13 September 2001 - 10:23 a.m.

Last night, just as I was about to turn out the light, I think I heard a plane. My first thought was "Oh my God, they really are out to get Carnegie Mellon!"

Then I remembered they said on the news that military planes might be flying over cities all over the country to keep us safe. If they want us to feel safe, they should quiet those things the hell down.

I finally talked to my punk dad last night, who is in MIchigan this week. To be fair, he did leave a message on my machine last night and was going to send me an email, but couldn't get his computer set up. But I was pretty worried about him, because he could very well have flown somewhere on Tuesday, and anyone who could only get Pittsburgh local news will remember that there was half an hour or so between noon and one in which there were rumored to be a great number of planes that had taken off from Pittsburgh in the air, all unaccounted for. One of them was allegedly circling Dulles, and we sure that was going to mean another attack somewhere. I was crying, because at that point, when the towers had collapsed and the Pentagon had been hit, the whole world had been turned upside down. There was no reason to think that I couldn't lose my dad as well; no one is that naive. Thankfully, ALL of what I just wrote about turned out to be completely untrue (thanks, Channel 2) and my mom called me to tell me that my dad was safe in Michigan, she had gone home from work, mostly because there was no TV there and everyone was dying to get to some news and their kids, and my brother was safe at school. Excellent.

However, there was similar panic among everyone I knew who's not currently in western Pennsylvania, since, apparently, other cities hadn't done a great job of distinguishing between "a completely rural area 80 whole miles outside of Pittsburgh" and the actual city itself. They were all relieved and irritated to find out that, possibly thanks to a few really brave people, the plane had crashed in the middle of fucking nowhere, as opposed to a reasonably large urban center. Not to undermine the deaths of those on that flight, of course. It just goes to show you that a few details in a news broadcast really do make a difference. I feel so bad for anyone who isn't near home right now.

The one funny thing about the Somerset crash is the way newscasters (presumably following the instructions of news writers) try to make everyhting more dramatic. Okay, in almost no instance is that funny, it's usually really stupid, and it makes me want to scream, "Have a little sensitivity, this isn't an action movie!" But the other day, whomever we were watching (too many reporters in the last few days to remember who said what) siad that the last plane had crashed in the Heartland of America: Somerset County. "Since when is Somerset County the heartland of America?" I asked.

"I think the heartland of America is anywhere you can't catch a bus," said Gus.

As the priest said Tuesday night, "You gotta laugh, folks."

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