Five Years Ago
The company I work for is based in Boston. We have a satellite office in San Diego. My boss tells me I should go out to San Diego and get a feel for the office, since we'd recently added it via an acquisition. Now, I grew up in LA, and I've always preferred to fly in and out of LAX. And we had an LA office, so I could plausibly stop in there, and just drive to San Diego.
I prefer to fly on Tuesdays; it's the day with the fewest people, and I can generally get more legroom. And there is a convenient flight from Boston to LA that I've been on a number of times. Flight 11.
My boss is arguing with another VP over whose budget will pay for the trip. September 10th comes, and I'm fighting to get the issue resolved so I can book my flight and go. Then, something comes up, and I end up working until 9 pm, and decide I'll fly on Wednesday.
Tuesday morning I wake up, and drag myself into the shower. My girlfriend (now my wife) is still in bed when my landline, then my cellphone ring, but she doesn't answer the call - we were still a bit stealthy about our relationship. As I step out of the shower, the landline starts ringing again. Still dripping, I race to the phone.
It's the receptionist at work. She tells me that she has my father on another line, and that there is a family emergency and he needs to get in touch with me. I panic. If there had been a family emergency, my mom would be the one to call me - so my dad calling could mean only that it involved my mom. I tell the receptionist to tell him I'll call him right back.
I call my father. The first words I remember him saying, "You're alive." You see, my parents knew I was planning on flying to LA. And my father and I both fly the same flight when we do this, enough that he recognized the number. And when I didn't answer my cellphone, they could draw only one conclusion. But at this point, I'm still confused. What was the family emergency?
My dad tells me to turn on CNN. The first image I see is smoke billowing out of the side of one of the towers, and the caption about Flight 11.
Tragically, one of my co-workers was on one of the four flights. Every so often, a customer will mention it, sometimes because they just heard it, or as a commentary of another sort. It never ceases to startle me, as I had wanted to be on that flight.
