Ground Zero: Never Again

Hmmm,if only we could retire the term for all time.

I donot have to remind anyone that today is the 20 year anniversary of the 9/11terrorist attack against the U.S. By now you have already either watchedseveral retrospectives in the media (many got a jumpstart by doing their storiesyesterday) or kept your TV and radio off to avoid them altogether.

By theway, I would really prefer that we not refer to it as an anniversary. I think of anniversaries as things to celebrate. Pickany word you want but that one.

We allhave our “where were you when” stories from that day. Here is mine.

I wasworking on the 28th floor of the Eaton’sCentre tower in downtown Toronto. We had a TV on in the board roombreathlessly watching the horrific event unfold. Needless to say, all of usthere felt very vulnerable as we watched the footage of the airliners crashinginto the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

MostToronto companies shut down by mid-morning that day and allowed their shell-shockedstaff to go home. It was the right thing to do. However, the result was a largepercentage of the computing population of Canada’s largest city descending uponUnion Station at the same time desperate to get out of the city.

At thattime, there were no mid-day Go Trainruns from downtown Toronto to Brampton where I lived at the time. So I stoodwaiting on Front Street to catch a Brampton-Georgetown bus. The situationquickly deteriorated into an every-man-for himself competition to get to thedoors of each bus as it arrived.

Threebuses came and went and I was not even close to getting on one of them. The ever-growingcrowd was becoming a panicked mob. I feared for my safety should thingsescalate. I made a judgment call and went back into Union Station to catch thefirst train at 2:50 pm. I was wedged in with other riders, like sardines in acan, but made it home.

It wasa no-brainer that the psychological trauma of 9/11 would stretch out for years.The world no longer seemed like a safe place regardless of where you lived. Thespectre of terrorism was planted deep in our minds and has never shaken loose.

But we didnot know that the cloud of dust and smoke,from the collapse of the towers and the fires that burned for months, would betoxic and would lead to debilitating illnesses that are still manifestingthemselves today in some victims and rescue workers. This would become part ofthe enduring legacy of 9/11.

Ground Zero. Its origins are the U.S. nuclear tests of 75+ years ago. Hiroshima was ground zero in 1946. The twin towers site began ground zero in 2001. Let us hope that we never have occasion to use the term ever again.

~ NowAvailable Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: HuntingMuskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is alsothe author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel whichwas a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’swebsite at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka That Make Me GoHmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions forsubscribing are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructionspage in the right sidebar. Ifyou’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularlyto my page for postings once a week