I was an expatriate at the time, so I missed out on the whole being brought together bit. Made life interesting. I had three nearly violent encounters in the months that followed 9/11 and the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, thanks to my painfully American appearance. And I had at least twice as many awkward encounters with people trying to share their sorrow with me, and comfort me for the sorrow they knew I must have been experiencing. I got angry emails from my old friends back home, and they made me feel really grateful I was away. I found their attitudes about the whole thing extremely unpleasant.

Operation Enduring Freedom made for kind of an embarrassing time to be an expatriate. Everyone around me was waiting for the newly awakened sleeping dragon to snap into action and leave the world in awe, proving once again that you simply don't mess with America. Instead several of our first casualties came from our own stupid chopper crashes, not from actual combat. I remember being in a bar watching the news and hearing someone comment, "If the Americans keep on killing themselves like this, the war is going to be over in no time."

My personal 9/11 story doesn't differ much from anyone else, except for the fact that my story doesn't include the phrase "I was shocked". I wasn't. I still don't think there was much to be shocked about. This wasn't our first terror attack from the now infamous Al Qaeda. It wasn't even the first attack on the WTC. It was a horrible thing that happened, and shocking in the details of the surprising way it was pulled off. I was expecting something of even greater magnitude to be hitting any day (as I am once again at this very moment), and was actually fairly relieved as the death toll continued to shrink. It could have been a lot worse.