Why are you calling me?

Back in my college days, my best friend Rebecca had it in for me when it came to breaking news. She feared that when she picked up the phone and the first thing I said was: "Dude..."She was in for the report of casualties.

In some way, I used to joke, we were the youngest 80 year olds I knew. I imagined that these were the calls that old friends make to each other when people around them start passing away. Folks that have lived their lives good and plenty, full of experiences and memories, and many of them lucky enough to pass away peacefully in their sleep. Smiles on their wrinkled and seasoned faces.

At least that's how I picture my friends going away. After a long time in this planet. After I've had the chance to party too much with them. After I have too many stories about them to remember them all in one sitting. After I almost feel that we're all good and ready to transcend to other adventures.

That day, September 11th 2001, I was 19 years old. Writing that just now automatically made me feel as old as a raisin. But its true, it has been 11 years since that morning.

Back then, Venezuela still shared the same time zone of New York City. This was before Chavez decided that it made a lot of sense to disappear 30 minutes out of the lives of us Venezuelans. I was still at my parent's place, in the beach town of Lecheria, on the last leg of my summer break from College.

I remember very vividly the sensation as my dad barged into my room, with my mom trailing close behind, flipping on my 19" TV and saying: "It's there a way to record this?!?" It was just past 8:50am. Flight 11 had just struck 1WTC.

In my still sleep induced drunk state, my first instinct had been to grab my cordless and dial Rebecca's house phone. She would be asleep. She would be pissed. I knew I was bound for some cursing coming down my end. She'd shut up the minute that she'd turn on the TV, I said to myself. Her Chinese grams picked up, woke her up in that scream that only Chinese people can feel as a caring tone, and she groggily said: "Chama, its 8am..." A foul groan followed. "What's going onnnnn?!?" She was so disgruntled.

"Dude. Get up. Turn on Venevision, or RCTV or whatever, CNN, FOX News, something!" I said, not even giving her the chance to object to the fact that I was calling her from 800 Kms away to invite her to a impromptu TV session.

As she flipped thru the channels, trying to land in something she understood, I heard the gasp and the confusion.

"A plane, dude." There was silence and then the filtered noise of her TV set. "A plane."

What followed was a string of 'How's' and 'Why's'... and then 'Who's'.

Violence was no stranger to us, being brought up in a country on the verge of a civil war, and remembering clearly the effects of terrorism. But this was of such dimension that we couldn't, and I think no one could ever, wrap their minds around the fact that such act could be in fact planned and executed.

As we watched together, and the journalists tried to make sense of something that would never have it, we both spotted the second plane lining up to hit 2 WTC. In micro seconds, we saw that black shadow come from the right top corner of our screens and then disappear in a ball of fire behind a building I had just visited 3 years before. It was a combined blabber of syllables, a mix of "Wait, is that.. -- what... no..." That ended with a scream coming from my mom's bedroom.

There was also an expletive that came from Rebecca's side of the line.

If we had any doubts that this was intentional, they had just dissipated. If we had hope and certainty of the world we were living in, that also went out the window. I didn't need to know if the Mayans were right and December 2012 was the end of the world. For me, end of the world as I knew it had started that day.

From that moment on, until both towers collapsed, all we could wonder was the scope of reality that this brought on. What this meant. What now would become of a nation that wasn't even ours but, at the same time, nationality meant nothing. Not only because, as it would turn out, there were many nations that lost their sons and daughters that day, but also because in the grand scheme of things, this just was a huge hit on humanity. It would become the moment where not only we saw the worst, but also the best. And it hit me that something like this would have to happen for us to figure that out.

It's been 11 years, and yes, we have changed, we have learned. The pain might not the same, but not lesser. While the crisis might have passed, we now deal with the aftermath, with all the good and the bad it brought to all.

And you may think, so many people have also died in wars around the globe, why don't those make people have these outbursts of very vocal reflections about such tragedies? Why don't we get woken up with urgency when a bomb goes off in Palestine or Israel? What about the thousands of different types of tragedies we flip through every year? Does it need to be this extraordinary, and so out of the norm that it could only be dreamed in some SciFi Conspiracy TV show?

Were we more sensitive before 9/11? is that what it is?

Rebecca, I wish I hadn't called you that day to tell you that almost three thousand people were about to die. I wish we hadn't seen them as they went, on images that I wished were part of some daunting apocalyptic movie or video game. What I won't regret though, is having you at the end of the line. Because even in that moment when I felt that really the world was falling apart, you were there. Sobbing with me, sniffling and in muted silences only broken by a million questions.

Those people had plans that went past that morning. I don't quite remember what was the image of what my future would had been before that moment. I try hard, but that split moment made it all go away.

Perhaps some day, the tally of triumphs of good deeds, peace, understanding, forgiveness and love will outnumber the tally of suffering we humans subject ourselves to. Perhaps it's true. The best that you can do is to Not Forget. But maybe do give a chance to Forgive.