Never Forget What Actually Saved New Yorkers After 9/11
I’ll spare you the details of how the towers fell.
We saw.
We remember the fear. The confusion. The heartbreak. The peaceful people, suddenly feeling a thirst for revenge for the very first time.
You don’t need to be reminded to never forget. It was kind of unforgettable.
I also don’t want to be part of the godforsaken commercialization of it. I don’t want to sell you 9/11 merch. I’m tired of seeing images of the towers brought to you by admen who aren’t old enough to know what war means.
“On 9/11 the terrorists forgot to take one thing….OUR HUNGER! Grab a Shaqaroni Pizza and watch the Yankees avenge America! On FOX! 9/1111111!!!!!!”
It’s like 9/11 hired a PR firm.
I won’t write the way I may have 10 years ago. Say, fuck sentimentality, and talk about the wars we launched. Talk about how more Americans lost their lives because of our reckless choices than did 20 years ago on this day. Talk about the hundreds of thousands people in the Middle East who were killed. The ones we don’t talk about because they don’t look like us. The money lost. The blowback. The fact that last fucking month, twenty fucking years later, we still saw people die from these wars we sacrificed our civil liberties for. The ones we turned into monsters for cause we were scared.
Sometimes I like to get nostalgic on my soapbox.
Today I want to talk about being a New Yorker. I want to talk about something we have stopped seeing as Covid keeps fucking with us.
Kindness.
New Yorkers get a bad rap. I was a Jersey kid scared of the city but resentful enough of my own town that I knew I would end up there. I have a theory that the talk of, “mean New Yorkers” is from tourists who encounter mean tourists who are trying to do their best New York impression but are actually just imitating other insufferable tourists doing the same.
“HEY LOOK IM BUMPING INTO PEOPLE IN TIMES SQUARE WITHOUT SAYING SORRY! JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES! FORGETABOUTIT!”
I lived in NYC at my most delicate. It’s where I figured out who I was and who I never want to be again. It was fucking scary. And I will tell you, every time I was lost or drunk or crying it was always, ALWAYS, a New Yorker who helped me.
Cut to 9/11.
Insert your own memories. How your stomach felt. What the sky looked like.
Cut back to now.
We are not handling this well.
I know how you voted by if you are wearing a mask. I have seen strangers scream at each other over cloth on an airplane. I have seen friendships dissolved over vaccines. I have seen friends turn into conspiracy nuts. I have seen others too scared to leave their homes.
Social media is not filling up with solutions to stop the virus. It has turned into a death toll contest. Anti-vaxxers posting about people who died, pro vaccine people laughing at anti-vaxxers who have died.
Humanity does not belong on Twitter.
What I miss, what I miss, what I miss, is the kindness of New York.
I know, this is some whimsical bullshit. Muslims were profiled by some dickheads in the aftermath of 9/11. Wars were launched. But a lot of that was the media leading the charge. They were the ones holding the pitchforks.
Just like now.
But they weren’t on the subways with me. They didn’t see the eye contact, and the nods to people that said, stronger than any words could, “you good?”
They didn’t hear the conversations started while waiting for bagels and coffee. Strangers who if you overheard them, you would have thought they were family.
They couldn’t feel the humanity. A feeling that I still wear on my skin like a light jacket on the first day of fall.
For the rest of that September, New Yorkers would have fucking died for each other. Some did.
The city was quiet. But not because we were scared. We were quiet so we could hear if anyone needed to be picked back up.
I miss New York. I tell myself it’s Stockholm syndrome. But it’s not. New York’s rent is high but it comes with backup. A city that will fight along side of you when you need them. That will smile at you when you are breaking down in the middle of Union Square. That will remind you, no matter how scary things are, you are still in the greatest city in the world.
What if we could harness that? What if every time I walked into a store it didn’t look like the people who have masks and those who don’t are gonna scrap? What if we asked more strangers what they needed to feel safe? If we went back to nodding and asking, “You good?”
We are in the middle of a disaster. We saw the outcome of what happens when we act with fear. But living in that city I also saw what happens when you act with kindness.
The choice is easy. The choice is ours.