It was 12:30 a.m., late on Thursday night, technically early Friday morning, and I needed office supplies.

This has long been a traditional crutch of writers.  When the words aren’t there, why not buy some new filing boxes, a new stash of 3-hole punched paper, even some Post-It notes?  It’s quite easy to spend an hour or more contemplating the panoply of pulsating Post-It note colors alone.

So I did what any writer in my spot would do.  I went on an after-midnight shopping trip.

I have always felt living in Los Angeles has certain advantages.  One of them, no matter how slight, was the 24-hour availability of office supplies at a nearby Staples.  So I gathered my belongings and set off for a merry late-night hour of looking at computers I’d never buy, testing PDA’s way out of my league, and finally, purchasing the relatively trivial (and yet, still quite handy) supplies I would actually need.

And that, dear reader, is where the scene above comes in to play.  For unbeknownst to me, the 24-hour Stapes is now a rather mundane and much too ordinary 18-hour Staples.  They close at 11:00 p.m.  I stood in front of the entrance, shocked, stunned, outraged.  These new hours – posted on a sign no doubt printed in-house on brilliant fluorescent pink paper – triggered an unusual mental chain of events.  No longer open 24 hours?  This is madness, I thought.  Why have they changed?

Changed ... The word echoed around in my head for a bit.

So much has changed ...

And it set me off thinking about the true tragedy, the true horror, the true “new reality” that up until now I haven’t felt comfortable writing about.

So, it seems to me everybody feels the need to tell his or her “World Trade Center” story.  Hell, even the normally steady Aaron Sorkin wasted an hour of my life re-hashing arguments long since over-hashed in the pages of USA Today.  (Don’t get me started.  The “special episode” of “The West Wing” caused such a rift between my best friend and me that technically, we weren’t friends for a period of about 45 minutes.  This came after an hour-long “warm up” discussion about the merits of said episode.  I’m happy to report the rift disappeared the second we moved on to another topic, but for a while there, it was touch and go.)

That said, here’s mine, in brief.

The week of September 10th was a week like many others for me.  I’d had most of the summer off work, but now, I was getting ready to start a new TV writing job.  New challenges, a new workplace, and I hoped, new opportunity.  But for now, I was “on hold,” awaiting the go-ahead from my new boss to pour myself in to my new employment.

I even had a very fun trip planned for Thursday, the 13th.  The Dodgers were playing an afternoon game down in San Diego, and I had made arrangements to take a train down, see the game, go to dinner in San Diego, and then catch a train back home.  What a fun, one-day getaway, right?

Early Tuesday morning.  The call.  The best friend.  “You’re probably going to want to watch this.”  I’m a notorious late sleeper.  It’s shortly after 7:00 a.m.  This is big, I think, as I stumble out of bed, and to the TV.

It’s big.  It’s live.  It’s happening.

I can’t believe, don’t want to believe, want to go back to bed and wake up again.  I can’t.

I can’t turn away from the TV.  I watch, and watch, and watch.

And at about hour six, it starts.  That tickling sensation that won’t go away.  Is my city next?  Is Los Angeles a target?  I mean, I don’t live next to anything that big – Universal Studios is a mile or two away, but no ... why attack a theme park/movie studio?

Then again, why any of this?

On the phone again to the best friend, I mention the idea that I might want to get out of Los Angeles, and head for the comfort of my hometown, San Luis Obispo.

“Are you kidding,” he says.  “I’m worried about Diablo.”

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, that is.  Tucked on the Central California Coast a mere 10 miles or so from Downtown San Luis Obispo.  Surely, that couldn’t be a target, could it?

Among its many terrible side effects, that’s what this attack did.  It made me, in a region of eight million people, worried that I should head for a small city of 40,000.  My friend, in that city, was forced to wonder where he should go, with his family, to be “safe.”

Like there’s anyplace you can go to get that feeling again.  Hey, if there were, we’d all be rushing to get there, don’t you think?  No, the “road” back to feeling safe wasn’t Highway 101.  It was a much more difficult path, a mental journey, a trip to face fears you’d rather not face.

I think both not having an office to go to, and not being in the day-of-air TV news business anymore, contributed to how I felt in the days following the attack.  At home, alone, with only TV to tell me what to think, I suddenly felt for the thousands of unseen viewers I’d written for over the last decade.  In the past, my words coming out of news anchors’ mouths provided at least a comforting illusion of control.  The world wasn’t ending, because Jerry Dunphy just said it wasn’t ending, and I wrote that, so it must be true, right?  That control crutch wasn’t available to me this time.  I was a watcher.  News was happening around me, to me.  I couldn’t shape or color it in any way.  And I felt more than a little bit overwhelmed.

After the attack, I didn’t leave the house, except for one quick trip to the store.  A couple of days were enough, and then I made myself stop watching the coverage and go outside.  I could only process so much before it all started to blur together, a repeating cycle of thoughts neither mentally healthy nor particularly productive.

Getting back to “normal,” despite the urgings of national leaders, was tough.  Baseball came back, of course, but with new parking restrictions, new security screenings, and new patriotic songs to provide reminders that so much had changed.  Actually, after a couple of days, the very nice but much too trusting security guard recognized me, and stopped checking my bag on the way in to Dodger Stadium.  Four days in a row, with “maximum security” in effect, I took a nice sized shoulder bag in to the Stadium, completely unchecked.  Of course, there’s no where I could hijack a stadium to, but still, I hoped people in other places – say, like at the airport – were being a bit more cautious.

And, in fact, I did get to make that trip to San Diego after all.  The rescheduled games actually worked in my favor, as I got to see a bona fide piece of Major League Baseball history I would have otherwise missed – Rickey Henderson breaking Ty Cobb’s career runs scored record.  Of course, the fact that I boarded my Amtrak train to the game without having my bag checked (again) or showing photo ID (as Amtrak said I would need to) caused a momentary pause.

I’ve since started that new job.  I’m hanging out with new people, and some old friends who also happen to work there.  I’m feeling a lot, lot better.  And I’m feeling like writing again.

I don’t know if the reason my Staples is no longer open 24-hours has anything to do with the events of September 11th.  I do know that I lead an awfully comfortable life.  And I know that every time I see a flag, or hear about someone who’s afraid to fly, or have to spend extra time getting searched by security at a public event, I am reminded of how much has changed – both in the world and inside me.

And, since this is a personal column on a personal web page, I suppose we should wrap this up with a personal truth.  It’s a truth that’s hard to admit, and I do so only in the hope that someone reading this will think, “you know what, at least I’m not the only one who feels this way.”

So here it is.

I’m not a big fan of “hate.”  Whenever any friend would say, “Oh, I hated that movie,” I was likely to respond with a gentle, humorous, but at its core truthful admonition.  “Save ‘hate’ for something that really deserves it, like Nazis.”  I think “hate” is a pretty strong word, undeserving of a place in everyday conversation, unless truly called for.

But now, this act, this horror, has opened up the corner of my heart where true hatred resides.

I really do hate these terrorist bastards.  I hate what they’ve done to thousands of innocent families.  I hate what they’ve done to my country.

And of all the damage done by these bad, bad men, it is for this I curse them most of all:

I now hate ... just like them.

And that’s what I hate the most.

http://www.staples.com

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