9-11....so, what were you doing that day?

[Magician]

I was attending my college's ethics course that morning. I got to class early and was watching the news on a tv/audio portable trolly before class began. The planes hit the towers about five minutes before class was scheduled to start. Naturally, everyone in the room was shook up from the incident. One poor woman in the class had an older brother who was on a flight from Minnesota to NYC that morning, so she was borderline into hysterics, constantly calling her family to try and get some news on her brother.

About ten minutes into the class the instructor excused everyone from class that day.

Nobody argued.

 

[famicommander]

I went to school. All the kids were talking about what their parents told them was happening. A lot of kids thought the Russians were attacking, some thought it was the Chinese.

I was at home when the plane hit the first tower, watching the initial reports breaking. Then when I got to school they brought us all into the gym to watch the news and we saw the towers fall.

 

[max 330 mega]

i was in history class, taking turns with my friend stabbing a metal protractor into a world globe. they turned the tv on. we watched while we stabbed more holes in the globe. then we got sent home early. i went home and played either saturn or dreamcast. cant remember.

 

[DragonmasterDan]

It was the last week before a new semester of college classes started, I had stayed up all night, slept in and awoke to my mother calling me while sound asleep to announce that World War III had begun.

 

[Cylotron]

We(my family) were spending the summer at a vacation home we had up in Oregon(yeah even us San Diegans like to get away occasionally). The day it happened we had some guys over who were removing a tree from the front yard. Various neighbors had come outside for some reason and were all talking to each other about the incidents. One of the tree cutters was some sort of backwoods redneck who got all worked up and was talking about how glad he is that he'd stocked up on all these guns & ammo. He was even talking about places he was going to hide & wait for the terrorists.

It was also a really sad time for me because the very next day I had to put my cat to sleep(old cat & wasn't doing well).


P.S. DragonmasterDan, they were calling it World War III also

 

[GregN]

I was working at Control Data/British Telecom/Syntega doing shit out-of-college work refurbishing POS systems for Best Buy. I remember them having it on TV in the lunchroom. Chilling stuff.

 

[Tung Fu ru]

Sorry to get way off topic:

I was working at Control Data/British Telecom/Syntega

What's with so many people in the Twin Cities area working for Control Data/Ceridian at one point in their lives. I haven't personally, but both parents, one of my grandparents, and many other people I've known have.

What's funny is when my parents worked there in the 80s and 90s, they were making computer boards for fighter jets. Now they do payroll.

 

[lithy]

I give this never forget bullshit 4 more years. At that point, it will be legal to have sex with girls born after 9/11/2001.

Never faget.

 

[K-2]

my father was in the city that day attending a medical conference. When the attacks happend, the conference promptly ended and all the doctors were bused to nearby city hospitals to help with the wounded.
Except nobody turned up because you either survived or were pulverized.

All the cell phones were dead so couldn't call him- finally got through to him on a land line later in the afternoon. When he got home all his clothes were full of dust.

 

[Endlessnameless]

Was working in a mail room at the time when one of the IT guys come down and said that a plane had hit the wtc. Everyone speculated just a misguided plane or something until the second one hit. They let us out of work early that day. I was actually living in Sarasota, FL at the time which was where bush was reading to those kids. In fact, my house was just minutes from the school. I remember listening to the radio and they were saying bush was rushed to tampa (I think mcdill afb) to leave. Crazy times

 

[goombakid]

I just moved from HI to OR about 4 days prior. My older brother was gonna take me and my younger brother to Seattle for the day. Saw on the news that morning. Messed up.

We ended up going anyway. Seattle was pretty much quiet.

 

[herb]

I was in 5th grade. They made an announcement over the intercom that "a plane hit the twin towers." Didn't really grasp the severity of it until I got home that afternoon and my sister told me what had happened.

 

[andsuchisdeath]

I was in high school history class.

I remember a few weeks after there was an assembly in the auditorium where students played a song on the piano and there was a corny song played over a loud speaker.

Some students were crying, and I was like "They're forcing out tears, they haven't really processed what happened. They're not really sad".

 

[Jibbajaba]

my father was in the city that day attending a medical conference. When the attacks happend, the conference promptly ended and all the doctors were bused to nearby city hospitals to help with the wounded.
Except nobody turned up because you either survived or were pulverized.

I recently read a first-hand account of someone who was in the vicinity of the towers, and one of the things that he remembered was that local hospitals had personnel lined up at the entrances with gurneys ready to receive the waves of wounded people that they were expecting. Didn't happen for the reason that you already stated.

I was in college at the time. My mom called and woke my wife (then GF) and I, telling us to turn the TV on. I think by that time both planes had already hit, but both of the towers were still standing. I of course remembered the previous WTC bombing, and the OKC bombing, but this was a whole new level. It just didn't seem real.

For all of the stories of heroism that I have ever heard or read in my life, nothing compares to all of those first responders running into those buildings when everyone else was trying to run out. I remember being annoyed at all of the "FDNY" schwag that I would see people wearing in the months after 9/11, as though those people were trying to somehow jump on the bandwagon and make it about them, but I don't look at it that way anymore.

 

[Karou]

well, I was washing dishes and living in employee housing. So I'd drive put into the woods to 'get out' at night and drink and smoke until I would pass out in my truck when I woke up around ten or so and put on the radio(which is weird because I had cds I would've usually listened to I heard about it. went in and worked a slow nights shift while others who had no relation involved acted affected. I didn't really get all sad(antisocial? disassociative? even worse?), but its not like I didn't care or anything either. felt the same about Boston. even the fact that we are supposed to associate the acts of individuals with large groups(even countries somehow?) sort of makes me think its not true for some reason. either way maybe something bad will happen or not

 

[Maury V.]

I was a sophomore in high school. It was the first class of the day and there was a lot of craziness going on that morning. We didn't get a glimpse of it until around 10 am CST. All practices were canceled and the football games that Friday were intense.

 

[Renmauzo]

I was on the couch in my underwear, watching CBC (having a particularly trashy moment...ughhh, just thinking about it makes me shudder...thank goodness I discovered the joy of wearing suits!) and as the the same information replayed across all networks, I thought to myself - and this may seem callous - terrorism happens everyday around the world but doesn't achieve this level of spectacle.
The rally cry from this incident and the subsequent disdain/racial profiling from the average American towards any middle-eastern person seemed manufactured at the political level, especially given the rhetoric mixed with the perceived sense of loss coming from anyone with a microphone.
9-11 has been turned into three letters to simplify and cement in the public consciousness that incident as a means to renew anger, mistrust, and racism towards peoples of different faiths and cultures. If every mass terrorist incident became a memorial day, every day of the year in some countries would be a day of mourning. And there is the rub; the average American believes themselves to be special, at least in the sense that what happens to them is more important than what happens to others. This self-entitlement is why I had no strong feelings about the incident one way or the other, because if I was to be depressed about that terrorist attack, then I should be depressed about all of them, shouldn't I? My first thoughts about any act of terrorism are of the children left behind and their struggle, and that is saddening.
Ultimately though, it was just another day of news.

 

[GregN]

Sorry to get way off topic:


What's with so many people in the Twin Cities area working for Control Data/Ceridian at one point in their lives. I haven't personally, but both parents, one of my grandparents, and many other people I've known have.

What's funny is when my parents worked there in the 80s and 90s, they were making computer boards for fighter jets. Now they do payroll.

Yea, it's a pretty big place. I was young and stupid, I had a sense of entitlement - I could have been hired full time in the lab, but like a dumbass - I declined the job.

 

[Tung Fu ru]

Yea, it's a pretty big place. I was young and stupid, I had a sense of entitlement - I could have been hired full time in the lab, but like a dumbass - I declined the job.

Like I said earlier, I'm pretty sure the ONLY thing they do anymore is payroll. Even that keeps downsizing. Even if you took that job, I'm pretty sure that job wouldn't have lasted long. They seem to be an unstable company to say the least.

 

[Neorebel]

I was still in college. I slept most of that day. I had 3 room mates at the time, and none of them woke me up.
I think the towers were down by the time I woke up.

I had a similar experience. Was an interesting dynamic to be woken up to all hell breaking loose around me suddenly, giving me the opportunity to put my own personal problems in perspective.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Working. Same thing I was doing when Pearl Harbor got hit.

 

[Cornerb0y]

I was sitting in my accounting class. A teacher rushed into the room and quietly informed my teacher. She put the tv on and we just kinda watched it unfold. I had a friend/old neighbor in class and when it was found that the Pentagon was hit (I was living in VA at the time), he told t he teacher that his dad was working there at the time, and he had to go, so the teacher told him to go. He ended up being ok, but if I remember, he worked in the section that got hit, but just happened to not be there when it happened. Crazy stuff.

 

[Voodoohead]

I was at work and i said to my turkish friend...dude, there will be war again...

 

[F4U57]

Went and saw BLOW at the cinemas.

Came home to it on the news; saw the second plane hit, live. Stayed up all night smoking cones with my girlfriend.

 

[StevenK]

Went and saw BLOW at the cinemas.

Came home to it on the news; saw the second plane hit, live. Stayed up all night smoking cones with my girlfriend.

It's rare that world events are timed well for Australian viewing, glad to hear you made good use.