102 Minutes

I've just given up watching this documentary on The History Channel. It's not that it's poorly made or uninvolving. What it is, is entirely emotionally draining. Devastating, really, if you want to get right down to it.

Still, 102 Minutes is a document for history. With real-time eyewitness video capturing the panic and despair that gripped a city, and a nation, the film relays what it was like to be on the streets of Manhattan that fateful day.

I couldn't even make it to the first collapse. I just had to stop. I've seen it before, and the perspectives offered in the film are riveting, but it's disturbing nonetheless.

--A young couple sets up their video camera while the first tower burns, and they [and we] witness the second tower get hit. The sheer terror in that room was palpable, even 7-years and 3000-miles removed from the tragedy on my couch in San Luis Obispo, CA.

--People gathered in Times Square watching the jumbo-tron on the Times building see the second tower get hit and pandemonium breaks out.

--One guy is overheard on the street telling a friend, "I was late for work 'cause I watched Monday Night Football last night. Monday Night Football saved my life. I was 15 minutes away from being in that building."

--A little girl of about 4 or 5 points out her apartment window and says, simply: "It's not there anymore. The World Trade Center. Right Dada? It's not there anymore."

--There's unvarnished fear in the eyes of emergency personnel waiting to enter the burning buildings to help any victims. And when their commander warns them to watch out for "jumpers," one young fireman looks directly at the video camera and you see him take a noticeable gulp.

There were a lot of heroes on that day, and a lot of regular folks who did what they could to survive.

And there are a lot of Americans who still, today, will never be the same.