I'm a college debater and the topic last year (decided in August) was international terrorism. What I kept thinking all day was, Damn, my research is completely useless. Those assholes!
-- Name withheld
I started a doomed business last year and at the time of the attacks I was two months behind on my mortgage and facing foreclosure on my house. Somehow, mixed in with fears concerning WWIII, attacks on the West Coast, and the welfare of my New York friends, my mind kept saying, Maybe my mortgage company was in one of the towers. The thought was accompanied by this involuntary, gleeful little zing of hope. Maybe the records were destroyed. Zing. I might not have to pay my mortgage for years until they sort this out. Zing.
-- Name withheld
When the planes hit ... and when it was clear that they were planes bound for L.A. ... and when it was clear that a massive conflagration had ensued in the towers ... I reached for my calculator. This is a chemistry class thermodynamics problem, went my illicit, cold, train of thought. I use a TI-83 graphing calculator. I used it in my calculus classes at an Ivy League school.
I used it in my chemistry and physics classes there too. I got A's in the classes. Calorimeter problem, I thought; the carbon-hydrogen bonds of that jet fuel are breaking like crazy, releasing energy like crazy, raising the temperature like crazy ... I began to think about the contribution that the rakelike penetrating crash into steel could make to increasing the surface-to-volume ratio of the fuel tank's contents -- and therefore exposure to vaporization and combustion. More C-H bonds breaking simultaneously. Yes, the temperature (delta T in the equation) would render the temperature in the container one that would make solid steel into molten steel.
And then there were the people. I set about calculating the number of people who could be expected to have arrived at work in the towers, the number descending the stairs upon the first plane hit, the rate at which they could walk the stairs in an orderly fashion below the affected floors and the timing of the melting of the towers. Conclusion: that the numbers gone would be the number of people at work on time on a sunny, bright Tuesday in September that would surely have beckoned some to stay in bed with legs happy, moving against deliciously crisp sheets, breathing a late summer breeze through the window ... or to go buy corduroys and a work of fiction ... or to escape to the Catskills ... or to get to work early to turn over a new leaf. Yes, about 3,000 would be gone.
Calculating morbid stuff: It's cold, it's utilitarian, throws Kantian ethic to the wind, reduces people to numbers ... and is very pragmatic if we want to stop and think about what is going on. As Congress sang and swayed, I hit numbered buttons."
-- Jen
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
I was really annoyed with people saying, "I could have been there, blah blah." You weren't, so stop dwelling on it.
-- Meredith, 25, public relations executive in Washington
The night of Sept. 10 I had an amazing one-night stand with a hot, swarthy Middle Eastern man. I lived in Battery Park City at the time. The next morning, we gazed at my spectacular view of the World Trade Center. The last thing I said to him was, "The R train? Just walk toward those two towers." Fifteen minutes later the first plane struck. I spent the whole day thinking (among other things), He did say he was Israeli, right? I didn't just fuck a terrorist, did I? I hope he made it out!
-- Female, 30, from New York
Sept. 12 I heard some people talking about the different state quarters. Shuffling through their pockets they pulled out a few and noted that the New York quarter had a picture of the Statue of Liberty on it. "Heh, heh, lucky they didn't put a picture of the twin towers on it," one said.
-- Name withheld
Being largely ignorant of which businesses were located in the WTC, I searched the Web with faint hope that any of my various credit card or student loan debt records might have been destroyed.
-- Name withheld
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
Next page: "If I have to hear 'Let's roll one more time I'm going to puke"