It's an odd scenerio. One you look at through a sort of lens of surrealism, when it comes down to it--wether because of the hour or distance, one doesn't know--but it's not that real, at any rate.

You wake up. A lazy day, you think--naturally you stayed up way too late last night, but little matter. You screw around with ypur computer, trying to get it to work. You go and brew your coffee. You get a phone call.

She works at a job where she has to just watch the news all day, practically, to check for computer viruses and threats to the whole system over there in the multitude of contractors that work with Hanford, with the federal building.

"Have you seen the news?" she asks.

A rhetorical question. Of course you haven't. It's too early for news, and anyway, the most you ever see is what little blurb is on the front page of the paper when you kick it in the door. She sounds breathless, though--your mom, who called straight from work so godawful early--and you worry--that a part of town is on fire, that you've just lost your ride to school or something. You always assume the tradgedy is yours, when you first hear it.

She does go on, though. She does say that all the government agencies around the nation are being closed.

And why.

At that time, when you finally turn on the TV, the South Tower had collapsed, the other was still standing. They seem unsure what, if anything, has happened to the Pentagon--you see an image of smoke coming from it, and you're not sure why they're not sure. You know one of those flights is from Boston to LA (later you'll find out that an acquaintance had parents who were scheduled to take the same flight, but two hours later. That she has 14 siblings, too.)

But it's still all very unreal, of course. You've got coffee to brew, still, and breakfast to eat. So listlessly you eat, listening to the news from the next room, trying to get ready.

It doesn't really become real until you contemplate your friends. The Eds and Kalis in your life. But you can justify--New York's a big city, right? It's fine, right? Not like it's some little po-dunk town like yours. Right?

So you go to school. And it's as usual, but the first hour class has NPR on, and you're listening to the news. And you hear about the Pentagon. The collapse that happened in the short drive. It's still not real, though. It's not like when there was the west's largest-spanning wildfire in quite a while jumped highways right next door to you. Not at all like that time when you saw the line of the horizon a wall of fire, when you turned on the CBS news and one man was there all night, and, at one time, broke down. You can comprehend that it must be so for those in New York. But you can't comprehend New York directly, not in a way that does it justice.

You hear from Ed--he's okay. Fourteen blocks away, he took photos and wants to write an article on what he's feeling for the paper back home. You hear from Kali--she's okay, but you know it's much more personal for her as opposed to Ed, who is just there for college at NYU.

And it's then, when you get home, when the coffee wears off, when everything's said and done and you're out of the routine that you feel the reality of it.

That you truly grasp how you could very well have been a target, living next to the Hanford site--a nuclear plant, one of the three that built the bombs for WWII, now converted to make nuclear waste to glass that can be disposed of, and is still a huge target. That you're a few hours from a chemical waste depot which you've driven by and seen the hundreds of bunkers stretching on, a graveyard of canisters of chemical warfare buried under mounds of thick earth and cement. And waiting. And a target.

And while Hanford certainly isn't as full of nuclear materials as it once was, it's still more than enough to kill you. And the chem. depot, with the winds, would bring people miles around to death and illness. And you're thankful airspace is closed.

It isn't until you get home, either, that you see the amateur footage of the second plane, so crisp, so cruel. It isn't until later when you realize Afghanistan is under attack. And they say the US government is in no connection to it, but you can't believe that. You're a cynic. You don't know.

And you're exausted. You're worried that the Islamic students will be attacked in their classes. You're still worried about your friends in NY.

And, while it's starting to hit you, it's still not as real as it must be for them.