| September 11th Remembered |
[Sep. 10th, 2008|08:01 pm] |
Good evening people,
I posted this entry last year. I'll probably post it again next year. I have nothing further to add to it. I feel now as I felt then.
September 11th Remembered - 2007
As you get older, the very nature of time seems to change a little.
There are some things you've experienced recently that seem to have happened a lifetime ago, and others that you know will always remain fresh. Today I arrived at the realisation that September the 11th is always going to be a fresh one for me.
I noticed it late yesterday when it dawned on me that the sixth anniversary was coming up. There was a reason for it.
The reason has a name, and I'll get to her in a minute.
In late 2001 I was living in London, partying in Brixton and happily working for a private Funds Management Firm in the City of London.
I loved my work. I was lucky enough to be employed by one of the few remaining private investment firms whose name still commanded a little respect within the barrow-boy dominated late 90s and early 2000's.
My boss was a 55 year-old, five foot, two-inch high Scotsman with the surname, "Savage".
And let me tell you something - he was.
That bastard had been known to reduce grown men to tears within fifteen minutes of a boardroom meeting. He was valued by the Senior Partners because he most definitely:
Did. Not. Suffer. Fools. Gladly.
The Scotsman wasn't naturally belligerent, he'd give anyone the time of day until something stupid tumbled out of their mouths - then all bets and gloves were off. I personally watched him cut bullshit-artist-salesmen and morons down to size on no fewer than five occasions and let me tell you this - it was awesome. Completely fucking awesome.
Somewhat like a drill-sergeant, he was as much loved as he was feared. He single-handedly built up his team over the course of three years and to this day I count myself lucky that he decided to keep me around because, as he put it, "you stand up to me when you're right and you make me laugh, you stupid Aussie bastard".
There were five of us in addition to Mr Savage.
Andrew - a quiet South Londoner who only opened his mouth when he felt we'd got it all wrong and needed to be "pictured in". He was never wrong when he opened his mouth, so we always listened.
Mike - One of the afore-mentioned "barrow-boys". He never closed his fucking mouth but at least he was entertaining.
William - one of the "Eton boys". Savage would have fired him in a heart-beat if his father hadn't been a senior partner. He was the quintessential chinless, in-bred dickhead (and as I found out later, his father moved him to a less influential position).
Mari - the youngest member of the team who had really earned the job after a long internship.
And me.
We got on well. We shared a few years worth of meetings, arguments and triumphs. We even shared in the little things like break-ups, births and marriages. We went to Brick Lane once a month for lunch and unlike any other people I've worked with, we looked forward to seeing one another on weekends on the odd occasion. After six years, Mike and I are still in contact.
After years of that sort of crap I guess we considered ourselves a team.
Mari had just been married in July of that year to a fund manager at a rival bank. She copped all of the ribbing we gave her with good-humour, and she in turn, inflicted every detail of her wedding planning on us as revenge.
Mari: Guess what we're serving at the reception?
Mike: Don't 'ave to. I've 'eard ev'ry detail 'bout ev'ry fucking ingredient. Why? Because that's all you've bloody well spoken 'bout for the last week, girl. Do some frigging work for a change.
Mari:
Mike:
Mari: We're serving Salmon, followed by ...
Mike: ARRRRRGGGHHH!!!!
It went on like that for months. Quite happily.
Mari went on a month's vacation for her honeymoon, returned with a ridiculous tan and life returned to normal.
Until her husband flew to New York on September the 10th. He had a meeting the next day with Cantor Fitzgerald on the 102nd floor of WTC1.
And I won't spin this out - he died.
We used to have TV screens everywhere in our workplace. They were constantly tuned to Bloomberg, Reuters and CNN. Anyone could pick up a pair of headphones and listen to the audio that accompanied any station in case there was something they needed to pay attention to. At about three o'clock that day, everyone was wearing headphones and watching CNN.
Everyone except Mari. She was on the phone trying to get through to her husband, but never did.
My boss, the drill sergeant from hell couldn't have been more like a father to her that afternoon. He took her downstairs, hailed a cab and took her back to her parent's house, a couple of hundred kilometres away. We never saw her again.
I hear she's doing well, and after a year off work she more or less picked up where she left off, but she aged quite a great deal in a short amount of time.
So here we are six years later and it still seems to have happened yesterday - and I still have the suit jacket that she cried on, although I've never worn it since.
Everytime this anniversary rolls around, I'm left with vivid memories of watching a young woman go through something that should never have happened, and I'm still angry about it.
What made it worse is when I heard some knee-jerk anti-american statement coming from the mouth of a twenty-something kid this morning. He was young enough to view 911 as remotely as he'd view Pearl Harbour.
"Yanks deserved it. Cut them down a notch, didn't it?"
This was from some twenty-year-old kid who thought that espousing an anti-american stance was an acceptable way to gain some cred at a lunch I attended today.
I gently told him the story of Mari and waited for it to sink in. Everyone around us watched as he turned red and realised what a career-limiting move he'd just made.
Then I gently told him to get out of my sight.
And then, more than ever, I was grateful that I'd worked for the Scotsman.
You were right Mr Savage, I was learning more from you than I ever realised.
Suit Dude |
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| Comments: |
Until you mentioned this I had forgotten what today meant .. nothing was mentioned in the mainstream media (papers/tv) AT ALL :(
Lest we forget huh???
Thank you for reminding me ...
Edited at 2008-09-10 12:51 pm (UTC)
When you forget the human dimension of any situation where people's lives are taken, you're only getting a tiny piece of the picture. | |
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