Worst Nightmare - by Roxie

My brush with sheer and utter panic and fear occurred this afternoon around 12:24 p.m. I turned on the living room television to watch my all time favorite soap opera that was in the process of recording and the screen immediately and in high definition showed a frightening scene. All thoughts of Pine Valley drama immediately vanished from my mind. I sat down on the ottoman to see what horrible tragedy had transpired in our now tenuously safe world.

The channel tuned to Randy’s favorite news show, Fox, had a ticker tape flashing across the bottom revealing the burning and smoking building was located in Texas. Okay, I thought, maybe (probably) in Houston or Dallas. Next thing I read is that a small private plane had taken off from Georgetown, Texas and crashed shortly thereafter. That’s when my heart began its staccato beating and instantaneous horror of WHERE it had crashed filled my terrorized mind.

Georgetown is just north of Austin, where several people I love live and work. My son, Brandon, is one of them and resides in Round Rock, which is between Georgetown and Austin, and my instantaneous alarm focused on him. I kept my eyes glued to the screen, frantically searched for the location of the burning high-rise and wondered why they hadn't revealed “where in the hell IS that building?!!!” I was terrified. Tears blurred my vision and I had to find out where it was and where my son was.

Finally, the beautiful blonde woman announced it was the Echelon Building III. I vaguely remembered that name because I had a brush with the IRS in that same building many years ago. My trusty laptop and I immediately went to work figuring out its location, but already my panic had subsided because if it was the building I believed it to be, my son was nowhere near it.

God will forgive me for breathing a sigh of relief when I discovered the address on-line because I know some people must have died in what the screen revealed as a black-smoke-filled inferno. I said a prayer for those unknown people whose loved ones passed on because their horror-filled day had just begun. My story could be quite different and I am sufficiently frightened of the terrors of this world we now live in to know that.

I watched the scene unfold as policemen and firemen did their jobs and the talking heads on Fox and authorities in Austin reassured us it wasn’t a terrorist attack. They explained bit-by-bit the events that lead to this tragedy. After a few minutes I broke down and had myself a good cry.

God help us all if a world exists where I can turn on the television and imagine my worst nightmare happens so easily. We are in deep doo-doo, people.