All the Fallen Off Shoes

[alcibiades_mystery]

One thing I learned in Lower Manhattan on 9/11: when a lot of people break into a panicked run, people's shoes fall off. It's a little detail that you'd never get in a disaster movie, that you only really get from being in an actual disaster. So, one of my clearest memories from that morning is watching people's shoes fall off all around me. They start running, and their shoes fall off. It makes sense: most of us - especially in Lower Manhattan on a Tuesday morning - didn't really expect to be going into a full sprint on concrete. Mostly, our shoes are not built for that, or our laces are not that tight. So I see this very clearly: people losing a shoe. Not one or two people. A lot of people around me losing their shoes. Then they turn - the moment of decision: do I go back for my shoe? Whoever thought waking up that morning whether this would be the life and death decision? Do I go back - that moment of uncertainty. I see this clearly. I also see many people picking up their shoes - stopping in a kind of confused state, not calmly leaning over, but bending sort of backward like they don't really want to do it, and picking up the shoe. It's one of the things that will always stick with me. All the fallen off shoes.

So I'm watching CNN just now, and they're looping through footage, and smack, right there, there it was. A guy with a woman, not marathoners, but viewers or whatever, in jeans, and they're trotting at a good pace, and his shoe falls off, and he does the backwards bend to get it, keeps trotting. Holy fuck, man, that was IT. That was exactly it.

Thoughts with the people of Boston tonight, like theirs were with us back then.

[Little Star]

1. Thank You.

[NWHarkness]

2. Eloquent

Thank you.

[Poll_Blind]

3. Thank you for taking the time to write and share that. nt

PB

[one_voice]

4. K&R

[AsahinaKimi]

5. I wonder how many

Roman Sandals were found at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius

[AtheistCrusader]

11. At Pompeii? All of them. Some still on feet though.

[marybourg]

6. And many N.Y.ers scrounged walking shoes and sneakers from their closets

brought them down to the street and gave them to people walking home who were wearing shoes inappropriate for long walks. Maybe barefooted too.

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. Somebody offered me a face mask once I got across the bridge to Brooklyn...no thanks

Another dude offered me a beer. Took it gladly.

Spread love, it's the Brooklyn way. - Notorious B.I.G.

[bluedigger]

7. The image that I will remember is all the international flags quavering in the blast.

Quite symbolic.

[oldandhappy]

9. I noticed that also

A good picture to remember, all the flags of the countries representing all the runner -- I am guessing. Anyway, makes the whole thing bigger somehow to think of the people from around the world who come to participate in the race.

[Raine]

20. Me too. It brought me to tears especially when I saw the Norwegian flag,

my grandparents were Norwegian Canadians who came here almost a hundred years ago. Seeing that flag with the wind and smoke really touched me.

[GiveMeFreedom]

8. Sorry your mind is seared

with these images. I hope for a world of peace.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. Certain things get seared into your brain after witnessing a horrific event.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a murder-suicide in our office building, in the office suite right next to mine.

Two things that stayed with me vividly:

1. The exact sound of what those gunshots sounded like when I heard them.
2. Looking out the office window and seeing a police officer jogging towards our building with a rifle in his hand.

[siligut]

13. Poetically profound.

I can guarantee this or a derivative of it is going to appear in a movie script/scene.

[mainstreetonce]

14. I once walked into the office

to find that the boss had just been taken out as a suicide. I can't remember what I wore yesterday, but I can tell you exactly how many buttons were on the grey coat I was wearing that day in 1989.

[Oilwellian]

15. There's a poem about shoes in the Holocaust Museum

We are the shoes, We are the last witnesses
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers.
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam
And because we are only made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh,
Each one of us avoided the Hellfire

http://www10.cs.rose-hulman.edu/Papers/Matias/thepoetr.html

[Squinch]

16. I think

I have come back and re-read your post about 8 times today.

It is heartbreaking, but so beautifully noted and so beautifully written. It's such a small detail that tells such a huge story.

Thanks for it.

[undeterred]

17. I read a survivor account written by a woman who was in a hotel

that was in the tower that went down first. They woke everyone up and told them to get out immediately so she left in her pajamas and was running around NY in her pajamas and slippers for a half the day at least. Which would ordinarily have been ridiculous, but on that day it could have cost her life if she'd gotten dressed.

[ProudProgressiveNow]

18. K&R nt

[Raine]

19. Very touching post, THANK YOU. nt

[Beacool]

21. I was there that morning.

Coming into the North Tower after riding the next to the last PATH train that made it to the WTC. The plane had already hit the bldg.

My impressions:

- Lots of smoke (white smoke, not the black smoke outside the tower).
- Once outside, many people looking up at the bldg.
- Woman crying and repeating, "that's my bldg., that's my bldg."
- Another woman explaining that "they said that a plane hit it"
- Wondering who could have flown into it on such a clear day (thinking small plane, not jet liner)
- People suddenly screaming.
- People jumping from broken windows and landing with a thud (THAT was the worst part of the day).
- Walking away and jumping over a small river of blood that flowed from someone on a stretcher.
- Going past the Hilton Millennium Hotel when someone screamed, "a plane".
- Looking up and seeing the bright blue belly of a jumbo jet flying into the South Tower directly across the street.
- Thinking two things: 1) it's a terrorist attack and 2) we are going to die.
- Running into the Hilton. The hotel people were yelling at everyone to "run to Broadway" (some people seemed disoriented).
- Shoes everywhere, particularly women's shoes.
- Paper, the streets were covered in paper that had flown from the damaged bldgs.
- Making it to work four blocks away.
- Frantically trying to reach my mother in FL and not being able to, calling home in NJ with similar results.
- Ground shaking and day turning into night, the South Tower had collapsed.
- Repeat of the same when minutes later the North Tower collapsed.
- Looking out our office windows and seeing the city covered in dust: people, bldgs., cars, just everything.
- Finally taking the ferry home to Hoboken where there was a triage area at the terminal.
- Firemen hosing us and telling everyone to get rid of their shoes once they got home.
- Walking home soaking wet, with a towel around my neck.

My town lost 57 people that day, more than any other town in NJ, although it's only a square mile.

Around here we know precisely what the people in Boston went through. Our hearts, thoughts and prayers are with them.

[truedelphi]

22. That is some experience.

As many years as it has been, and it is still chilling to read the first hand accounts.

[Beacool]

23. It was a day that none of us who lived it will ever forget.

Events like the one in Boston bring it all back, the smells, the sounds. It's much different living it than watching it on TV. So I know that those who were there, even if they weren't injured or lost a loved one, will never forget what they lived on that day. For example, I never saw on TV or a photo of what we saw from the ground when a jet liner was just yards away from us. I remember vividly the bright blue belly of the plane (it was the United flight) when it went right through the bldg. and debris flew in every direction. That's when I realized that it was an intentional attack on the Towers.

Many sad days followed as there were so many memorials for the people who were missing. Everywhere you went there would be posters w/photographs and info. on a person who had never gone home, and never would. They were up for weeks until all hope was gone.

Anyway, Life goes on.