Where Were You / What Were You Doing?

[iGary]

9/11/01?

I hate these kind of threads, but I thought it might be interesting to see where people were, what they remember, and what their first reactions were.

I was working at a new job for a British cmpany and just arrived at work in Baltimore when the receptionist came in and said a plane had hit the WTC. My first impression was *Oh, OK, some sightseeing Cessna or something hit the tower*

Then she said another one hit and we all knew what was up. Everyone left work, but I stayed. Rob had trouble getting home on Metro in DC (we weren't living in sin at the time).

The spookiest thing was working at the end ofthe takeoff runway at BWI and having it suddenly fall silent for a week.

I left on the first Virgin Atlantic flight for London a week later. Getting through security and onto the plane took 4 hours. :eek: Guess I am kind of apathetic about the whole thing these days. Don't know why. :o

[gauchogolfer]

I was home sick with the flu in Santa Barbara, taking the morning off from work. My wife was in Denver for a business trip, and got stranded there for a couple of extra days.

I called in to work to see if I was needed, and a coworker asked if I had seen the news. I hadn't, and immediately rushed off somewhere with a TV to watch it unfolding. The closest place was a bar where I would watch sports, and I remember people sitting there crying and talking and just sitting stunned (like I was).

I guess I was a bit late to the scene, since both towers had fallen by the time I got there. Anyways, I'll remember this one like I do the Challenger explosion, I think. For a long time.

[Kernow]

I had got back from a 3 month holiday in the states a couple of days before, and I was preparing to start my new job a few days later. I was getting ready to go into London shopping when my mum gave me call and told me to turn on the TV as the World Trade Centre was on fire. I didn't get into town that day - I just sat in front of the TV absolutely gobsmacked at what was happening.

My first reaction was shock - I had been up the towers only a few days before and I had probably seen and met people who were now trapped in the buildings. I was also concerned for a friend who worked in a sandwich shop not far from the site. Luckily she was not working that day.

[dcv]

It was a couple of days before a friend's birthday and I was at work. I had a huge headache so decided to pop out to try to get some air and while I was out I popped in to a card shop. I heard a news report on the radio and a couple of people in the shop commented on it, but I wasn't really paying that much attention and the full-scale of the tragedy wasn't apparent until a few minutes later. When I got back to the office people were gathered around a tiny TV in reception watching the breaking news... Back upstairs everyone was talking about it and reading the news reports on the web in absolute horror. Then of course there was worry about the City of London (i.e. the financial district) being a target so we were sent home from work early.

[GodBless]

I slept in because I wasn't feeling well and then the first thing I saw on TV was a burning building and then -- just then -- the second plane crashed right before my eyes on TV. :eek:

[Applespider]

I was working at home and took a late lunch. I clicked on the BBC news site and it was down (it was about 10 minutes after the plane hit I realised later). I was surprised but just had lunch and went back to work. Got a text about 30 minutes later to ask if I was OK since people were concerned London might be a target.

Turned on TV just before the first tower fell. Still seems inconceivable when you see the footage now..

Was in NYC in Jan 2002 and went down to Ground Zero to pay my respects. It was just after the viewing platform was put in place. I didn't do that - I didn't know anyone who had died there and it seemed a little too morbid otherwise.

[Chundles]

I was in bed, late at night on the 11th (most of the news and stuff came in on September 12th here) in my bed at the college I was living in in my first year at Uni. We watched some of it on my next door neighbour's TV then went down to the communal TV room and watched it on the big screen. We had CNN there and it was on 24 hours a day for the next few weeks.

[kretzy]

I had just finished watching something on TV and had left it on for the news - this was around 11pm. Towards the end of the bulletin, they had a news flash and switched to one of the american news networks of live coverage of it all. I think I ended up going to bed around 3-4am. Everyone was shocked at school the next day.

[iGary]

Does anyone remember the entire Internet being locked up like a rusty wheel?

Not being able to get on just about any news site was eery.

[Queso]

This sounds really bad, but I was sat in my dressing gown playing Civ 2 since work was hard to come by that year and I had nothing else to do that day. I remember I was playing as Japan and at war with America, and had just bombed New York with my airforce and taken the city. I then went into the living room to make a cup of tea, flicking the TV on as the kettle boiled. This was after both planes had hit the WTC. They were showing it live on BBC1 and commenting on people throwing themselves out of the windows, which was bad enough, but as we all know there was worse to come. When the first tower collapsed I was in complete shock and when the second one followed suit it actually became difficult to breathe. Ian rang me from work to ask whether I was watching it. He was also in a bit of a state. He didn't have access to a TV and was listening over the radio.

Needless to say when I finally returned to the computer a couple of hours later I didn't bother saving the game. I actually felt guilty that I had been attacking New York, even though that New York was on some imaginary continent on a game world and just shared the same name as the real place. I also felt guilty that I was sat wasting my time on computer games and not making the most of life when so many others had just lost theirs (they were saying it could be 10,000 dead at that point). It must have been nearly five in the afternoon when I finally pulled myself together and got dressed.

[Chundles]

Does anyone remember the entire Internet being locked up like a rusty wheel?

Not being able to get on just about any news site was eery.

Was the same down here, like the whole system had gone down. abc.net.au/news was unreachable for two or three days.

[zwida]

I was on jury duty at city hall in Manhattan, a few blocks from the WTC site. At first, when the first plane hit, they announced that there had been an airplane crash nearby and that we were going to stay put until they had a better sense of what was going on. After about five minutes of that, people started getting REALLY antsy and the judge finally let us go. (The trial was still in process, but the people must have settled or something, because we never got called back to finish).

I was standing on the city hall steps when the second plane hit. That moment of realization was one of the scariest moments of my life. I tried to call my wife repeatedly from my mobile and finally got through. She was at Kennedy Airport waiting to board a flight to Germany. They hadn't officially cancelled her flight yet, but she decided not to stick around in any case. We decided to meet at home and, since the subways still seemed to be running, I walked/ran up and over to Canal and hopped on the A train. I was on my home on the train when the towers fell; my wife was in a cab and got the whole thing on the radio.

After calling our families to let them know we were OK, we spent the rest of the day kind of wandering around our neighborhood and sitting in the park in kind of a daze.

My office is on Wall Street a few blocks from the WTC site. I wonder how it will be getting to work today.

[Applespider]

Not being able to get on just about any news site was eery.

Ever since, if I've tried to get the BBC news site and can't, it flashes across my brain that something extraordinarily bad might have happened.

[timnosenzo]

Does anyone remember the entire Internet being locked up like a rusty wheel?

Not being able to get on just about any news site was eery.
Yup, I was at work at the time. Someone in the office got a call when the 1st plane hit the tower. After that we were all trying to watch online, but getting around was difficult at best.

[Mac Rules]

I remember it, I was in a Grapahic lesson in secondary school, when the failed rockstar/bearded caretaker burst into the room and dnnounced to the entire class that the World Trade Centres and Pentagon had been destroyed..
He exagerated about the Pentago obviously...

Everyone in the class was stood in shock, then everybody asked what was the world trade centres and pentagon, these are 14/15 years olds :o
Anyways, I had to explain to them what they were, and then people started to realise what was going on...

Obviously when I got home, my family already had Sky news on, apparently my mum watched on the news whent the 2nd plane hit...

Sad day...

Cheers

[wordmunger]

Does anyone remember the entire Internet being locked up like a rusty wheel?

Not being able to get on just about any news site was eery.

Yep. I was a graduate student in English at the time. I had to tutor students in the writing center all morning, and I had classes until 9:00 p.m.; there was no TV there, so I didn't ever watch it live. The internet was completely locked up, so all the news I got came from word of mouth -- some people in a nearby office had a radio. When I got home, my wife and kids were completely sick of watching it, so I never saw any TV news coverage on September 11. I think it was a few days later that I finally saw the footage of the buildings collapsing. By then it had all been prettified, so I never got to see the truly horrifying stuff, people jumping out of windows, etc.

The hardest part of that day was talking on the phone with my wife during a 5-minute break from tutoring, trying to figure out what to say to our 3rd- and 4th graders about all this.

I just asked them about what they remembered this morning (obviously now in 8th and 9th grade), and they were pretty matter-of-fact about it. It obviously had a huge impact on their lives, but they don't really remember a pre-9/11 world.

[Lyle]

My wife had been diagnosed with a recurrence of her cancer just a few weeks before 9/11. After consulting with her doctors here at home, we decided to fly up to New York to consult with a leading head & neck cancer specialist there.

On the morning of 9/11, we were doing some last-minute packing so that we could get on the road to the airport. My mother called and asked if we were OK. I told her that we were, and that we were about to leave for the airport. Then she asked me if we'd had the television on (we hadn't), and told me that weren't going to be flying to New York that day.

One week later, we drove from Alabama to New York. We parked our car at a friend's house in Mt. Kisco and took the train into the city. The place where we were staying was downtown, near 1st. Ave and 17th St. and it was a very eerie feeling being there. All of the shop windows were plastered with photocopied flyers picturing missing people. That's the image that always come to mind, for me, when I think back on that time -- all of pictures of missing people.

[edesignuk]

I was at work, which at the time was Morgan Stanley - it was a bad day.

[Lau]

I was working at a cinema, and we had no internet access, so the first we heard of it was a message on the walkie talkies from projection, who had a TV up there so they could watch Neighbours or Richard & Judy while films spooled out onto the floor or were shown upside down. :rolleyes: We kept getting updates from them, but it seemed really surreal, and it wasn't until much later on that I was able to go up to projection and watch a bit of the news. There were wild rumours of planes over the Atlantic heading for London, and I was slightly worried about my dad and friends in London.

It seemed hugely unreal, I think partly because I'd never been to New York and so had little idea of the scale of the towers. It hit me more when I visited in 2004 and saw how big the buildings were around the site, and having seen the pictures of the towers and how much taller they were than the surrounding buildings, I just couldn't believe how awful it must have been to be caught up in it, and the magnitude of them falling.

It was my friend/flatmate's 21st birthday that day, and that evening we watched a bit more of the news on our illegal telly, and then tried to go out and enjoy ourselves for his sake, but it was too much of a weird day to really do that, and so mainly sat around in a pub. I felt sorry for my friend.

I remember thinking that things weren't going to be the same afterwards.

[dalvin200]

i was at work, cos in the UK it was 13:46, and remember someone shouting across the office that twin towers had been hit.

my heart sunk, as i have many memories of that place and trying to get onto the bbc news site (or any other, for that matter) was a pain, as the servers were just flooded..

the company stopped any access to the internet, and had updates only on our intranet, but of course, there is the mobile phone and wap (for what good it was back then!)

i have 2 friends who didn't make it into the city that day, but i was worried for them..

was quite tragic. I will be remembering this all again in about 15 mins time, as other office workers around here just plead ignorance and carry on their daily chit chat :mad:

[MacBoobsPro]

I had 'volunteered' to work in an off-license (liquor store) that was the only one in the area not held up by armed robbers in the last month. It was 'due'. If you marked them on a map it formed a circle and this place i was at completed the circle. So I was on my own crapping myself waiting for someone to stuff a gun in my face. Then I heard the news :( I wasnt bothered about my situation anymore. I was glued to a crappy radio with a weak signal, so I had to construct a makeshift aerial out of paperclips. I finished it when the second plane hit. I wont ever forget it...

...it had 10 paperclips!

[Bobdude161]

I was at school. Around the time the first plane hit the towers, rumors started to swell. No one had access to the news right then and the teachers were clueless as well. I started to joke with some girl next to me about how I read this Clive Cussler book about how terrorists shipped nukes by transporting cars from Japan that were loaded with them. Thought it was funny. But then the school principle came in right then and told us that one of the towers were struck. I felt like ****. He told us he didn't want to post the news over the intercom because he didn't want to frighten the younger elementry school kids (All grade private school). He decided to let them find out through their parents which I thought was very wise.

We later got to watch the news just as the next plane struck. Lots of parents picked up their kids that day. Like our school was a target...

[Lollypop]

I had just come out of a study group heading for a Maths class, we walked through the student shopping centre and I saw on big displays replays of the first one hitting the trade centre, moments later they showed the second one. The RAU student centre is usually a extremely load place, that day it was dead silent and people were glued to the TV's. I went to the maths class and told some friends, they though I was making a joke, they actually laughed at me.... lecturer then told us all about it, few of us knew, the rest had no clue... we still had to sit through 2 and a half hours of algebra though...

[ejb190]

I was on my way to a conference in Indianapolis with a coworker. We were trying to piece everything together from what we heard on the radio. We got to the hotel in time to see the second tower fall. We didn't get much done at that conference. The keynote speaker never made it and we were all too stunned.

[PlaceofDis]

i was just leaving my 8a.m. class and on my way back to my dorm room, when one of my buddies who listened to his radio back and for from classes said something happened. i think he said that they thought someone had bombed the pentagon i think, we basically ran back to our rooms. 9am on a college campus means its dead. no one on my floor was up yet, and i basically woke 'em all up after turning on the TV. classes were cancelled for the most part and the tone was errie for the following week or so.

[jdechko]

I usually stay out of the political forums, but I think it's important to remember 9/11/01.

I woke up later than usual, and at that point, I believe that the first plane had already hit. At this point, they didn't suspect terrorists (officially). After I took a shower, I came out to find that the second tower had been hit, but I still didn't know how serious it was until I went to class, and everyone was talking about it. I had a Calc 3 test that morning, so I took (and failed it - but not because of the WTC). After that the college decided to cancel all classes for the rest of the day, so I spend the rest of the day back at the dorm with my girlfriend watching the news.

[SilentPanda]

I was at work... I can't remember exactly when I first started hearing about it but it was probably near the onset as I'm usually at work by that time... of course I wasn't checking the news sites frequently at work but one person hears about it and it gets around work fast.

I had slight difficulty getting to news sites but was still able to access most of them (probably something to do with my 'net connection at work) so I started saving web pages locally then uploading them to my web site. There was literally nothing on my website prior as it was simply there for testing purposes for getting other sites running. I just ran a plain text web page for that day with local links to stories I had snagged off news sites. I posted the URL to Slashdot and maybe a few other places...

It's odd to look at my hit statistics at that time... it went from virtually 0 to several hundred thousand then came back down as the internet started working again.

So yeah... I guess I spent that day being a news relay.

I always think anniversary's seem weird as they appear to be a semi-arbitrary amount of time but... yeah. I always thought it was odd that people could remember where they were when Kennedy was shot or when the space shuttle blew up... now I guess I know that you can remember those kind of things.

[nospleen]

I was at home. I was just released from the hospital after being in ICU for a few weeks. I remember my sister was blowing up the phone, but I could not get up to answer it. I had just had my spleen removed, hence the username, and I was getting over the P.E. that was a result of that. So, my sister in law who was staying with me at the time brought the phone to me. My sister dropped the, why don't you answer your phone schmuck line on me. Then I watched in horror as everyone else did. :(

[Sweetfeld28]

I was at work. Getting ready to cut my dad's farm's grass. I had to go get the grass deflector plate from the building which we normally store our Grasshopper. Once, i walked into the building a Co-Worker told me "A plane just hit the World Trade Center".

At first i was like, your kidding right? He then proceeded to tell me it was on all the radio stations. So, i then walked back to the Grasshopper, listening to my headset. As I was walking back to the lawn mower, i said a little prayer to anyone who might of been injured, or even killed.

Then, as i was cutting the grass twenty minutes later, i hear of the second attack. This is when I, and I am sure many others, knew this could not possibly be an accident.

[aquajet]

I entered my classroom for music history when I overheard everybody talking about how the Palestinians had bombed the WTC and the top 30 floors had collapsed on one of the towers (!). After an hour, I went to my next class and my instructor told us all to "not pass judgment until we know all the facts." Then she released us after the administration decided to close the university for the day. After I got home, I turned on the television and the first thing I saw was a tower collapsing. I stared at the television in disbelief for about two hours, after which a friend of mine rang the telephone and asked if I wanted to go to NYC. I said yes, and so we drove non-stop from TX to NY in order to witness everything with our own eyes.

[sethypoo]

I was still in high school at the time, and was in my stage band (aka jazz band) class which meets early in the morning Pacific time.

I walked into class, and everyone was gathered around the TV. I knew something was up, as it was absolutely silent. We all watched the replays in horror, then, most of us went home for the day.

Talk about a bad day.

[yg17]

The night before, I had *cough*downloaded*cough* a copy of Windows XP, and being before release date, and being the hottest new item (i did not yet know the glory of Macs) I wanted to play with it. So early on the 11th, when I normally woke up (around 6 AM long before the planes hit) I faked sick so I could stay home from school and went back to sleep for the time being. Yes, I'm bad, I know. At some point between the first plane hitting and the second plane hitting, I woke up, and my dad, who was off work told me a plane hit the WTC. Didn't think anything of it. Then the 2nd plane hit, and we started freaking out, because my sister at the time lived a couple blocks from the WTC. Then **** hit the fan, we got ahold of my sister (nearly impossible, all the lines into NYC were tied up) and....yeah. Then, I remember sometime later in the day saying to my family, "I hope we don't re-elect Bush over this *****" Not to turn this political or anything, but I did do that on 9/11 ;)

Anyways, me faking sick to sleep late and stay home was just pure, unjustifiable laziness. But on that same day, my sister slept in, which turned out to be life saving, because she intented to go to the Borders in the WTC that morning to buy a book, but decided to sleep late instead.

[thejadedmonkey]

I was in Geometry class when it happened, and I found out about it in social studies. I still remember the headline on MSN.com "Two planes crash over (or above, not sure which) world trade centers". I wasn't supposed to see that though..

The kids at school was officially told around noon.

[nbs2]

I got up and got ready for class, only to get a phone call from the crazy girl that my roommates and I knew (she believed that milk can cause leukimia). Told us that the WTC had been hit by a plane - living in Utah, the events were too early in the monring. Told her that she was being stupid and that it couldn't be what she was thinking. Looking back, I'm not sure what I thought she thought.

Anyway, finished getting dressed and went to ROTC. It was an eery day, since Tuesday's we wore our Class A uniforms. Spent a lot of the rest of the day watching the big screen in our ROTC common room, discussing what happened, and likely responses.

The hard part of the day was that at the time, my dad had weekly meetings at the Pentagon, that were held on Tuesday mornings, roughly in the vicinity of the big hold in the wall. But, his Dr wsa annoyed that he hadn't come in to review some tests, so he took the day off to go to the Dr and putter around the house. Of course, the phone lines were packed, and I couldn't get ahold of him at work or my parents house. So, I left for class with instructions to my friends to keep trying to call my parents and let me know if everything was ok. Nervewracking indeed.

[beatsme]

but I think it's important to remember 9/11/01.


why? did something happen? :confused:

I was at work. Screen print/embroidery for leisure apparel.

The next day we get a 250,000 piece order for patriotic tshirts from Sam's/WalMart. Two weeks later we get another 250,000 piece order from Sam's/WalMart...evidently they couldn't keep them in stock.

This is corporate America. The building site is still smoldering and all we can think about is how to make a buck off it.

[liketom]

i was pulling a sick day - and was watching the whole thing live on tv all day - brought a tear to my eye's when that 2nd plane crashed

[CorvusCamenarum]

I was naked in the bathroom, shaving. My bags were packed, my flight was confirmed, my passport all ready to be stamped, and I was getting ready making myself presentable for the journey when my roommate at the time who was going to be driving me to Atlanta Hartsfeld barged in and told me to put the TV on CNN. I stood there in my bedroom, moderately wet and with shaving cream on half of my face, watching the horror unfold. Trying to get through to BA was an understandable nightmare, and by the time I got through to a human, flights had not yet been shut down. We ended up driving to Atlanta anyway, and upon arrival turned around and went home.

[mactastic]

I'd just gotten up and flipped on the news as I usually do first thing in the morning. By that time it was only a few more minutes until the first tower fell.

Then I had to go to work. It was a pretty bad day.

[leekohler]

I was on the L train on my way to work downtown and all of a sudden every cell phone in the train started ringing. I asked someone what was going on and they told me a plane had hit the WTC.

When I got to my stop, mobs of people were running up the stairs to get on the train to get out of downtown. I walked into my building and it was chaos. People looked confused, some were crying. Some were saying that another plane was headed for the Sears Tower. Nobody would tell me what was going on til I got up to my office. That's when I found out we'd been attacked. Shortly after that, the mayor ordered the evacuation of the Loop and we were told to go home.

I spent the rest of the day trying to call friends in NYC to no avail.

[takao]

just got my driving license and was driving around in our car for getting used to it when i heard it on the radio.. drove home and watched the second crash live on CNN

my sentences on that day where
(after it got clear that it was an attack):
"i hope they learn something"
"they are gonna use it to go to war for years"

oh yeah and i was drinking orange juice

[deputy_doofy]

I remember....

I was at work, listening to Howard Stern. When he reported that a plane hit the WTC, I immediately thought terrorist attack, but then, I'm paranoid. Obviously, there was immediate buzz all thoughout the work place. As soon as the 2nd plane hit, I knew, as sickened as I felt, that I was right.

Everything then just blurred together.... Trade Centers hit, Pentagon hit, White House on fire.....

Yes, everybody at my work was reporting that the White House was on fire.

Our company being our company sent out messages telling the workers to use "this quiet period" (meaning lack of incoming phone calls now that everyone was glued to their TV) to get more data entry done.

[xsedrinam]

9/11/01?

I hate these kind of threads, but I thought it might be interesting to see where people were, what they remember, and what their first reactions were. ......
I was in the office in Quito.
My wife called from the school offices to tell me they were watching the breaking news live on the networks, that a plane (the 1st one) had crashed in to one of the Twin Towers.
My first reaction: "Oh, ******!" :o
I turned on the TV and watched the horror unfold.

[devilot]

School.

My incredibly sensitive and thoughtful (now ex) best friend thought it was hysterical. :rolleyes:

She wised up when a classmate of ours was inconsolable because her father was on a brief business trip working in a WTC office suite. Needless to say, the teacher let her leave school. Most of my teachers just allowed us to sit and watch the news. It didn't look real at all. I thought they were showing movie footage...

[Thomas Veil]

Like many, I was at work. Just came back from the cafeteria with my morning bagel, and a co-worker told me that America was under attack, that both the WTC and the Pentagon had been hit.

I remember just looking at the guy, who was young and a bit of a joker, not sure how to take it. "Come on..." I said uncertainly.

"No, no kidding, it's on every TV station."

Now, I'm a video guy. We had lots of TVs, even projection ones. We turned on the nearest CRT. And there was the tragedy unfolding before our very eyes.

I remember lots of things, mostly saying (almost silently) "Holy ****!" over and over as I saw replays of the first WTC strike, then the second, then each tower falling. I remember Peter Jennings watching the first of the two towers collapse, and quietly saying, "Oh...my...god...."

At some point early on, I wondered if I would be asked to set up a projection TV so all employees and visitors could come and watch. Sure enough, I got the call a few minutes later, and I ended up doing just that.

I didn't do a damn bit of work that day, just made sure the TV was going and that there were chairs for everyone to sit and watch. I remember thinking I'd never seen so many shocked people in one place in my life. I also recall that we kept alternating between ABC's and CNN's coverage, though we had some dodo who kept popping in to insist we would get our best news by switching over to Fox. :rolleyes:

It was so weird for days afterward. My drive to work took me directly under an airport approach path, and it was common to see at least three planes coming in directly following each other, each lining up for a landing. After 9/11, it was kind of spooky to make that drive and see nothing in the sky.

[sunfast]

I was at university at the time (and back in my room). I randomly turned on the TV very soon after the first aircraft hit, when they still thought it was an accident. It's all still very clear.

[freeny]

I was at home in Manhattan about 25 blocks from the wtc. working on the computer. My wife called from her office in midtown and told me that they had heard a plane crashed into the wtc on the radio and wanted me to turn on the tv and tell her what I saw. The second plane was in the process of a b-line to the second building and hit. I thought I was watching a replay and said that two planes had hit. she was shocked as well as I.

I described to her that the planes were large and it was most likely a terrorist attack. She said she was leaving and on her way home. I grabbed my mini cam and ran down the street for a clear view and shot about five minutes of footage of the buildings. Started to get worried and went back home to be by the phone in case my wife called, but of course, the phones were all busy and cell phones were useless.

My wife showed up at the door with several of her coworkers who lived outside the city but could not leave the island. we all sat around the tv for the rest of the day. I remember fighter jets cruising around the sky all day. eerie. we sat outside on our stoop in the late afternoon and people were just wandering the streets and no cars at all. strangers would just come up and start talking and telling anyone who would listen what had happened to them that day.

[mactastic]

I'm sorry, but the title to this thread keeps reminding me of this:
Where were you when they built the Ladder to Heaven?
Did it make you feel like crying?
Or did you think it was kinda gay?
Well I for one believe in the Ladder to Heaven
Ooh yeah yeah yeah, 9-11
I said 9-11 9-11 9-11 9, 9-11

Where were you
When they ran out of stuff to build the Ladder to Heaven?

Where were you
When they saved that Ladder to Heaven?

Where were you
When they decided Heaven was a more intangible idea
And couldn't, you couldn't really...get there?
You little bastards ruined my latest song!!

[rdowns]

I was in a meeting at work when someone popped in and told us a plane had hit the WTC. A while later, the same person came back in and told us a second plane had hit. We ended the meeting and all went across the hall to our other office space. You can see the NYC skyline from there (we're on Long Island) and we could see the smoke billowing up.

Everyone was paniced and trying to call people we know who worked there or nearby. A while later, someone said one of the towers fell. We were in shock and looked at the skyline and it looked different, an hour later, we were in even more shock.

We closed up the office and sent everyone home. Got home to dozens of emails and PMs from another board wanting to know how I was. My girlfriend made it over and we spent the rest of the day watching news and drinking.

I also remember the fighter jets flying overhead all day. That was frackin eerie.

[sb58]

i was in 4th grade and school had actually started the 10th that year. I, on the other hand, was on a plane coming back from Florida the first day, so 9/11 was my first day of school. Aint that a great way to start the year?

[vniow]

I just got in my mom's car on her way to drive me to school. We turned the radio on and swore it was some kind of prank, neither of us beleived it. Until we started flipping stations and every one of them was saying the same thing. School went relatively normal that day but you could definitely feel something in the air. Scary day.

Some of the kids got really gung ho about bombing/nuking whomever attacked us shortly after while others took a more rational approach of "why did they attack us in the first place?". Funny thing was at the time, a lot of the kids and teachers predicted we would invade Iraq soon. How unfortunate that they were soon proven right.

[dukebound85]

16 and had in calc class. The teacher told us "did you guys hear planes hit the twin towers?" I had no idea. He shut off the tv and we had class as normal. All my other classes were spent watching the news the entire time

[lu0s3r322]

i was back in the 5th grade and school was almost over and each kid got a letter from the district president and since my vocabulary was not good at the time I could understand some of it but not all. I got home and got a call from my mom and she asked if i had heard what happened I said yes, but i started asking all these questions and she just said "turn on the tv". so the rest of the day i just watched the tv, i couldnt do any hw and i barely ate.

it feels strange because we all know what we did exactly on that day, but i have no clue what i did the day before or even after.

[MacRumorUser]

I was having lunch whilst sky news was on. It was kind of awe & dumbstruck.

People throwing themselves out of the building had the biggest effect on me, that hoplesness & bravery of those people.. all of them... wow.


-
but i still think bush is a pillock. we have more chaos in the middle east now than before. we had to react - but violence begets violence.

[dukebound85]

Funny, I can also remember where I was when the oklahoma city bombings happened as well. I was like in 4th grade but I definitly was playing street hocky and our parents came out to tell us the news.

Same with columbine when I was in 9th grade. Came home from school and everybody was in shock.

I personally feel that Columbine had almost the same level of effect across the country as 9/11. I mean after columbine, schools serioulsy went into lockdown mode and still are in a sense.


Edit: maybe this should go into a tangent thread talking about these events

[dornoforpyros]

I was just starting a new job (at a grocery store) and I didn't have to start work till noon so I slept in till about 9:30-10:00ish.
I got up and my mom was home instead of at work and I asked her why she was home and she replied "America is under attack" I'm sure I watched news until I went to work, and got updates all day at work from people coming and going from breaks and such.

I can't really remember much about which planes had hit & stuff and when the towers fell and such. The rest of that week was/is just kind of an overload of "the sky is falling" media reports.

After the first few days I had to turn off the TV and the radio and remember that the world had not in fact ended and life would go on.

[Mike Teezie]

I was at school, buying a scantron for a test that morning.

This really overweight lady ran into the bookstore, and started screaming - "We're under attack - they done bombed New York!"

Having family in the city, I dropped my scantron and ran to the student center, which being 8 in the morning, was completely empty. I stopped at a TV, and Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were saying a second plane had just struck the second tower. They didn't even know if it was a terrorist attack yet, but I knew it was. There was 100% confusion, weird reports coming in from all over the place, etc etc.

I got into my car and sped home, trying to call my family in NYC the entire time. I finally got my dad at our house here in Louisiana, and he said everybody was fine, they weren't even in the state that day.

I watched the towers fall in total awe and disbelief. I remember that night, I felt so sad and odd, knowing things would never be the same. I stayed glued to the TV for the next 2-3 days.

Something I will never forget - seeing the f-16s patrolling the NYC skies.

[trebblekicked]

i slept through the whole thing.

i had just graduated school the summer before, and was in that post-college unemployment phase. i took my gf to an 8:00 class she had, then went back home and crashed on my couch.

i had the presence of mind to bring an alarm clock down from my bedroom, and it went off at 10 or so, and i heard bits and pieces:

"obviously a terrible tragedy..."

and i hit the snooze button. i did that like six times. the radio was set to a 70's funk/R&B station that was still playing music after the towers fell.

eventually, i heard that both the WTC buildings collapsed and was understandably shocked. i didn't have a television at the time, and the internet was useless, so i took a look at my to-do list and saw that i had to get my oil changed. i drove out to a wal-mart because i didn't know what else to do. i took my car up, and asked the guy if they were still changing oil; he said that wal-mart was a federally designated disaster retailer so they had to stay open no matter what. true story.

before i left, i saw one of the creepiest images of my life:

the wal-mart was mostly empty, just a handful of people watching the news feed in the electronics department. the audio from CNN was fed through the store audio system, so i was hearing this echoey description of death and destruction and i saw a lady lazily picking through a bin of flip-flops. just a weird, weird, unsettling image on a wholly unsettling day.

[iSaint]

I was driving in my car (as opposed to golf balls, maybe) and Billy of "John Boy & Billy" mentioned that a plane had hit one of the twin towers. I thought maybe a small plane hit is by accident. It was wierd listening to it unfold for three hours as the major news networks took over. I remember Peter Jennings on the radio telling how the first tower fell. He was somber, not excited or freaked. Very somber moment indeed.

To top it off I was calling on elementary schools to recruit Cub Scouts. Needless to say, I didn't get much done that day.

[skubish]

I was at work. Someone told me a plane had hit the WTC. As others had said, I thought it was a small Cessna or something. I went down to the cafe at work to watch CNN. I was watching TV when the second plane hit and I knew this was something much worse.

They let us go home from work at noon EST because no one was working anyway. As others said, the internet was useless.

The best news I heard about 9/11 was one of my coworker. His plane was in route to LAX from Japan and was diverted to Hawaii. He got to stay in Hawaii for the rest of the week.

[jessica.]

I was laying in bed, the alarm went off 40 minutes prior and I was watching the news trying to think of a good reason why I didn't need to go to Spanish class that morning. I ended up going because I felt sitting at home was kind of confusing.

[dbhays]

I had jury duty that day at 10:00 pacific time, so I got to watch most of what was happening. About 10:30 a bomb threat was called into the court house. We were evacuated. Then we were let back in at around 11:00. The judge dismissed us for the day, but ordered all teachers (about half of us were teachers) back to our classrooms. She said our students needed us more than the court system did. It was really weird going back to my classroom, but all my third graders ran to me and hugged me the minute I walked back into my class. I get choked up just thinking about it.

[zephead]

I just started 8th grade, and got up like any other morning to go to school. I went downstairs where my mom and sister were watching on TV that there was a Twin Tower on fire, and thought "whoa, that's not too good", but I had no idea what was actually happening. Then I saw the 2nd plane crash into the other tower and then I thought "ok, something's seriously f*#%ed up here". The teachers even had it on TV at school.

The real kicker is later that day, my little brother (who was only 3 at the time) said "let's watch that movie where the planes crash into the building!" :eek: So we had to explain it wasn't a movie, it was actually real, and we told him "really really bad people did it" and he's like "oh ok."

[Kingsly]

Mom woke me up after the first one hit. She had gotten a call from a friend. We watched it all live on CNN... It was surreal, watching all those people die on live television... more like a horrible movie than reality. I still get chills when I think about it, and now I know exactly how my Grandfather must have felt hearing the first radio broadcasts from Pearl on Dec. 7th. Later that day we took a razor blade to all the downstairs carpet while watching the news.

It just occurred to me the irony that we have blood red concrete floors that were made on 9/11 :o

Sadly, we are the only people in the neighborhood who bothered to fly a flag today...

[KingYaba]

I lived in Arlington VA at that time. (Bounced around the DC area for years.) Riding my bike to school, friend jumped out of the car yelling at me saying the towers are on fire and all that. I thought she was joking. Soon as we got to school everyone was in their homerooms glued to the TV. School was canceled the next day.

Scary thing was my father was heading off on a business trip to California that very morning. His flight was scheduled out of Dulles at 9:00 AM to San Francisco. (Interesting because if he didn't hate LAX, could he have been on that other flight?) Scary morning.

[solvs]

I was asleep during, didn't have to be at work until 8 PST. Heard people talking on the radio instead of music, so I tuned it out and hit snooze a couple of times. Overslept, running late. Every station had talking instead of music, but when I woke up a little bit more I could finally understand what was going on. I should have just called in sick, but it hadn't really hit me yet, so I went in and we just talked about it. Listened to it on the net, even got some streaming video working. The boss wanted us to get back to work even though there wasn't much we could do and she was just sitting there on the net herself. Our IT guy came in complaining that we were sucking up too much bandwidth.

I know it changed me.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/11/a-look-back-the-daily-show/