How we heard the news

The wife and I were driving in to town. Turned on the radio. Man said something about Rush being stuck in a Florida airport, wondered what that was about. Then a report of Mexican refineries being shut - and the skin started prickling. Then the announcer recaps thusly: "The World Trade Centers are gone."

That's how we heard the news. Didn't yet know how, but I knew immediately who. "The f-ers really did it!" We turned around back home, where I told our kids, your world just changed forever. Your Pearl Harbor, of sorts. Here come the terrorist wars we had anticipated.

Then we spent the day watching the planes hit, the people fall, the towers collapse, over and over.

By then it was all done, so to speak. I actually thought, horrible as it was,that's it, the punks shot their wad? It's not the Beginning of anything larger coming? No next wave of assault? Spectacular, but nothing but a sucker punch by a$$holes - hard to explain. Like finding out the Boston bombers were two punk brothers, not a military unit.

The world did change - still waiting for the full blooming of the "ultimately for the better" part.