all we had to go back out into the bowels of the plant and go back to work.

We worked for a while and then I made them all go back to the center area. I was sitting alone on a table, this was common, and I thought to myself, this is stupid. Why are we here when all this is going on. What is to stop them from hitting this site? At the moment I decided to get my people out my boss called and told me to get out and get all my people out. He personally had been locked out of a major auto company headquarters and all their people were out and gone. The major auto companies continued to run the assembly plants while they all went home. Hmmm.

We left and met at local restaurant to decide what to do, the airlines were shut down and these French people were supposed to fly home. I remember how I had told them they could not leave until they fixed the problems, and how I told them when the airspace shut down, now you will have to fix the problem and not run away. Not my best moment. My boss took them home with him.

I remember calling Big Daddy to come home. He was in Canada and I heard from United Technologies that they were pulling their people out of Windsor. He did not believe me and I remember yelling at him to get home before the borders closed.

I remember one thing that amazed me, when I drove past Edsel and Cynthia Ford's home their flag was at half-mast. I think that is the first flag I saw lowered and I was impressed that someone had the sense to do this.

It was a terrible day.