September 2026
Who’s On First
A very old comedy duo known as Abbot and Costello are talking baseball in this segment taken from their 1945 film called The Naughty Nineties. If you’ve never seen or hear this then its a must watch even in the 2020s!
9/11 – 25 Years Ago today
Twenty five years ago, I was working in a 12 story office building in Toronto. Shortly after I got settled in for work on the 10th floor some of my co-workers came to me and said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. They suggested I come got up to the 12th floor with them to watch the news on the TV in our company cafeteria. I pictured a small twin engine plane hitting the building.
When I got upstairs it was very clear that it was not a small plane but a big jet. My coworkers started saying it was most likely a terror attack. We were watching live TV and were seeing the fire in the tower as well as what was happening in the streets around the tower. While we were there watching the events, live on TV, we watched as the 2nd plane flew into the 2nd tower. That image of that plane flying into the building is still very vivid in my mind 25 years later.
After that happened company management told us we were not obligated to work that day and that we could stay in the cafeteria to watch the news. We were all quite freaked out by then; especially, due to the fact our office building was one of only a few tall buildings in the area and we were located under a flight path for Pearson International Airport. Everytime we saw a plane nearing our building we would get very nervous.
We continued to watch the TV which was now showed both World Trade towers burning. We were seeing images of people hanging out the window pleading for help as helicopters flew around to assess the situation. There were also people roof pleading for help. Then came the falling bodies. People were jumping out of the building to escape the horrific fires. We saw a number of those people fall on live TV. Those people fell 300+ meters to their deaths. What were they thinking as they fell? Did it happen quickly for them or did the time pass slowly? What kind of situation will cause a person to make a decision like that? Just thinking about what those people must have been experiencing feels very unsettling.
As we continued to watch we heard stories of 2 more hijacked planes. One crashed into a field and another crashed into the Pentagon. We did not see those happen but we were hearing about it shortly after it happened. None of my friends outside the company had watched the live TV. They only knew what happened from news reports later in the day. Actually, I have yet to encounter someone who experience the day like we did, but I know there are many. Those that did not see what my coworkers and I witnessed on live TV and did not experience the full impact. Of course what we experience was nothing like what those people in New York experienced.
We then started hearing the flights were being grounded in both the U.S. and Canada. We noticed less and less planes flying by our building and then they complete disappeared. At least we could stop getting nervous everytime we saw an approaching plane.
We were there watching live TV when the first tower came down. It was like it was happening in slow motion is it was an unbelievable thing to witness. We continued to watch and witnessed the 2nd tower come down. Live TV was showing the dust clouds spreading in the streets and the people running away from the downed towers. We spent most of our work day up in the cafeteria watching the horrific events unfold on live TV. That was one of the most impactful days I have ever experienced.