... And a Dollar Short

Due to yet another hectic weekend, this posting is tardy, and now appears on Tuesday, September 11, 2007.

With apologies to former UnshelvingBeth readers, I am reposting the reflection on 9/11 I wrote last year. Though innovation is important, there is something to be said for tradition as well, and it seems appropriate to share a second-annual post reflecting on the tragedy that occurred six years ago today, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

Living Stories

My creative writing class. A table full of young writers, headed by a vibrant Southern author who tsk tsk tsks us when we use clichés like "her eyes are filled with tears." It’s a 9am class, and we are commenting on a classmates' story of new love -- a difficult topic to tackle without using any clichés. Almost immediately after the class begins, a cell phone rings. This elicits an instantaneous tsk as our professor's eyebrows hit her hairline. "Which one of y'all brought a cell phone to class?"

We all turn innocent faces back to her. We know the rule. In honor of our beloved professor, our cell phones are all off or absent. The phone keeps ringing.

She flushes crimson. “Oh good Lord, it’s mine,” she chuckles, reaching into her oversize knit bag. “It’s my husband – must be some sort of emergency. Please forgive me,” she says, taking the call. “Honey, I’m in class, so this better – what? Well that’s strange. How very odd. All right – bye.”

She places her cell phone back in her purse, and reports with a puzzled face, “My husband says that a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.”

We are all mystified, all tripping over similar bemused questions: A small plane? Anyone hurt? Was it a navigational error, or some sort of mechanical failure? One student, saying her father works near there, excuses herself to see if she can reach him. The rest of us return to our stories, confused but not shaken.

The phone rings again.

Flinching slightly, our professor takes out her vibrating cell, looks at the caller ID. “It’s my husband again. I can’t think why he’d need to call back – I won’t be a minute – I’ll just – hold on. Hello? Hi, sweetheart… what? … What? I… That’s just … okay. Okay. I love you too.”

She ends her call and somehow seems to meet all of our eyes at once. Her voice wavers like the watery air above a blistering fire. “A second plane flew into the World Trade Center. They’re pretty sure we’re under some sort of terrorist attack.”

Too stunned to speak, we stare. It never crossed our minds. Our naïveté had shielded us from the first crash, but the second plane went right through us.

The professor speaks again: “I don’t believe there’s anything we can do just yet. Shall we stay in our stories a little while longer?” It is not yet 9:30am on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. We mutely nod: we want to live in our fiction just a little while longer.

But then our other classmate walks back into the classroom, and her eyes are filled with tears.

©Beth Kander (please do not reprint without permission of the author)