Jeff Davis | Vent Section Manager

(It should be noted that this article was written on September 11, 2001, the day of the terrorist attacks.)

My friend Maggie sent me an instant message when it happened. "CNN" was all it said. So I turned it on and, well, you know the story. Planes, probably hijacked, flown erratically into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Another plane went down in Pennsylvania but officials weren't sure if it was connected or not.

The pictures on the television seemed distant. Smoke was billowing like heads of broccoli, people were running with rags over their faces like newsreel images from the West Bank, and camera operators stood in the stream of debris like rocks in a river.

Down here everything was different. Students were walking on campus as they always walk, never in an exactly straight line but to the same destination they do each day. It was a gorgeous day today, with sunshine stretched out like a dog in the summer and a delightful breeze that only gets one's hair a little out of place. It was an anachronism to the people in New York City, who walked with gremlins of terror perched hard on their shoulders and three-piece suits covered with soot like the victims of Pompeii thousands of years ago.

I called Mom today. She said she could hear a pin drop at our home on top of a hill in rural Botetourt County. "It's such a gorgeous day," she said. "But I feel so crappy." It was like the day in July of 2000 when Purgatory Mountain was on fire. We could see the smoke from our house, but everything was still. In fact, we were on the porch with iced tea and gardening magazines talking about the weather and the loony management at the local country club. It's funny how us humans work.

I called Dad at work. He's the Vice President of Grand Home Furnishings and often finds himself caught up in his stacks of responsibility, telling people what to do and how to do it. "Today that all seemed so trite," he said in a very weary voice. "I don't see why anyone in their right mind would go out to buy a sofa today." He thanked me for calling and went back to his mountain of papers.

My roommate Chris and my friend Steve were playing Grand Turismo on Chris' PlayStation 2 earlier. They were really getting into the game, taking those virtual Toyota MR2s and Mercedes Benz SLK230s around the bends at ridiculous speeds. The tire smoke only reminded me of what was going on in the world. Prime Ministers and Foreign Ambassadors and Presidents of all cultures and descriptions were denouncing the acts of war perpetrated on innocent people on Wall Street and at the Pentagon. The stock market fell into a bowl of financial spaghetti with equity markets falling and treasury bonds flooding in like the Roanoke Valley was flooded in November of 1985.

It wasn't as if the campus was ignorant to the situation. Students were talking about it, exchanging condolences for those who were worried about their family and friends in Northern Virginia and New York City. The administration kept classes open and ordered televisions stay on to keep students apprised of the situation. I didn't have any classes. Dr. Baker and Dr. Poland cancelled them. Dr. Baker was suffering from a bit of a cold, actually, but I could tell there was more on her mind than invading bacteria. "I ran into an Arab woman today," she said to us before she dismissed us. "She told me that two guys screamed 'f*** you' at her." It would seem that both knowledge and ignorance were prominent on the campus today.

I found myself doing dishes and laundry. Anything to get my mind off the obvious. My friend Stephanie's best friend Noah goes to school at VMI and now all such academies are on Delta alert with the rest of the country. My friend Kristin's boyfriend works on the 40th floor in Manhattan. She doesn't know which building, or where in Manhattan, but he is a stock broker. I walked around to the laundry room of Fairfax Apartments and two guys were playing catch in the grass behind the tiny Criminal Justice building. They were talking about peanut butter sandwiches.

And I realized that I was doing whatever I could to get through the day, just like everyone else. Sliding quarters into the slots of the washers and drying washed beer mugs was natural. But somehow, it was still disturbing. Like watching it on TV made it seem like something I could change the channel on, like those rich, fat men who hold starving children from Ethiopia in their arms and beg you to get out your wallet. An admirable cause, but we get out the remote anyway. I'll probably buy a newspaper like everyone else will tomorrow and save it. Some people may not even read the story. They'll just buy the newspaper.

They buy the newspaper anyway.

Plenty of people will go to the candlelight vigil tonight and mourn the tremendous loss. And it'll come from their hearts. Then we'll all wake up each proceeding day and remember where we were when the worst peacetime attack on any country occurred in our backyard. But a lot of us slept through it.

Something about this doesn't seem right. I don't think it's any fault of anyone, or something to get enraged about. It's just how people go about doing what they do. It's just how people are. And there's nothing wrong about that.

But synthesize that with the collapse of the Twin Towers and thousands of businesses and most importantly thousands of lives, and everything we do just seems trite. Hell, some of us want to stand behind George W. as he pushes the bomb out the door of the plane when he makes good on his promise to "hunt down and punish" whoever is responsible for these attacks. I hate war in all its forms and I'll never support it. But no matter what I write here a violent retaliation will occur. This is, after all, the most powerful country in the world. And the cycle of fragmentation will continue.

We all want to do something about it. And it would seem everyone is doing just that.