Dear Stickers,
What specifically are you concerned about me forgetting? My roommate waking me up in our dorm on 9th Street after the first plane hit? Seeing ant-sized jumpers, all falling at the same sickening speed? Watching the buildings crumble outside my window, like an action movie without the sound?
I don’t need you to remind me about the hordes of exhausted, shell-shocked people trudging up Third Avenue, all colored beige, dust piling on the shoulders of men’s suit jackets and hanging from women’s hair in clumps. I lent my against-all-odds functioning cell phone to a woman who worked downtown, and I won’t forget how bizarre it was when she asked me if it was OK to make a long-distance call.
We were inside an emergency zone. Only residents were allowed south of 14th Street. People trying to get downtown all ended up in Union Square Park, including reporters, who were putting people on camera and letting them get hysterical. Going to the grocery store meant crossing a National Guard checkpoint and a mob. I remember showing our Student IDs to a Guardsman on our way back, and I remember his gun, the most threatening weapon I’ve ever seen in person.
Word got out that a theater south of the checkpoint was open for free. I did forget some of the movies we watched that afternoon. We saw at least three – everything that was playing except for Apocalypse Now Redux. When we left, the staff was handing out napkins for us to hold over our mouths. We would all grow accustomed to the thick, choking cloud, with its layers of yellow dust that gathered on our windowsills for months.
Stickers, I’ll be honest, I’d forget more if I could. Just enough to lose the worst of the feelings that come back sometimes. I’d like it if my chest didn’t seize up when planes fly overhead, or when I pass an officer with a semi-automatic rifle, or see one of you, who want so badly for me to remember the worst day of so many people’s lives.
It’s been 11 years, but you’re still surprisingly pervasive, with your block lettering and flag motifs. People are still buying you, sticking you on their cars and trucks so that everyone behind them gets the all-important reminder. But I promise, I will never forget lying in bed with my eyes wide open, thinking about the people buried alive two miles away. We’re good. You can all peel off now.
