To preface this, it�s important to understand that I�m not rationalizing, I�m saying what I believe. This isn�t about sense � it doesn�t make sense. It�s a non sequitur.

It�s already been six months since the day America changed forever. March 11 marked the six-month anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, but to confine the attacks to just those two places isn�t really fair.

Not to bitch or nitpick or anything, but it wasn�t just the WTC and the Pentagon, it wasn�t just New York City and Washington, D.C., it was all of America. These terrorists hate us so much that they were willing to give their lives to try and take down the greatest nation in the world. I was so scared that day � not really for myself (although, that too), but for everybody else. I remember thinking, �What next? Who next? When? Where?�

Because that�s what I do. I have a streak of journalism (or maybe it�s just nosiness) in my blood, so when da shit goes down, I switch over to autopilot and run the five Ws and handicap the odds and try to make sure that everyone who knows what�s going on tells me what they know and everyone else who doesn�t know what�s going on knows what�s going on. But for them to have accurate information, I had to have accurate information. CNN, ABC News, MSNBC, all the major news sites were down (no surprise; everyone in the country was hitting those sites for information just like I was). Thinking quickly (for once), I turned to WorldNetDaily and NewsMax for updates. Later�much later, I deal with the things that happened.

Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer are all sitting in their pretty little studio: �Coming up in this half-hour, we�ll have health expert Fucky McFrivolous explain the difference between the new low-fat non-dairy strawberry yogurt and the low-fat non-dairy plain yogurt. But first, we head over to the news desk for a check of headlines and � what? A plane has hit the World Trade Center? Fuck!�

I remember dismissing a thought as out of sequence, out of place, out of time. It�s going to be a bad day, I remember thinking. Probably because I was running two minutes late, which isn�t really two minutes late, but it�s two minutes later than I like to be. Or because the dog was being uncooperative or because I didn�t study for my Chemistry II test. Something frivolous though, for sure.

I remember sitting in my 1st period class, AP US History, when another teacher (the department head) came in for, in essence, a sidebar with the Eggman. Someone (it�s really, really not important who) said, �Pink slip!� and we all laughed for what would be the last time for a long time. The department head left and the Eggman informed us that someone had attacked the World Trade Center. Silence. Dead silence.

We filed into an adjoining classroom to see the gang from Good Morning, America (not that day) try to deal with seeing the world literally come down around them. That was when the first tower came down. We sat, captivated, wondering what this was, because it sure as hell wasn�t real. That�s a building. It�s just there. This isn�t New Year�s Eve, this isn�t Vegas we�re looking at, and we�re not watching Fox. There is no reason that building should�ve just fallen over. What is going on?

It was unreal. The clich�s are rampant now, but it was like watching a movie. It just didn�t follow. Those buildings belong in the skyline. They belong in the establishing shots for Sports Night and a thousand other TV shows and movies. They are as much a part of the New York experience as taking the Staten Island ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and buying a pretzel from a guy on the street (can you even do that anymore? It�s possible that Giuliani got rid of all of them. The pretzel vendors, though, not the tourists. I don�t know).

There is a lot of literally and a lot of clich�s in the proliferation of writings and firsthand accounts and news reports, blah blah blah fishcakes. The thing is, all our extreme literary allusions, all our worst-case scenarios, came true that day. So it really was a bad movie, only we were living it. We really had never seen something like this coming (although we should�ve.) It truly was the worst thing ever to happen in our country.

I don�t remember who was the first person to make a dumbass statement � you know, �Fuck!� or �This is really not good� or �This is bad,� stuff that�s incredibly obvious but also seems appropriate at the same time because what else are you supposed to say? � but I know I heard an awful lot of them. And they all seemed like good, new, valuable, important information, because I was processing a minute behind so by the time I actually broke down and digested what they had said and realized that it was really nothing they were gone.

I remember getting home and turning on the TV and seeing the afternoon paper and wondering what, exactly, was going on and how long I could expect it to be going on for. There were no early answers, there were no easy answers, and I wanted to be with my friends more than I wanted to be with my family � odd, but I decided to go with it. I called work and asked if they needed people. They said yes, they did, so I got dressed and went to work. It was somber, but it was with people, and I needed a break from the constant barrage of news footage and screaming people (I know, I know. Selfish. I�d explain that I wanted to escape from the horror of it all, at least for a little while, but you�d shoot back that the people that were in it didn�t have that opportunity. I know. I�m sorry.) and maybe I didn�t get that from work, but maybe I did. I remember hearing all about how gas prices would now skyrocket, so that was the big thing. The customers seemed to care more about that than about the fact that our nation�s security had been severely compromised. Bastards as always, those customers. It was comforting in some small way.

And there was evening, and there was mourning � the first day.

We whipped out the American flags and got all patriotic, banding together as a country to rise out of the destruction and emerge stronger than ever. We did all that. And slowly, we moved on. But it took exactly a month � I remember October 11th � for me to finally deal with it. It was always there, but it was far away and I was apart from it, at least a little bit. Finally, one month later to the day, I was able to finally feel the horror, the shock, the not knowing, the chaos, the everything that made that day what it was.

And there was evening, and there was mourning � the first month.

All this by way of saying that it was a profound and very real experience to see it firsthand in the recent documentary 9|11, which recently aired. It is an incredibly humbling experience to assume that people care about how things went for me that day when you see the firefighters rush up flights of stairs to their impending deaths. To see the second plane hit and to see it rain debris � TPS reports, memos, crap, basically � and watch, horrified, as horrified people ran through the streets. To hear the falling bodies hit the ground with such power and intensity (as one firefighter said, �How bad must it have been up there that the better option is to jump?�) � wow. In a bad way. To see the first tower come down and see the people inside run for their lives � literally � is a very scary experience.

It�s been six months � a long time, and yet a short time. The more things change, the more they stay they same, I guess. Everything old is new again. All the pain, all the sorrow � the nightmare is just as real today as it was six months ago. And yet, while we can never and will never forget that horrible day, we are charged with the task of moving � not necessarily moving on, but moving ahead. It�s a sucky job, but we all have to do it, because if we don�t, they�ve won. They want things to change. They want Britney Spears to put some clothes on, they want us to stop obsessing over trivial crap. But we can�t because that�s America, and if they don�t like it, they can bite us. Collectively. What they can�t do is try to bomb the fuck out of us, because we�re not going to take this shit. Osama better watch his ass, but we better watch ours, too (collectively again), because this obviously wouldn�t have happened if we had been paying a little better attention. Not that the blame rests in any one place, but still. And slowly, things will be the way they were again. "Everything under the sun..."

And there was evening, and there was mourning. The first six months.