Like most of us who were old enough to know our own telephone numbers, I'll never forget where I was five years ago this morning or how I found out about the events taking place on the East Coast.

But what I remember most about that day is not the rage and sorrow I felt in the morning, but the awe, pride and gratitude I felt by evening.

The nineties made me very cynical.  That decadent, self indulgent decade was like a frat party where the music never stopped and the beer never lost it's head.   We were all getting rich off the internet, which wasn't so much an information superhighway as it was a way to view naked people doing icky things to each other. ISN'T AMERICA GREAT??

I admit I fell for it.  I thought that's really who we had become.  As I watched those towers collapse, I remember thinking that the looting and chaos would be terrible.  I knew we were at war the moment I saw the flames from those buildings, but I  didn't expect anyone else to see it that way.

The first inkling I had of the truth was shortly after the south tower came down and a camera man found an EMT to ask what had happened.  The reporter asked if the emergency personnel had managed to evacuate the building.  The EMT nodded, saying that they'd gotten thousands of people out.  Then he looked back toward the cloud of debris racing up the street and said  "But all our guys were still there..."

All our guys are still there.

I'd forgotten about those guys. 

And then I heard about the fourth plane going down.  Butch and Sundance were alive and well in the skies over Pennsylvania.

Then, in the midst of the chaos and carnage, I watched thousands, tens of thousands of New Yorkers, calmly leaving Manhattan.  Walking, covered in concrete ash, helping each other get out of harm's way, helping each other get the word out to loved ones and getting off the island and back home. 

Instead of the looting and crime I'd expected there was none.  In the entire city there was practically no crime that day.

Everyone was too busy waiting in line to donate blood.

Or donning protective gear and going in to offer their help.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, we saw the very worst face of humanity.  By the evening of that same day, we had seen the very best of humanity.

We saw America return and that's why I commemorate this day.

 

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