A friend of mine sent me a great little story about a dog named Daisy who supposedly led several hundred people out of Tower 1, from the 101st floor, then went back and led several hundred more out before the building collapsed. It's a lovely story of canine heroism and leaves you all sort of fuzzy and warm the way animal stories do. Unfortunately, it's a hoax. I'd sort of suspected it was as I was reading it. As obsessive as I was about the news in those hours and days following 9/11, I'm sure I would have remembered a story like this and I didn't. The facts seemed kinda iffy too. The planes hit on floors lower than 101, and anyone who was at or above those floors didn't get out. Whole floors and even the escape stairwells were on fire or full of smoke above that. Still, it was disappointing to find it was a piece of fiction when I looked it up on Snopes.com. It's such a lovely little story. It wasn't even the story itself that bothered me, but that it's presented as a fact.
I dunno, call me touchy, but it bothers me that people are already making stuff up about this event, even if it's something as seemingly harmless as a dog story. If it were presented as a story—as fiction—it wouldn't bother me at all; fiction is a way of making sense of our lives. But there was so much real heroism that day that a made-up story presented as fact seems to diminish it, especially since most of the dogs never got a chance to rescue a live person. It takes something away from the real victims and heroes, and it has a "cashing in on tragedy" quality to it that repels me. "Look, I have a 9/11 story too! Isn't it great?" Everyone who witnessed the event has a story, no matter where you were, or how far away. Why make one up and pass it off as fact unless you don't have one at all and you're greedy for attention?
It also bothered me that the friend who'd sent me the story knew it was a fabrication and sent it along without mentioning it. "I know it is a hoax but it is a great story and it made everybody who sent it to me feel good so I figured it did not hurt anybody," she said later. But I think it does. Not the dogs, obviously, but their handlers, who went day after day without finding anyone alive, and watched their dogs suffer for it. The rewards for being a rescue worker at the pit were few and far between. If Daisy's story were true, it would be a triumph that others could applaud. If it were presented as fiction, it would act as a piece of wish-fulfillment. "Damn, that would have been nice to see!" But a piece of fiction presented as fact is a cruel joke.
It's one thing if you've got your own story about 9/11, whether it's fact or fiction but let's be clear about which is which. It's too early to start distorting the facts. That will happen inevitably (and began to happen when George Bush linked Osama with Saddam), but there's no really good reason to distort what actually happened at those two buildings. It's too soon, and the event is too raw in many people's minds yet. It's still, to many people, a very personal story, though it's rapidly becoming part of the national mythos. But I think the people who were actually at the site, working, still have some claim to it and to what stories are told and how. It seems disrespectful to be making things up about them.
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