Friday, September 11, 2009

Perspectives of 9/11

On the morning of 9/11/01, a Tuesday morning, I did like so many other Americans were doing, getting up, eating breakfast and getting ready to go to work.

At that time, I was a foster care worker for Milwaukee County. It was a job that I loved and hated at the same time. The stress was unbelievable, taking on the responsibility of scores of young lives without the needed resources, trying to do the best you could, not just for the children, but out of fear that your name would be in the next day's headlines if you failed in your job. At the same time, I loved it, knowing I was making a difference in people's lives, giving the kids a chance at life they might never have otherwise had.

However, on the morning of that fateful day, I was way less enthusiastic to get to work. It was the last Tuesday that I would ever be a foster care worker. For all I knew, it was that last Tuesday that I'd ever be a social worker. Tommy Thompson and his cohorts in the legislature like Alberta Darling, Margaret Farrow and Scott Walker had already sold us out and privatized the foster care system. That coming Friday, September 14, 2001 was my last day on that job.

Needless to say, I was feeling awfully sorry for myself. I had a week off and then I was to report to the House of Correction. A job I didn't want, and a job I hated every single day. But it was a job, I kept trying to tell myself.

But then as I was putting on my shoes and getting my stuff together, I saw the news. I remember Katie Couric and the others on the Today show talking about the plane hitting the first tower. I called my dad, who was already at work, to tell him that something was going on. As I was talking to him, they showed the second plane hitting.

In shock, I hung up with him and called my wife to tell her what was going on, to reassure myself that she was OK, and to tell her that I love her.

I went to work after that. I don't remember much of what I got done that day, as most of us kept going to the conference room to watch the television set up in there. We saw the buildings fall, first one and then the other. We were quiet in our shock, our fear, and our pain.

In the days, the weeks, and the months to come, as more and more information became available, it put things in perspective for me.

How could I bitch about being forced out of my job and having to choose whether to work at a crappy one I hated, when people were forced to choose how they wanted to die, burning to death or jumping to their deaths.

How could I say I was nervous and even a little scared going to work in a room full of inmates, when I saw firefighters and policemen running into buildings that were about to collapse, hoping to save someone else's life at the cost of their own.

To look at what is happening today furthers that perspective. We have both sides of the political aisle accusing each other of preposterous allegations and participating in childish name-calling. Nazi, communist, fascist, socialist.

Did we learn nothing from that day?

1 comment: