I remember.

I didn't know if I wanted to say anything about 911 today. I thought I might keep my remembrances to myself and just keep it light and funny the way we like it here at Trooper York. I mean after all I am not a serious person.

But in between working on tax returns today I have been reading various blogs and in many of them today is just another day with the left and the right going at each other with talking points blasting. Vile people are saying detestable things safely under the blanket of anonymity that the internet provides. It is truly beneath contempt.

I had this discussion with my wife last night. As we walked to the wine and cheese place for dinner around midnight after working like dogs in the store all day, we passed a local restaurant which had a giant sign outside. They were having their "Grand Reopening" today on 911. My wife thought that was horrible and insensitive. Now I have a long and complicated relationship with the owner of the restaurant where we have had a lot of ups and downs. We were great friends for a while but now not so much. I know that he really wants me to come to his opening but I can't do it. I can't party and laugh today. Don't get me wrong, I am not going to weep into my hair shirt all day but I don't think it is appropriate to celebrate on the anniversary.

I don't want to go into the details of the people I knew who died that day. The busboy and the restaurant manager and the bond guys I had gone to the Yankee game with. Some of them I didn't even know had died until months later as I did not pore over the lists in a morbid fascination as so many people did. This is not about me, but about the people who were murdered that day. The wife knew a lot more of them because she was a daughter of a fireman and several of those men who died that day she knew from cook outs and retirement partys and such as they were the sons of the guys who worked with her dad. So she feels it a lot more. I can understand her outrage and I am glad that she doesn't read blogs or she might hunt down some of these losers and do some serious damage to them.

So last night I told her to think about the TV show "Saving Grace." I don't know if you ever saw it on TNT, but it is a cop show about this skanky whore of a detective played by Holly Hunter. One of the subtexts of the show is that Grace (the focus of the show) is all messed up because her sister died in the Oklahoma City bombing. Now they have a lot of scenes where she reacts and her family reacts and relives the bombing. Intellectually I can understand it but it doesn't have the visceral impact that 911 has for me. It doesn't resonate the same way for some reason. Is it because I didn't know anyone there and because it is so far away from me in the middle of the country? I don't know, maybe. But I think that might be how a lot of people out in America feel about the Twin Towers. I mean they were horrified and all but to them it was long ago and far away so it doesn't resonate with them and they can talk out of the ass about it. Make up conspiracy theories. All kinds of bullshit like that. They didn't go in those towers hundreds of times like we did. So it is just history to them like Jonestown and the Great Chicago fire.

Anyway I remember those people who died that day and will say a prayer for them tonight. We will have a quiet dinner at home and remember. I think that is the right thing to do.