a strange thought

While killing a few minutes surfing the web, I ran across a website where people send in anonymous secrets that the sitekeeper then posts. Here is one that I found both chilling and fascinating:

“Everyone who knew me before 9/11 thinks I’m dead.”

Could anyone really have gone to the World Trade Center to work that day, barely escaped the catastrophe, and then had a sudden on-the-spot impulse to vanish and start completely anew in some different life? It’s really a remarkable possibility, and one of the rare cases where one could do it without being the object of intense searches.

It would also take a streak of cruelty to do this, since presumably at least some people suffered over the thought that this person had perished in the ruins.