The sky was blue. I know people try to make it out like it was a different blue and how cliche that might be. But seriously, it was as if the ocean (in the caribbean, not the jersey shore) and the sky traded places for the day. It was a blue that you could just sink into and swim in. It was my first day training at Chef Geoffs. A local restaurant right off The American University Campus. I was a sophomore and had never really held a job so this was something new for me. My alarm rang early and i dressed myself for work. We had to wear these god awful khakis, blue oxford shirts, yellow ties and black shoes. All the servers looked like computer programmers before hollywood made it popular for computer geeks to wear vintage t shirts and sport bed head year round. When i arrived at work i was nervous. I had all the normal symptoms of anxiousness, the sweaty palms, swamp ass and told inappopriate jokes to try and ease the tension with my trainer Jackie. She had none of it.

We walked past the bar when jackie stopped dead in her tracks. The tv was on like normal but instead of Sportscenter the bartender Steve had put on CNN. A small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Honestly i did not have any real emotional reaction to it. It just didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. After Steve gave Jackie and i an update on the situation we returned to work. It was only a few moments later that we heard some loud screams from the bar as we cleaned out the urinal cakes in the mens room. For the next few moments everything was a blur after planes crashed into the WTC, the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania.

An hour later we sat in front of Chef Geoff. All i remember thinking was that i was sure the restaurant would close and we would go home and deal with the ramifications. I wanted to be anywhere but at work. I wanted to go home to Philadelphia to be with my mother. I tried numerous times to call my mother and my father but the line was busy. It wouldnt be until late in the day when i finally reached them. They were crazy frantic. I wanted to be anywhere but DC, well DC and New York City. But Geoff sat there steadfast and resilient. He told us all to man up and get ready for work. We were going to remain open and be a haven for people all across the area. Sure enough businesses and restaurants closed across the DC metro area. Geoffs wife was Nora O’Donnell, an MSNBC White House correspondent and she brought all her friends and peers to the restaurant. By Noon we were packed. People sat in silence and watched in horror as the footage played over and over again.

Who was to blame? Why was this happening? What the fuck was going on? Everyone had their theories. Some thought it was Saddam. Some even thought it was the beginning of a new cold war and that Russia (even with its failing economy) was up to no good. No one thought or knew that it was some extremist from the mountains of Afghanistan who was trained by our own CIA.

Generally a lunch shift at Geoffs lasts from ten am till 3 or 4 pm. My shift lasted till 7 pm. When i got off work i had a glass of red wine and a ny strip steak. I checked my phone and had 17 voice messages from various friends and family. A few were even from my ex girl friend from highschool who hit me with her car earlier in the year and cracked two of my ribs. Of course in such circumstances i had to suck it up and call her back even as my ribs were still sore from her VW Jetta attack a few months earlier.

In the following months life in DC was odd and unfamiliar. It was like living on a different planet. The week after the attakcs all flights were suspended. The American University campus laid right under the flight trajectory of Reagan Airport. After a week flights were open again. My friends and i sat on the quad passing a joint attempting to make time go faster. Then all of a sudden the sky boomed. We turned our heads up in horror as we watched the first flight since the attacks glide over us. Planes didn’t sound like planes anymore. The ambient sounds of jet engines that we were so accustomed to were all of a sudden sirens of terror. We were sure this plane was destined to crash somewhere nearby, perhaps even on our campus. We waited and waited but nothing happened. We were safe. We passed the joint in silence.

Soon after, DC was hit by a string of Anthrax attacks. I was scared to open the mail. I made my roommate Whitey open all deliveries. To fuck with me he would take the envelopes and rub them all over his body. I figured better him then me. My paranoia was at an all time high. It didn’t help that a few months earlier i was at a Phish concert and some hippie chick dosed me with acid unknowingly. I bugged the fuck out. As a result i developed a paranoid personality and became increasingly anxious and uncomfortable around large groups of people and clowns (don’t ask). I couldn’t sleep because i was afraid people were gonna get me (i was only sleeping 4 hours a night). I wouldn’t eat because i thought all food was dosed with acid by extremist hippie kids (i lost 25 pounds). When the anthrax came it just added to the paranoia and my lovely roommate Whitey willingly tortured me throughout the whole ordeal. I even called 911 when i saw a letter laying in the grass close to a mailbox. It would take a year before i could get the mail out of my own mailbox.

Shortly after some guy with a sniper rifle started gunning down random pedestrians across the DC metro area. No one wanted to go outside. For some reason he shot some people at random gas stations and even filling your car up became terrifying. I would watch people run outside their cars, put the hose in their tank, duck and run around and wait in their cars, heads hidden down while they prayed. I myself did the same thing. After 13 victims the sniper was caught on the of the highway taking a nap in his car. Some trucker called in a suspicious vehicle, a regular sedan. Everyone applauded and congratulated Police Commissioner Moose Johnson for his forces superior work. Apparently they all forgot that he ID’d a large white van as the snipers mode of transportation weeks earlier. We spent a month ducking for cover everytime we would see a fucking white van when all along it was not even close to a white van! Good work Moose.

We also had bomb threats and were forced to evacuate the school twice. A fellow student thought it would be funny to freak out his schoolmates and made some prank calls from a local Maryland drug store. Funny guy. We all wanted school cancelled for the rest of the week but they made us go back to class later that day. My friends and i instead went to Geoff’s and got drunk on shots of tequila.

At graduation our commencement speaker mentioned all the shit we went through while going to school in DC. She listed 9/11, the Iraq War, Anthrax, Sniper attacks, a horrible economy, a shit president and then continued that if we went through all of that, we would easily be able to take on the real world. It was 9 am on a Sunday, most of us were ridiculously hungover and stuck in a hot ass auditorium. All we could think was when she was gonna shut her fucking trap and when we could start drinking. Apparently in the real world in times of turmoil, liquor sales go up (at least thats what i heard). If that was the case then we were all gonna be fine because if we had learned anything in college, we had at least developed a strong tolerance for a stiff drink. God knows we needed it.

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