My psychiatrist, or which is it? Therapist or psychiatrist? He was one of those. Which one doesn’t give you medicine, that one, it’s him. He asked me if I remember what I was doing on Nine-Eleven (2001), which I know what it was that he meant, and so do you. But I told him, or actually first I thought about how it was odd for him to ask. I felt like he was trying find an easy way into uncovering a repressed childhood or something. As in, if I said

-YES! I REMEMBER WHERE I WAS DURING 9/11!

Then it means that I did not have a repressed memory.

But now if I said

-No. I sadly do not remember where I was when 9/11 happened.

Then he probably would resign it to me having a repressed memory of my childhood. I doubt that’s what he wanted (paperwork).

And I don’t remember what the hell I was doing when it happened. Because I hit my head, so I sleeping when it happened. I found out from my Mom later that morning. She found me sleeping next to my Mongoose, chrome and neon green all to hell, soaking in the wet grass next to a picnic table (I told him all this).

“So, you do remember where you were when you found out,” says Doc, in a classy tone (or so I thought). He wanted to leave this appointment with no repressed anything. No repression, no paperwork. The lazy bastard.

“I don’t remember where I was when it all went down.”

“You have a memory of finding out about it, though?”

“I remember somebody telling me, but I didn’t witness it firsthand.”

“Few of us in the country witnessed it firsthand.” I felt irked by his use of country rather than world because it affected more than just America but OK.

“Do you remember where you were?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, pointlessly rearranging papers and things on his desk, “I relocated to this office in 2000, and it was a year after that. I was at this very desk. Around 9-something. Our time zone, of course.”

“How you find out?”

“Shel, my secretary, or assistant, rather, came into my office and told me to come watch the TV. And me and Shel and two of my former patients watched the footage in the waiting room.”

“You had a tv in the waiting room?”

“Took it out shortly after that.”

“Seems strange for a psychologist to have.”

“I’m a therapist.”

“But my point is you witnessed it on tv while it was happening, and you recall this.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me that you remember what you were doing the moment that-”

“Alright,” he said, and “Enough of this. No, I suppose I wasn’t aware of it happening the exact moment it was happening, but it couldn’t have been ten minutes after the first plane that Shel grabbed me and we watched it on the TV.”

“OK.”

Doc looked at me after I said OK and I considered that my insurance didn’t cover this so I oughta just talk.

“I don’t know. I was playing Kingdom Hearts that morning before school, probably for an hour. I left the house before 8 cause that’s when school started. Then rode my bike to school, but then decided not to go. And I went to the park instead.

“And then I woke up. Mom was shaking me. The sun was behind her. And it hurt my eyes.

“How did she find you?”

“She was driving home from work cause she was working third shift. And I guess she drove by the park and then caught a glimpse of an inanimate child from the road and stopped to see what the hell. I must have been laying there for over an hour. She was in a very peculiar shock, distressed in a way I had not seen her before or since.”

“At the sight of her unconscious child.”

“Yeah, for sure, but also cause of the news that day.”

“You don’t think she would more invested in her child’s safety.”

“I woke up, and she was throttling me. And she looked like she was the concussed one. Like she was the one who rode her bike off of a lunch table head-first, not me.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah she was in my face like, Darb are you OK, Darb, and I said Yea I’m fine. And then once I assured her I was OK, she was immediately like The Twin Towers fell badly. Like with no segue at all. And I didn’t know what she was talking about. I kind of knew what the Twin Towers were but for a moment I blanked on it. Maybe from bonking my own head, and no I didn’t have a helmet. She told me and then grabbed me and threw me in the car and we went home and she made a hundred phone calls.”

“Ah.”

“Maybe she connected all of these bad things happening at the same time, like the planes and me both were part of some conspiratorial thing and she got overwhelmed or something?”

There was a silent moment. I felt like me and Doc both were thinking how funny it’d be if he asked me in response “How does that make you feel?” But neither of us said anything about how it would be funny. I would have just about busted a gut if he asked me that.

The doc asked me something about alienation. Did I feel alienated because I wasn’t awake to learn about the Big News? And I said yeah, you know, I really did. I never thought about it like that. But yeah! I told him how I halfway believed in karma cause of the whole thing. If I had went to school like Mom trusted I would do, then probably no concussion. And then I would have found out about all the craziness when everyone else did. If I had a time machine, I’d travel back to that day, and I’d go to school instead of that lunch table. And then I wouldn’t feel so alienated.

I told him this and he laughed for one syllable.

“Babe, you aren’t supposed to talk about your patient’s files with me.”

“I’m just saying. It’s not indicative of his diagnosis or something. Using a time machine so he can better experience a national tragedy. What an ass-hole.”

“Well would you do, Scott?”

“Kill Hitler, prevent 9/11, something useful!”

“Unknown therapist-time-traveler from future prevents aircraft from hitting the Twin Towers. And everybody is happy.”

“Prevent JFK, MLK, something. Anything! I don’t know! You have a time machine that goes to 9/11, and knowing what you know, you wouldn’t try to stop it?”

Shel laughed. “I go back to September 11, 2001 with what I know now. What knowledge does that entail? My military defense skills are the same as they were back then. Which is zero, as in nothing.”

“Even without that, you wouldn’t try warning people?”

“And just look like a crazy person? No. Hell no.” She took a few seconds before letting out a second and more concrete “Hell no!”

“You show up in Manhattan in 2001 and you’re just gonna let it happen, you’re saying.”

“When you word it like that, absolutely.”

“Unbelievable.”

“I would probably get a drink somewhere within a safe distance and see it how it unfolds. I was living in New York only a month before moving here, I’m sure you remember.

He rolled his eyes, “Believe you me, anyone that knew you at that time knew you lived in New York only a month before 9/11.

“I still have keys to my old apartment. I’d probably get on the roof and watch, if I knew it was coming.”

“I’m disappointed.”

She said something about a Stephen King book in relation to the whole thing. Then they agreed it was one of his better books.