So Frank does the lion's share of the inking and doesn't even receive a credit? Seems unethical from DC/ DG. 

My bestie called me back 15 or 20 minutes later, and that was the end of my sleep for the day. A girl I was friends with was dating a guy who worked in one of the Towers, who supposedly was above one of the impacts, but managed to get out. It was a really, really hard day for her. 

Edited to add: this is a really poorly written post but I’m going to leave it as is, because it amuses me. In my defense, I’m still teaching 10-12 year olds until the 25th of this month and my brain is in a perpetual state of fried.

On 9/11, I was up early, and was getting ready to take the 8AM bus. But I got distracted by something online in the morning, and I ended up leaving an hour later instead. But do the math - if I had taken that 8AM bus like I had planned, it would have dropped me off at the WTC between 8:40 and 8:45 AM - within minutes of the first plane crashing.

So, I walk out of my house some time after 9 AM, blissfully unaware of what had just transpired at my destination. I stared to wonder why the bus to take me there isn't showing up after a half hour of standing there. I also started to get bad vibes from people around me. Looks of fear in the faces of passers-by. Cars blasting what sounded like news our of their windows instead of music. Something didn't seem right. Then, almost on cue, an elderly woman sees me standing there and says "See that smoke over there? It's from the Trade Center". I must have given her a confused look, and then she kept on walking. With the trees and all, I could only make out smoke in the distance. I decided that's it, this bus isn't coming, time to go back into the house and see what's going on in the news. And that's how I found out. Not knowing the full details of the timeline at first, I didn't realize that they had evacuated the PATH train stations before the collapse, so I thought for days that had I left when I intended, I would have been killed.

Bonus story!

Clearly I did not make it into work that day, and I stayed home. About 3pm that afternoon, my doorbell rang. I open it (getting a whiff of the downwind smoke from the disaster less than 10 miles away) and it's an apparent Middle-Eastern man in his late 20s-early 30s seeing the for sale sign on one of my cars parked in front, telling me that he'd give me $800 cash right there to take it away. I told him that it had a dead battery (which I recall was actually true). He said no problem, he'll come back that night with a fresh battery so he can take it. This was all seeming extremely suspicious but I said fine. I didn't want to prejudge but in light of the circumstances of the day, this guy REALLY wanted to get out of dodge. I had to suspect that maybe he has associated with the attacks somehow. 

But I had no proof, and barely even any evidence - and it was such a wild notion that I had no idea what to do about it. Later that day I drove to my local police precinct and told them what happened. Well....on 9/11 the cops clearly had other things on their mind, so I don't think they really took me seriously. I don't even remember the details of the exchange, I think they just took my name and number down and that's it. I didn't know what to do when the guy came back for the car.

But, he never showed up again. I still wonder from time to time if this could have been an actual Al Qaeda sleeper cell member ringing my doorbell that had gotten away via some other means, and for good.