Let me just preface this by saying that I lived in Oklahoma City when the bomb went off there in 1995. My dad was at work about a block and a half from the blast. I was at school, it was the scariest day of my life, period. I was fortunate enough to not have lost anyone, but I was really afraid I had lost my dad for a few hours, and let me tell you, there is no worse feeling on this earth than to think you’ve lost the most important person in your life. That was 167 people total, dead when all the smoke had cleared. That was downtown Oklahoma City, not downtown New York City. Big difference. Apparently the death toll right now is estimated to be in the thousands, several thousand. Yesterday my dad was to go to Austin, Texas for a business meeting, but he got stalled in Dallas when they determined that all airports would be closing. I had the oh so enjoyable task of driving from here (Norman, Oklahoma…at OU) to north Dallas to pick my dad up. I was probably on the road 7 hours total yesterday. Not a fun day, but all I could think about as I drove down there was that at least I was going down there to pick up my dad, he was alive, he had been affected by this tragedy but not in a way that was at all permanent, like death is, or like serious injury is. I listened to the news on the way back, and it all really still was just starting to sink in. If you lived anywhere near NYC, chances are you knew someone who died yesterday. If you have relatives who work or live in NYC, chances are either they died or one or more of their friends did. I was just so thankful that I hadn’t been directly affected by loss in this situation. I really do feel for everyone who lost people yesterday. Whether it was in NYC, DC, PA, or on board one of the planes. It was just a horrible day.
I’m really having a hard time wording everything correctly here, lots of emotions and thoughts running wild through my head, kind of colliding and I feel like I’m headed a dozen different ways, so forgive me if I am not making sense here.
I browse message boards regularly, just to see what people think of different things in the wrestling world, but obviously wrestling talk has been replaced this week with talk of this tragedy, it’s consequences, and the culprits. I see enraged Americans posting about how we should just wipe out all of these certain races of people because they were dancing in the streets, because the hijackers were of that race, etc. I see Europeans, Asians, and even Canadians attacking these Americans, calling it “blind patriotism”, even going as far as to say that maybe America has gotten what it has had coming for a long time. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that it’s not to start fighting with each other about this. Americans are very patriotic, no doubt. Look at our history, how hard America had to fight just to be an independent nation. We have a right to be proud, to be patriotic. But I see the same thing from Canadians; you’re all very patriotic of your country as well. So is England. Patriotism is part of this, yes, because it was as the headlines call it an “Attack On America”, but if you live in any civilized country and don’t feel for the people who were victimized by this incident, shame on you. Period.
That’s as far into the specifics as I’m going to get. I don’t feel comfortable commenting on the status of anything else, because it’s too early to tell what’s going to happen. Obviously, thoughts and prayers are with the victims, and let’s just all hope that this situation doesn’t get any worse than it is.
Now, since this is a wrestling column, maybe we should take a quick look at how this whole ordeal might impact the wrestling world. The Smackdown tapings set for Tuesday have been delayed until Thursday, making it a live show again this week. It’s yet to be seen what action the WWF might take to somehow acknowledge this tragedy on-air. I’m sure that the wrestlers were just as shook up as the rest of us by this news. I’m not sure what sections of New York are blocked off, but this could affect shows done from WWF New York for awhile. WWF Tough Enough has been pre-empted this week. The airlines still aren’t running, and if they aren’t running yet come this weekend, who knows what the WWF will do about running shows at the beginning of next week. Looking beyond the immediate future, when the airports do open back up, increased security will be in effect. This will make going through airports an even bigger pain in the ass than they already were. Something that the entire WWFE team has to do several times a week is fly, so they’ll get a fair share of problems from that. Although if I were in their shoes…I’d be driving for awhile. As far as we know at this point, no one on the WWF roster was affected by the tragedies as far as losing someone, and hopefully that will remain the case.
Plain and simple, September 11, 2001 will forever stand out in everyone’s mind as a simply horrific and historic, horrible day. The entire nation came to a standstill for the first time ever, and whether you’re American, Canadian, British, French, I don’t give a damn, you’d better show some respect and keep these people in your prayers. However, I am a proud American, as I said before, and as such, my final words for you in this really bizarre edition of my column are four little words that maybe a lot of people have forgotten, words that appear on our money, words that really are all we can do in a time like this, and those words are IN GOD WE TRUST.
