Eleven Years Later

Everyone remembers where they were on September 11th, 2011.  It's probably safer to say everyone remembers the fear, anger, confusion, and that crushing feeling of helplessness that came with the events of that dark day.  The dead silent skies over most of the country, except in Washington and New York, where and shocked silence was shattered by the sounds of sirens and fighter jets roaring through the skies were the norm for a day or two.

As for me, I was sitting in Miss Parson's science class, right next to the turtles.  We were kids, totally oblivious at the time that the Towers were hit, that the plane went down in Pennsylvania, and only 25 miles away the Pentagon was hit and a we just kept going through the motions.

All of the sudden though, Dr. Love, or principal, came over the PA system and started rattling off names of students to report to the main office.  A ton of kids got called out for early dismissal by parents who saw the news, leaving those of us left in classes to wonder what the hell was going on outside the walls of school.  The teachers knew, but for whatever reason (Probably to keep the level of sanity at a normal level) we weren't told, we all found out from Mom or Dad driving the carpools home.

Now, like I said, most of us remember how we felt watching and hearing what was going on.  I was confused and scared but beyond that I just felt like it wasn't happening. I'm sure people will tell you they instantly felt angry, but it was like taking a punch to the face from Joe Louis; you're stunned, you're not ready to throw your hands up, hell, maybe it knocked you to the mat for a few seconds, but you were gonna get up, eventually seeing the footage of the rubble of three buildings and the plane down in the field in Pennsylvania would pull you off that mat and into the ring again.

Then, as the referee started calling numbers, American pride and the human condition rose out of the rubble of three buildings and a field in Pennsylvania, and stepped up into the fight.  First responders flocked to New York and Washington, American flags flew in every neighborhood, the military started chomping at the bit, and for once, everyone across the United States, black or white, Democrat or Republican, KFC or Popeyes, picked each other up, dusted each other off, and said "How can I help?"

Now fast forward five years, I was watching a "first account" documentary from New York and that's when the magnitude of 9/11 hit me.  Seeing everything all the footage that had been put in front of us on a seemingly endless loop with the addition of survivors accounts and stories from the families of survivors had me (A) crying like a baby and (B) it made cry like a baby.

After probably three hours of watching, I realized I was leaning off the couch (Which was literally right next to the TV set) glued to the TV, emotionally drained, and just shocked at all I had seen and heard from the documentary.  It's amazing stuff to see these people who lost parents, lovers, friends,

So why am I writing this?  Because I still think about that day and those events a lot.  Working in Washington DC clearly brings it up from time to time, the first time I was in New York City reminded me of that day, and naturally watching "United 93" made me think of it.  I'm writing about it because, well, because it's been on my chest and on my mind for a while.  It is one event I will truly never forget, along with Osama Bin Laden being killed, the Beltway Sniper, a few major breakups (one comes to mind), and (as sad as it sounds in comparison) the Rangers/Caps playoff game where Federov scored the OT game winner.

Also, if you haven't seen "United 93", go out and see it as soon as possible.  Also watch "Rescue Me" (It was on FX for like seven years), which tackles the issues of the NYFD/NYPD post 9/11, and all the seasons are on Netflix.  And if you're a fan of the blues, check out this song by John Hiatt.

Epilogue

I've made a lot of fun of the WMATA on here (For good reason) but riding it every day lets you meet a lot of different people with different stories on the world.

Today, I was speaking to a friend of mine, Jason, who works on Capitol Hill and he was telling me that they were on the second floor of the Capitol Building and watched the plume of smoke rise from the Pentagon.  He got pretty much everyone listening a little misty eyed and choked up, if by everyone we mean me.  The most lasting image for me is what he told me he saw when he left the building; women's shoes scattered all around The Hill from women who decided to run and couldn't do it in heels.

Then the gentleman sitting in front of us turned towards us and chimed in with his story, and a new perspective, at least to me.  This gentleman is blind and worked with the Parks Service as a guide (Irony not lost on anyone) and talked about what is was like to hear people bustling around the National Mall and then chaos broke out.

Sadly, Jason and I reached our stop before he could finish his story but for the three blocks we walk together, we talked about it nonstop.  Picture that, being there in middle of the darkest day in American history, and not seeing a thing.


Never forget.

Bring My Lover Back

She left me in February.  After years and years of dating on and off, I always go back to her, sure as the seasons change, the wind blows, and the hands of time march onward, I will always return to her.

Who is she you ask?  The one that marks the end of my summer romances, the one who I can spend hours with on weekends and occasional weeknights, depending on her schedule.

The relationship can be a roller coaster though, some weeks are ups, others downs.  Sometimes she hurts me for weeks, other times she puts a smile on my face for a month, but like a drug addict, I will always need that rush.

Who is she you ask?  Some blonde bombshell?  Beautiful brunette?  Ravishing (And of course, soul less) red?  Wrong, wrong, and wrong again, friend.

Her full, legal name is "The National Football League", and she is the one for me.  I love baseball, I spend my summers with her, but as soon as the leaves begin to turn, the air gets a chill, and men put on pads and beat the shit out of each other, baseball just seems, well, too plain, too boring for my likes.

All ridiculous writing and romanticizing aside, football season is right around the corner, and I couldn't be happier.  I've been talking about it with friends, reading the latest news, and counting down the days until the season kicks off.

Now, if you walked my bedroom, you might notice a few things.  One, I try to keep a clean room.  Two, why do I still have a twin bed if I'm too big for it?  And three, there's a few Redskins things on the wall.  Like a giant FatHead of the Skins helmet, poster of the 1932 World Champion Redskins team, poster of Sonny Jurgensen, Redskins basketball hoop and basketball, giant Redskins blanket, team plaques for the three Redskins Super Bowl Champion teams ('83, '87, & '91) and the matching beer steins, and then there's the wall color, which may or may not be burgundy and gold walls.

You could say there is a theme to the room.  Now, for those of you who really know me, you know that I live and die with the Redskins on Sunday, it's that emotional rush that makes the football season so magical to me, but it also means after losses, I have to sleep in hell.  I have to go to bed staring at all this Redskins stuff, getting more upset and disturbed that the Redskins always seem to choke in the red zone, or Ladell Betts tripped over the four yard line (I know, I know, yes that was years ago but it clearly still bothers me to no end.  IT'S JUST A LINE!  HOW DID YOU FALL OVER?  I'm ranting. I do that a lot.)

But sleeping in that room after a tough loss can be a nightmare.  Sleeping in it after a big win is the best sleep of my life.  It's a terribly awesome hell I live in.  And I love every minute.

Football is just amazing, I feel like that's all I'm really saying here.  It's the roar of the crowds, the deep bombs, the amazing tackles, the back breaking runs, the acrobatic interceptions, the slow motion instant replays, agony of defeat, and the sweet, sweet ecstasy of victory.

I know some people, well, a lot of people, think it's insane how on game can affect my mood for a few days, or how it can affect who I socialize with on certain days (Both "Dallas Weeks" are my favorite weeks of the year), or how it can bring a group of people t who have never met, together for three hours over a game.

Okay, I'm getting myself too worked up right now.  The point is, football is right around the corner, and it's basically what America is all about haha.

Until next time, follow my random thoughts on Twitter @therealSamWow.

Nostalgia Sunday

I've been feeling extremely nostalgic ever since my first "Offical Unoffical Grade School Reunion" was planned and I wanted to share a few memories from my grade school years. I'm hoping to string a few of these together but we'll see how that goes. It's 1995ish. I'm in Miss Andrea's kindergarten class at Ascension Catholic Church. I used to sit near the door next to Joe, Joel, and maybe Emily. Can't exactly remember. What I do remember is every morning when we came into class, we'd have to get out our journals and crayons and draw something. When we were done, we had to take it up to Miss Andrea and show and tell her what we drew so she could give us a check mark on the page. Since I was a boy (and awesome) I drew tanks, bears, and other deadly stuff.

I wish I could find that book and scan in a few of the pages but I wouldn't know where to look, probably an art muesum but that's not the memory I wanted to share. I already told you guys about the girl trying to kiss us and us running away (we were so naive) and that's my only memory (along with the drawings) that's clear enough to tell, so I guess I just wanted to show you all how good looking I was in kindergarten.

So now I'm in first grade at St. Pius X Regional School. It's November of 1996, Mrs. Cavanaugh's 1st Grade class. This memory I can promise you is 100% solid. I wish I knew how I could hold all of these random memories in my head, it scares me sometimes but it's also a really cool thing to have.

Okay, so back to the memory. I was sitting next to Anne on the window side of Mrs. Cavanaugh's (1A?) classroom all the way at the end of the hall in the "Old Wing". My Grandfather had just died and I was telling Anne about that (I don't know why) and while I was telling her, I had a pencil in my hands with a pair of scissors onnit. What I was doing was holding both ends of the pencil and spinning my hands, making the scissors spin around the pencil. Apparently that wasn't "safe" to do in a classroom full of kids so I was told to stop and I was pretty embarassed.

I also remember that Mrs. Cavanaugh always took off her shoes during class and just walked around barefoot and apparently I was the only kid that could read the word "creation" off the board (well duh, I was in Sister Cecilia's reading class so I was kind of a big deal).

I debated sharing this next memory for a while for two reasons, (A) the finer details are kind of foggy and (B) it's embarassing to me. I think it was sometime around second or third grade and we were playing a game that put basketball and kickball together in some weird sports orgy but it was a fun game (everything was then). I was up, kicked the ball, and made it to first. It was a close call, but an arguement arose.

My team said I was safe, the other team didn't so they yelled at me. I started to cry like a little bitch. Mrs. Sikorsky came over and said I was out so I walked back to the bench and hung my head in shame. We lost the game by one point (I made that up for dramatic effect, I have no idea if we even kept score).

Now let's skip ahead to third grade. Mrs Curran's 3B classroom. It was close to the end of the day and we were all writing down our homework in our "Homework Books" and I was sitting next to a classmate that will remain un-named (if you really wanna know, send me a message on Facebook). My classmate asked me what the homework was that Mrs. Curran had just mentioned. I told her to shut up and thought it was over and done and I returned to jotting down the day's homework.

She raised her hand, presumably to ask Mrs. Curran to repeat the homework that she had missed. Wrong. She ratted me out. I looked up at the front of the class like a deer in the headlights. I got in trouble but I don't think anything happened to me except the fact that I had to apologize, which is dumb, cuz if I told her I would have just been slowing myself down then I would have had to ask Mrs. Curran and it would make it look like I wasn't paying attention.

What takes longer to say, "Shut up." or "Finish the color by numbers, read another chapter in our 'Children's Bible', and learn why two plus two isn't five." Women.

Okay, so that's really it for this "Nostaigia" post. Let me know what you guys think and I'll post more pictures and stories later in the week that will cover the fourth through eigth grade years.

What Photography is to Me.

Yesterday, I told my friend Dave that photography lets you block out the good or bad around something and let's you focus on one part, let's you paint a picture that's prettier than the surroundings and what you want to be seen. Does that make sense? I can't really remember how I worded it but I understand what I meant and that's what's most important, ya dig?

Looking back in my life, I know when I got really into football, really into girls, and really into cars and stuff but I can't pin point when I got into photography, all I know is that I'm neck deep innit. I took "Introduction to Photography" sophmore year of high school where we used film. What the hell right? Film, it was a dying art then (6ish years ago) and it's just about dead today. After that I went back farther into photography's past, "Darkroom Basics". Holy shit, if film was dead, doing the work your own was died with those cavemen they keep diggin out of ice. All joking aside, those classes were fun, it was cool learning and seeing something go from a tiny piece of film and then watching it almost magically appear on a piece of paper after about two minutes and you can say "Oh that, I made that.". I still have all my proof sheets (what you get after you devlop the film but before you make pictures) in a folder on my shelf.

While film was a great way to learn, you had only twenty four chances to get "the shot" and if you screwed one up, you wouldn't know about it until you devloped the film. The camera I'm looking at right in front of me (the "cheap" Nikon D3100 DSLR, my baby) can take 2,000 pictures (on a 4gb memory card), see at them in the screen, delete what didn't work, and try again. I went from taking maybe two shots of a subject from a film camera and praying they came out okay to taking ten pictures until you got the right one. Technology is beautiful thing.

In the few months I've had my Nikon, I've taken about 4,000 shots. That equals out to about 350 shots each time I've taken the camera on a "trip". Most of those pictures are in Washignton, DC which is where I work and also home to about one million of my favorite things to photograph. It's the home of old, beautiful row homes, giant monuments, shrines, tourists, and statues - all city scape and "live action"(maybe that's not the right catagory) shots, never a dull moment if you play it with some creativity. When it comes to the momuments it's giant white landmarks striking into a blue sky. The buildings are half old throwbacks colored like the monuments or new ones with glass faces. The people that pour in all have different looks and a look of wonder and amazement in their eyes and there's enough statues with differing styles to satisfy for a long time. I'd love to get to Boston, Annapolis, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, and New York to take a ton of pictures but Washington will always be my favorite cuz home is home.

What else could this post be about? I guess I can tell you that I think Jim Vance (NBC4 here in DC) is my favorite news reporter of all time, Will Smith is my favorite actor (Jason Segel is in 2nd), my favorite actress if Natalie Portman, my favorite singer is Sara Bareilles, favorite band is probably The Young Dubliners. There's what, two verbs in that sentence? Yeah, maybe just two, I onlt looked back through up until my first parenthese. And how great is Jim Vance? I

You can tell I walked away from the typing, got hyper, and came back. I blame (I say blame but mostly I thank) Milford Swagger and K. Trags (shout out, if they read these...) for reminding me Fun Dip still exists.

What else can I blog about? My friends? My adventures with those friends in Apartment 1615? The dumb stuff I've done? Working in a hardware store for two years? My high school? My family? My idea to get Sara Bareilles to marry me? How much I love watching Community on NBC? The Chive (if you don't know, Google "The Chive")? My ever lasting love for the Redskins? Movies? My deadly peach/fuzzed fruit allergy? "Cross-The-Line Wednesday? My attention span? (By the way, this is more a list for me so I can go through and find stuff to write about when the tank is empty)

I'll leave you with a picture - Happy Friday, now get walking.

Haha, uranus.