the confusion of the bystanders who wondered what that noise was as the jumpers hit the ground.
When the towers started to collapse and the news pundits trying to figure out what was happening

still too much to ever relive

but... we were really concentrating then on New York and then on the heroic crash in Pennsylvania.

I don't remember having a section dedicated to the Pentagon.

I had just gotten home from getting my kids on the bus. It was such a beautiful fall morning. I went to a NY Jets message board that I was a member of and learned of the first plane and clicked on MSNBC. At first I thought it was a small plane, and it had been a horrible accident. Then the second plane hit, and my whole soul sunk. I immediately called my husband and told him to turn on the news in their break room. Then I called my sister. My sister worked in tower 2 every other Tuesday, but thankfully she was not there that day. Then I called all of my loved ones who worked in the towers or in the vicinity. It took a few hours to learn that thankfully, they were all ok. Then I went back to check on my Jets friends online.

And then the news came of the Pentagon crash and the Pennsylvania crash. It seemed to take forever until all planes were accounted for and landed.

I live by an airport. The silence was noticeable. Around 8:00pm of that evening, I was jolted by the sound of a plane flying overhead. Nearly all of us in the neighborhood went outside to look. It was a military jet.

Then a few of my loved ones who were either in the National Guard or a member of the NYFD were summoned to search the rubble, in hopes of finding survivors.

Everything seemed so surreal.

But another thing that stood out, was the compassion and love of one another. For nearly a week, people were so respectful of one another. There was no road rage, strangers would smile at one another, nobody acted like a jerk.

Waiting for a flight to Atlanta. Small airport. So, with that and the fact that is was before all the extra security, i walked back out to the magazine stand when they suspended all flights. I had heard someone hit the WTC with a plane.

So, i go back out to watch the news with the lady that ran the newsstand and i was there 20 or 30 seconds when the second plane hit.

Realizing we were going nowhere that day, i picked up my stuff and drove home.

The "truthers."

The ones who say it wasn't airliners, it was missiles with holograms.

The ones who say (fill in the blank, usually the Jews) were the ones who did it.

The guys getting filthy rich claiming the government did it, or used explosives on the towers.

That guy who said it was a truck bomb at the Pentagon.

Bush, Cheney and their cronies, the opportunists who exploited this to "justify" their power grab in Iraq.

For years because of it. I was as horrified as everyone else when it happened but I recognized pretty quickly that it was not justification for all of the crap we were allowing behind it.

Free speech zones my ass.

Congress likes to fund wars but not veterans. Money for cleanup but not for first responders. People stranded for days at the Superdome. A bridge collapse here and there. Corruption in Iraq. The Great Recession. The F-35. The hottest 15 months on record.

Did we as a nation learn anything? Are we better prepared today? It seems that, more than ever, our national politics are just a game where, win or lose, everybody's in it for the money.

Where's "rock bottom" where we collectively do some soul searching? It apparently wasn't 9/11 or Katrina. It wasn't the 2008 economic collapse...

I think it was the Canadian parliament that went outside to express its support during a certain memorial.

The world supported our quick retaliation in Afghanistan. And we squandered this win, too, by quickly moving to Iraq.

And, of course, cutting taxes while conducting two wars.

You probably get angry watching the Weather Channel.

Apparently it was a staging area for first responders and where people were brought. There's a plaque and a piece of the building on the wall. It's eerie.

I know I was terrified of the events of that infamous day. It's a shame so many people (cough Bush, Giuliani) have shamelessly exploited that horrible event for political gain.

I had taken that day off, so I wasn't in the office, but when I returned the next day I learned that one of my coworkers was on the phone with a woman in a building facing the south Tower when it collapsed. The woman wasn't physically hurt, but she knew people who worked in the WTC and simply disintegrated at the sight of it.

Horrible.

Like millions of other Americans, I lived 9/11 in real time.

But now 15 years have passed. There is a new structure there, a memorial, plenty of commemorations ... I didn't know anyone personally to die in the WTC, but I did have an acquaintance whose spouse did. I imagine she'll never get over it.

But I have come to terms with it, and can even laugh at 9/11 jokes. Terrorism didn't begin or end with 9/11/01, and life did go on. New York is thriving more than it ever did, and downtown (as opposed to Midtown) is also more vital than ever. So yeah, life does go on.