It Was All Over by the Time We Heard About It

It was all over by the time we heard about it.

We spent a casual morning, disconnected from the world as we were then in our country home, with our three young adult children.

Mrs and I left them and drove into town. As we cut through the suburban area, I flipped on the radio, which was tuned to Rush Limbaugh.

A substitute announcer first assured us that Rush was all right, stranded at some airport in Florida. That seemed odd. Then there was news of refineries in Mexico being shut down. The skin-crawl of anticipation began.

Finally, CBS or some network newsie came on with this most succinct, memorable, and devastating summary of events:

"The World Trade Centers are gone."

I didn't know how, no details at all yet, but I knew who. "They did it. The bastards really did it," I cursed, probably using a few more choice words.

We turned around, back to home, where I told the kids, basically, this is your Pearl Harbor. Everything is different now. Your life will be measured by before and after this date.

We opened up our mostly-failed-and-closed cafe for the day, watching cable news replay the collisions, the burning, the fall of the buildings, over and over. Details about the Pentagon and Pennsylvania filtered in.

There was one other thing I thought, as soon as I heard the sum of events. I thought, is that all you bastards got? Punks.

I don't care what they get away with. They're still a bunch of punks.