False alarm

Well, there's nothing like a small aircraft crashing into a Manhattan apartment building to jar me out of my silver-pooled light of happiness.

I know, I know, everyone's comparing this to 9/11. Well, I'm one of them. This time, when I read the news online I thought to myself, until the second plane hit, all the news stations were reporting that it was just a small aircraft. As the live video stream on ABC.com kept timing out before it could launch, I remembered having the same problem with CNN.com five years ago. Only technology was worse, then. I finally logged on today, only to hear conflicting reports: it's a plane, no it's a helicopter; it's not terrorism, it may be terrorism; it hit the 20th floor, it hit the 40th floor. On September 11th we heard all sorts of stories that we took as factual at the time, and only learned later were nothing but speculation.

Like many people, I had terrible nightmares after 9/11, mostly that planes were falling out of the sky and crashing into buildings. Sometimes, when people asked why I was moving out of New York when LA was just as probable to fall subject to an attack, I answered, because the chances of a building falling on my head are far less likely.

Alas, the tragedy today turned out to be very different than last time. And so it's not about me but about a baseball player with a wife and young son at home and a city full of people sighing with relief that this was only a false alarm. Wondering how long their luck will hold out until the real thing happens again.