It's Fleet Week.

[conuly]

I absolutely hate Fleet Week, and I'll tell you why.

Fleet Week involves air shows. Air shows sometimes end up sending fighter planes over my house. Fighter planes over my house panic me and bring me back to my third period class on 9/11, when they were right over my school. This is not good.

And I feel so stupid about it. Nobody I knew got hurt. Nobody I knew* was even there - the closest was Jenn, on the boat. She just walked off back into the terminal and went home. Likewise, my mother and I were both on Staten Island. (And trapped here for a week!) It's not like I had to flee Lower Manhattan with body parts raining down on me.

So even though "a lingering dislike of low-flying planes, especially fighter planes" is a very, very minor side effect of 9/11, I don't like having any at all, like it's somehow disrespectful to people who actually suffered and actually have PTSD. (And you don't need to tell me that this is a ridiculous position. Knowing that doesn't make it better, and I feel like the vicious cycle this can lead to is a bit self-evident.)

On the plus side, and there is a plus side, at least I'm aware it's Fleet Week. It's only really bad when I don't pay attention to the calendar and am completely taken by surprise. One year the airshow was a week late or something, and I ended up in the basement with the girls. They thought I was completely overreacting. And I was, but if I hadn't been, I might've just saved their lives, so whatever.

Edit: Actually, I had the bright idea after typing all this up to look at the schedule. Looks like all airshows have already happened. Boy, is that a relief. Worked myself up over nothing!

(Still don't like Fleet Week.)

* This is not strictly true. My mother's coworkers were all there, and I knew many of them. But you know what I mean, I hope. Anyway, they all survived with no physical injuries.

Comments

[zesty_pinto]

I get it; hell, I worked at Tower 2 for Morgan Stanley for a year before I left to go back to college and when it happened I saw it from the other side in Journal Square. To be honest, I feel just as annoyed at how politicized the event has become as a sort of way for politicians to get easy votes and I took classes with people who would become America's new pariahs.

I'm kind of used to the planes since Burlington has a group of F16s and is the new proposed test site for the F35, although I never associated it with the event.

Personally, I thought even military aircraft wouldn't be allowed to go across the boroughs that not even commercial flights could.

Glad that you missed out on the air shows all the same!

[conuly]

Personally, I thought even military aircraft wouldn't be allowed to go across the boroughs that not even commercial flights could.

My teacher* had just finished telling us the border was closed and they'd shut down all flights - which was about all the information he had at the time - when we heard the fighters overhead, like a bit of audio punctuation.

* Absolutely hated him, btw, and I'm happy to say the feeling was mutual. The most professional thing he ever did was recommend I do independent study the next time I was stuck in a class he ran.

[pipibluestockin]

I don't blame you for taking cover. Instinct is a wonderful thing.

I'm not fond of Blackhawk night exercises either. The flight lanes are along the rivers (under the commercial flight lanes) and right past the house.

[conuly]

I don't blame me either. If that had been an actual fighter with actual bombs or whatever, I'd've been vindicated right on the spot. The girls don't get it, and I hope they never have reason to.

[gingicat]

I hear that. I had a job interview in that area on the previous Friday. I felt simultaneously loved and annoyed when people asked me to check in, not realizing I was back in Boston fielding calls from panicking parents of high school students (they'd heard that the planes came from Logan Airport) on the second day of a temp assignment. (Said temp assignment turned into four years of job, in part because of how I handled the day. It helped that my friends whom I was connected to on IRC called my parents.)

I have a funny Fleet Week story if you'd like to hear it.

[conuly]

I have a funny Fleet Week story if you'd like to hear it.

Go for it.

[gaudior]

O my gods, me too!

I mean, not Fleet Week specifically, because I live in Massachusetts. But I have that same fear reaction to low-flying airplanes, and the same "but I wasn't really traumatized, I have no business making a big deal of this!" feeling.

And the thing is, even if you weren't in the Towers, even if you don't personally know someone who died-- we still lived in a terrified and then traumatized city. I was smelling the smoke for weeks afterwards, and there were still bits of charred paper falling out of the sky on me for days. I was still surrounded by people who were grieving and shocked and horrified. Fear is contagious; trauma ditto. I think it makes sense that we react that way to airplane sounds.

[conuly]

And the thing is, even if you weren't in the Towers, even if you don't personally know someone who died-- we still lived in a terrified and then traumatized city.

There is that. Our grocery store sold right out of French toast supplies.

[sabotabby]

We have this annual air show in the west end, which is home to a disproportionate number of refugees from war-torn countries. Particularly last year when we had a big influx of Syrian refugees, there's always a move to put it somewhere, anywhere else to avoid causing demonstrable trauma to innocent people. Torontonians all hate it even if we haven't experienced war.

It's not stupid to have residual trauma from living in New York during 9/11, srsly.

[conuly]

It's not stupid to have residual trauma from living in New York during 9/11, srsly.

Yeah, I know, but knowing that doesn't help. It just gets into a loop of "it's stupid to feel stupid" and "seriously, how stupid is it to feel stupid about something so ridiculous" and no.

Torontonians all hate it even if we haven't experienced war.

So why don't they just move it? Sheesh.

[sabotabby]

Apparently people who live in the suburbs get to make all the political decisions for downtown Toronto.

[conuly]

And they want to have the air show, but they don't want it overhead any more than you do.

[amaebi]

I respect your statement distinguishing yourself from those who have PTSD, but I also know people who were much further off who seem to me to have PTSD from the events of that day.

[conuly]

Well, I do hope they don't have the "but nothing really bad happened to me" loop running, because that doesn't help at all.

[amaebi]

Yeah.

Me too.

[vampwillow]

Planes coming into London Heathrow airport fly over me on the way in. They're probably a couple of thousand foot above me but some of them are REALLY LOUD and if I'm not looking out the window then I get worried I'm about to get landed on.

Marine One once flew directly above my place (with five other choopers weaving around) maybe 200 ft above and that was even louder. Getting worried about what is happening outside our own control is nothing to apologise for - we all do it.

[conuly]

1. Nice icon.

2. Ugh, choppers. That's another one - since 2001, we've had an increase in police helicopter action in my neighborhood. Or maybe I didn't notice before. It doesn't scare or panic me, but I hate it so much.

Five above your house? Ugh. That sounds awful.

[vampwillow]

Thanks :-)

Marine One was an Obama visit. If it's ever Trump overhead I might search out a missile launcher... :O

I've noted that at night here Cop copters can be heard from five miles or so away. When they're in the immediate are they can be really loud too.

[conuly]

If it's ever Trump overhead I might search out a missile launcher.

Shh, don't post about it!

When they're in the immediate are they can be really loud too.

WHAT WAS THAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! WHEN THEY'RE RIGHT ABOVE THEY CAN BE REALLY, REALLY LOUD!

[archangelbeth]

I get twitchy, and I know we are on no reasonable flight path to anywhere -- but we are near a former airforce base, and it's now a "tradeport" and we get low-flying planes... a lot. Also very late at night, as they refuel and then go across the ocean or something.

*sigh*

[conuly]

Late at night? That's worse than the stupid airshows.

[archangelbeth]

Anywhere from 2-4 in the morning, yeah. And those aren't on a regular schedule, that I can think of... *sigh* We also get helicopters sometimes -- at least, I've seen one or two -- but they're so high up, they sound like a plane... A slow-moving one. *sigh*

Sometimes when it's real quiet, one can hear the train go through downtown, too, but that's a rather different sound.

(My kid gets freaked out by hearing the planes now. Ever since the election. And kid was a toddler on 9/11. *SIGH*)

[larryhammer]

I get it. I grew up in Washington, DC aka Ground Zero in the 70s and 80s, and every plane off the usual flight patterns (which are TIGHTLY controlled in that town) I'd freeze and wonder, Is that a missile?