9/11

I’ve written two 9/11 entries. I can’t decide which one to post, so I’m posting both. They are very different from one another -each written while in two opposite moods. Because I’m human!  

Counterparts:

September 11, 2001. It’s the 20th anniversary, and people seem to want to talk about it. That’s a change because, for the past 20 years, we really haven’t talked about it much. My own kids don’t know the details. Even my 17-year-old son didn’t realize that both towers collapsed. With so many special 9/11 memorials this year, it’s been weighing on my mind and sitting in my heart. 

My story isn’t anything special. I was home that day. But, like everyone else, it happened to me. It felt personal. It happened to my country, my airline, my flying partners. 

My route at that time was San Francisco to New York. They flipped the crews working flight 93 every other month. One month San Francisco-based flight attendants would fly it. The following month, New York-based flight attendants would. That September, it was JFK’s turn. 

A few days after the horrific events, I went back to work. It may sound strange, but I couldn’t wait to go back. I wanted to be with my flying partners even though I was scared to fly. I wasn’t the only one who was scared. The flights were empty, and those few who were onboard sat in utter silence. Passengers barely spoke and hardly moved. The flights were tense and somber. None of the passengers shared their story with me, but I’m sure they all had one. It had happened to all of us. It was personal.

The two airlines hijacked exchanged condolences. I wrote some words on an American flag that our airline presented to theirs. I can’t remember the words exactly, but that’s not important. It wasn’t the words that mattered but the sentiment. They reciprocated and sent us an American flag filled with their flight attendants’ and pilots’ messages of grief. Their gift hangs on the wall in our crew lounge in Chicago, our world headquarters. My breath still catches every time I walk past it. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. So much was lost that day, including our innocence. 

On this day, this year, I’m thinking about counterparts. With the New York base, we exchanged the flights; we shared the work. With American Airlines, we exchanged the flags; we shared the hurt. With everyone else on the planet, we shared sorrow and our common humanity. It was an exchange of energy …and it was personal.

Hookups: 

I don’t want to write a sad 9/11 story. I can, but not this year. This year, I want to tell you a funny story. 

After 9/11, we flight attendants would tell the most awful jokes. Really terrible, insensitive, shocking things would come out of our mouths. No one joked about 9/11. But we did. With each other. Only with each other. I guess it was a defense mechanism, a release of pent-up stress and grief. 

But don’t worry. I’m not going to tell you any disturbing and deeply inappropriate jokes. Instead, I’m going to tell you a cute story that took place shortly after the horrific events of 9/11.

To understand my story, I have to first provide some background knowledge and explain what a crash pad is. A “crash pad” is an apartment where lots of flight attendants swarm in and out, “crashing” for the night. Flight attendants commute on airplanes to work the same way other people commute in cars. In fact, probably less than half of all flight attendants actually live where they’re based. Hence, the necessity of the crash pad …a place to sleep before and/or after you work your trip.

After 9/11, I was still flying the same route: the transcontinental to New York. Only now, we had Air Marshalls on all our flights. Only they weren’t real Air Marshalls. Guys were getting pulled from all sorts of federal departments to serve as Air Marshalls while the government was frantically ramping up the hiring and training of real Air Marshalls. Basically, any government employee with a gun would do. We had men (sorry, they were all men) from Border Patrol, Customs, FBI, even the US Postal Service. 

One day, our Air Marshall from one of these agencies came into the galley mid-flight to chat with the flight attendants. He was a New Yorker, friendly, probably in his 50’s. He started telling us how he used to hang out with a bunch of stewardesses in the 1970s. He told us that he had an apartment in the city next to a flight attendant crash pad in those days. 

As this “Air Marshall” was regaling us with stories about wild parties and crazy antics hanging out with his flight attendant neighbors, one flight attendant (around his age) perked up and said, “Did you used to have a round bed?” He said, “Yeah.”  

Everyone in the galley lost it. All the flight attendants fell to the floor, cracking up while those two stood staring at each other, frowns on their faces, trying really hard to remember one another. 

When your hookups come back to haunt you. Now that was comic relief.