World Trade Center

Today’s New York Times had a special section called, “The Death of Osama Bin Laden.”

I flipped through it, reading some of the articles, when I came across a picture of the Twin Towers on 9/11, smoke pouring out of them. It had been awhile since I had seen the image and now seems..weird, for lack of a better word.

I stared at the picture for awhile and after a moment, something struck me. I looked out my office window. I looked back at the picture. I looked back out the window. Then back down at the picture. I realized that I was IN the picture.

I wasn’t actually in the picture, of course. I was in college on 9/11. But my office building is very much present in this, and probably many other pictures from that day.

It was enough to give me a supreme case of the FREAKING OUTS.

It goes without saying, of course, that I work right near Ground Zero. One block away, in fact. I took a stroll over there yesterday to see the increased pedestrian traffic and to count what ended up being 27 news trucks. With President Obama coming here on Thursday, I imagine that number is going to double.

I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if I had been here and not in Boston in 2001. There are so many questions running through my head about what that day would have been like for me.

But it’s better that I’ll never know.