It was December 1999.
People were ready for the end. Y2K was going to end it all! We were going to party like it was 1999 (thank you, Prince). Computers were going to stop working as soon as the clock ticked into 2000 and we were all DOOMED. Right when some of us had just started making any money. The panic was real. Guess what happened? Nothing.
One giant nothing.
The real threat was something of which many of us would have never thought. Planes crashing into buildings so tall that when I looked up at them I felt dizzy (I had been in New York City just the week before September 11, 2001). People who had to work at 8:00-9:00 am in those buildings were killed, some jumping out of their floor because they knew the alternative was either to burn to death or be crushed when the building fell. I watched it live on TV. I didn’t actually even know what I was seeing on the screen when I was watching it in real time. We didn’t have cell phones at this time, no one was constantly texting us.
My first thoughts when I saw and realized what was happening – my family in California had no idea what was going on, they were three hours behind! They all worked in federal buildings and the thought was that the federal buildings were a target all over the country… And they probably were.
I remember seeing the phone booths on the side of the road and people pulling over, rushing to them to call their loved ones. But the phone system shuts down with that much use, and again, no one really had cell phones at this time. I had a clunky “car phone”, but that wasn’t going to work either.
After seeing the burning Pentagon on the horizon, and discovering the flood of calls on my old-school home phone, listening to worried voicemails about my whereabouts, I sat and watched the footage. Horrible images of people jumping out of the World Trade Center Towers, and then the story of Shanksville, PA. The Pentagon was something I saw in person – the plane that flew very low over the Parkway and the ensuing black cloud on the horizon.
None of us knew what to think. But in the days following the terrorist attack, I did see people come together, even if it was just letting a car merge in the horrendous Washington, DC traffic.
Sometimes, well – always! I wish people today might remember these things. I do. Y2K was not a catastrophe. September 11, 2001 was a terrorist attack. We got through it, but we need to learn from it, and make sure it does not happen again. The culture of hysteria is real. We need to remember our history, not engage in hysterics.
