That Song by The Boss, or, Where I Was

For the last two weeks, all kinds of media has asked me to remember.  "Share your story," demands Twitter, Facebook, the New Yorker, The New York Times, the LA Times, most cable networks, even some libraries.

You talkin' to me?

Ok, once upon a time, on September 11th, 2001, back in the States...

• I was working two jobs at the time.  I was working two jobs because I had thought that I would be in a higher paying job in New York City training people to make fundraising calls on behalf of art organizations like the opera and museums and such.  My training was to have been held, starting in August, 2001, in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  I turned it down because I would have to pay for the relocation.  I would have been fine with one job but my mother got sick and created a boatload of expense to go back and forth from Missouri to Ohio to take care of her.  That's why I had two jobs.
• My morning job, from 7 am to 12 pm, was to enter benefit paperwork for Blue Cross and Blue Shield.  My evening job, from 1:30 pm to 10 pm, was to train people how to be nice and knowledgeable on the phones at Bass Pro Shops.
• That morning I was wired, because my mother was starting radiation 680 miles away.
• My morning job was solely data entry.  During that time, because I missed learning and missed college so much that I ached, I listened to NPR on headsets.  Everyone else listened to rock stations.
• At around 7:55 am Central time, Carl Kasell came on the radio with his news update stating a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  At that point the news was being broadcast as though the crash were a malfunction.  I still found myself standing up, nevertheless.  The woman working next to me said, "What are you doing?"  I replied with the news.  "You're crazy," she said, and begged me to get back to work--we were measured on metrics.
• Five minutes later was our break.  We made our way to the breakroom and turned on the television.  By the time we had just about settled into watching the news, the second plane hit.
• When we all finished our break, everyone's radio was on NPR.
• In the distance between my first job and my apartment, gas prices were rising faster than I could drive.  And I was on a third of a tank.  Luckily, all of my workplaces were in one city.
• When I got home, my brother had left a message that WW III had started.  My parents had left no message at all.  I didn't eat lunch.  I just rotted in front of the television until 1 pm.
• When I got to my second workplace I sat and watched the news in the breakroom for my entire shift.  No calls were coming in to the call center, save for one notable one that someone got wanting to know why he had not received his camping gear when he paid for one day air.  We issued a credit and told him his gear was probably grounded, and that he might want to turn on the news.

That's where I was.  As to all this 9/11 remembrance hype, you've missed it with me, dear media.  That was the year my mother was sick.  In my selfish, scarred heart, I was just glad for the diversion that day from the silent phone from Ohio.  But I do remember 9/11 in my own way--every time a digital clock reads 9:11, either am or pm, I think of this song.  That number seems to remind me not to rot in front of the news.

P.S. - This song is where the title for today's post of Life For Rent comes from.  You can call me Jo.