Metropolitan Diary

Déjà Vu at the World Trade Center

Dear Diary:

A brick-filled safe fell on me.

Or it seemed to me when I exited the subway car at the World Trade Center transportation hub. I could not fill my lungs with air and I fought the urge to flee.

I know that I am not the only New Yorker who had avoided, or still did, the World Trade Center area after the attacks of Sept. 11. So when I interviewed by phone with a pleasant human resources executive of a start-up, I chose to believe that her email signature was nothing more than a P.O. box.

I was wrong.

So I sat on the crowded subway car, clutched my phone and fought to keep the sudden onslaught of liquid pooling in my eyes from ruining my interview makeup.

But there was something very familiar with this scene: I had been here before.

I was a junior in college, heading to my first professional interview. I sat on the same train and checked the subway map enough times to wear out its plastic enclosure.

The potential employer was a large, prestigious, financial services firm in the World Trade Center. I felt my hands tremble ever so slightly.

I was making my way out of the subway station when I heard a voice call, “Good luck.”

A kindly looking blond girl, perhaps a few years older than I, smiled.

“You’re heading to an interview, right?” she asked.

“Uh, yes.” How did she know? My face? My outfit?

“Well, good luck then!” she said cheerfully.

I don’t know if it was her well wishes, or the encouragement that resulted, but I did get that internship all those many years before.

And fortified by the memory that New Yorkers knew compassion, I breathed a little easier and stepped out into the midday sun.


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