Where were you September 11, 2001?
I was living briefly in a holiday park during off-season, because that was my teaching practice year, in which student teachers are sent to lucky-dip parts of the country to try and teach get through teachers’ college. I was sent to Nelson.
The camping ground was pretty deserted, which was great, but then an entire crew of foresters turned up, from way up north. The group was entirely made up of young men in their late teens to early twenties, and they were from north of Auckland. They seemed to smoke a lot of pot. They had a casual attitude towards ownership of kitchen items, and the washing machines were perpetually in use due to the soaking of perspiration-soaked overalls. One of them broke into my cabin one night; not because he had ill-intent, but because he was drunk, and thought his cabin mates had locked him out of his room as a joke after taking a leak. He came to apologise to me the following day, looking sheepishly at his boots. And that’s probably all you need to know about them.
I woke up one morning to find their cook preparing breakfast in the kitchen. “Have you heard the news?” he said. “The twin towers got bombed.”
I have to admit I didn’t really understand what this meant. First, I was half asleep. I wasn’t even too good on American geography and important buildings and I couldn’t have even pointed the Twin Towers out to you on a map. But it soon sank in when I got to school, and all the students with American connections had been pulled out of class to spend time talking events over with the guidance staff.
When I arrived home that evening I joined my fellow campers in the TV room. Man, did those guys watch some crap. I was lucky to see anything apart from soaps and reality TV shows, but this one time they were watching the news. That week is memorable for scenes of the planes bombing the buildings, over and over again.
All I heard from the young men was, “Cool!” and “Woah, awesome!” and other expressions of delight.
I don’t understand that. I have never understood. I’m tempted to put it down to a guy thing, but every now and then I come across a woman who either enjoys destruction to the same extent, or who pretends to, perhaps, as a badge strength. I don’t know.
Charlie Jane Anders, who appears to be a woman, writes for io9, and introduces a series of paintings like this:
We love watching cities being crushed, blown up and swept away — it happens in a lot of this summer’s biggest movies. There’s just something so viscerally thriling about structures coming down in flames.
When she uses the phrase ‘we love’ I wonder if she’s speaking on behalf of the team at io9, or about her perceived target audience, or perhaps about people in general. And now she has me wondering if the seeing of large things being destroyed has a thrilling effect on most people, and if I’m just a loner here, thinking instead of how bad that must be for the environment (usually). Or just plain old what a waste.
