Remembering 9/11 [Philosophical Monday]

Ten years and one day ago I was running late to school. I had never been great with punctuality, and my second year in a grad program hadn’t changed that. I rushed through my morning routine, only to then have to wait for a bus that seemed to take forever to come. This, I think, is when I determined I should get a bike, as my apartment was a straight shot from Carnegie Mellon University, just far enough to make for a long walk or a short bike ride. Little did I know, while waiting for the bus, that the feeling of wanting to be in control of something, even if it was something as little as my morning commute, would become amplified within the next few hours.

The bus finally came, but I didn’t wear a watch, and having only had a cell phone for a week at that point, was not in the habit of checking the time on my phone yet. I didn’t notice the excessive amount of students walking in the opposite direction, toward the bus stop, and when I arrived to the Purnell Center where our Drama Conservatory program was housed, only to find a ton of undergrad and grad students alike chattering, spilling down the steps into the glass-encased foyer, I thought maybe there was a some kind of special event that I didn’t know/hadn’t heard/had completely forgotten about.

I spotted my four graduate program classmates in the crowd and waved. We were an unusual Dramatic Writing class, in that we got along from the start and continued to like each other for the entirety of our two years there. But at that point, only a week into our program, we didn’t really know each other all that well.

“What’s going on,” I asked them.

Clark Perry, one of the two writers in our class that would end up out here in Hollywood with me, explained that terrorists had flown a plane into one World Trade Center tower and then another one into the other. Now they were evacuating the campus because Carnegie Mellon held so many military contracts and they were afraid it might be a target. Clark has a rather distinctive reputation for possessing both a voice like a game show host and a wicked sense of humor, so of course I laughed. “You’re kidding.”

But he said, “No.”

I shook my head, “You’re kidding, right?”

And he said, “No.”

We all walked outside together andawkwardly parted ways. Both Irina and Clark lived nearby. Ben had biked and I’m not sure what Rob’s dealy was. I vaguely remember offers being made, since by then, the bus stop was mobbed with students trying to get back to their apartments. But I declined. My best friend, Monique, was also on campus, I explained. I should go find her.

I tried calling Monique as I walked toward the school, where her grad program took place, planning to leave her a voice message to meet me outside the building, but the lines were down, and I couldn’t get a call through, even just to leave a voicemail. I’ve only learned the discipline of follow-through in recent years, so when I arrived at the Heinz School of Public Policy and couldn’t find Monique by her locker or any of the places that I knew to be her in-building haunts, I surprised myself by not giving up the search. I went to higher floors, asked people I vaguely recognized from Heinz School events I’d attended as her guest if they had seen her. A few of them actually had, sending me on wild goose chases to certain classrooms that she might be in or meeting rooms where they’d though they’d caught a glimpse of her. I looked everywhere. I even checked the bathrooms. I couldn’t find her. Just go home, I kept saying to myself. The campus was being evacuated for a reason, and it would probably be safer at home. Also, there was a good chance she had already left the building. For all I knew she had driven to school and was already on her way home. But I couldn’t stop searching for her.

I came back to the outside of school, and tried calling her again and again, hanging up and re-trying every time I got through. Finally I got a tentative connection. The phone rang through and Monique answered. We immediately began breaking up. “I’m outside you school,” I yelled into the phone, repeating it into the static hoping that she heard me.

She hadn’t. But she chose that moment to come out of the front school doors anyway, trying to get a better signal.

“Monique!” I called to her. She waved and came down the stairs. Just a few moments later, we would fumble into action, trying to get a hold of friends and family members, grab lunch in downtown Oakland, take a stuffed bus back to the apartment that I shared with Roya Hamadani from “Fierce Foodie” and watch TLC documentaries and 9/11 reportage while we waited for her husband to get off of work and come join us for dinner.

But when I think of 9/11, I think of that fierce hug after she came down the steps, of the relief of finding your best friend, when the world has fallen into chaos around you.

And I’ll never forget it.