What were you doing on 9/11/01?

[TE]

I remember being in first period seventh grade english class with an old-ass cranky teacher. I had forgotten to turn in some important assignment that was due that day and was subsequently singled out by the old woman. She was about to lay some sort of academic penalty on me (giving me detention + calling my parents) until some teacher came into the classroom and brought in a television on one of those television carriers to show the class what was going on. I was bailed out.


Anyhow, seeing the events transpire was ing surreal. Later on that day, I remember trying to get some sleep but I kept hearing planes flying overhead...


I'm pretty sure you all have some memories from that day. Let's hear them.

[Ditty]

I was in 6th grade taking a benchmark, and before we started our teacher said he had some bad news, and some annoying got white boy named Colton, who I didn't like because his best friend dated some girl, I was trying to hit on for like a week , anyways he was joking around saying that we got in trouble, and some other BS, then other teacher got all pissed at him, and told us a plane ran into the wtc, which I didn't know what building that was, and at first thought it was a small commercial plane for some reason, and thought it lost control, and all of that, and maybe a 20 or so people may have been killed.

I don't remember what happened after that or how the rest of the school day went, I just remembered my Dad was off that day or got off early because he works for the public transportation system in SA, and pretty much the whole country was on lockdown, I was just watching the whole situation but at that time the towers already collapsed, so I never saw them live on tv, then remembered them showing Afghanistan celebrating in the streets, and my dad telling me that the country is going into war. I never really understood the whole terrorist situation being so young.

[Ditty]

I'm sorry it was East Jerusalem not Afghanistan my bad

[TE]

Another thing I remember was getting picked up from school and heading to the local town store (I lived in a small ass town which probably had a population of over 1,000) only for the store to be completely packed with drivers who wanted to stock up on gas due to a fear of rising gas prices.

[TDMVPDPOY]

theres already a thread like this if im not correct, do a search

[TE]

theres already a thread like this if im not correct, do a search

Find it then talk dumbass, I sure didn't find it.



edit:
I found a thread similar to this. But it asks a different type of question: what were you doing when you heard the news of the 9/11 attacks.

Sorry, my bad.

[CubanSucks]

random ass thread

I was in 6th grade but none of the kids understood the significance of what was happening till after school

[jimo2305]

i believe i had drove to school in my first car and walked into the library.. said what's up to a couple of my friends and one of them was like 'dude.. terrorists a plane just flew into one of the WTC buildings in new york'.. and i was like 'quit playin' around..' because he usually jokes about stuff like that (i know.. don't ask..) and he's like 'no im serious..' and i still didnt believe him.. then the other friend backed him up sayin' 'dude.. it's not funny.. some just went down.. look at the tv' and i saw a smoking tower 1 being televised on cnn..
they eventually had to go to 1st period but i had 1st period off so i just stayed in the library glued to the tv along with other students.. and saw the 2nd plane crash into the 2nd tower live.. everyone's jaw dropped.. wow.. whatta day..

[The Reckoning]

wtf i must have been the only one who still had to sit through lectures and take tests and .

[jimo2305]

lol i was still a young cat as my story was in high school.. not as young as the folks that posted before me tho lol

[IronMexican]

I was in the 6th grade.

[scampers]

Decided to skip school that day. For whatever reason, I flipped CNN on a little while after the first plane hit and people were still trying to figure out what was going on. Watched the second plane and both collapses live. Unreal.

[Dr. Gonzo]

Smoking weed from the time of the first attack until I had to be at work at 7pm.

[stretch]

i was sitting in class in 8th grade, doing absolutely nothing, when another teacher ran in and told us that someone bombed the pentagon. 2 minutes later she said they also bombed the WTC. shortly afterwards we got clarification that it was airplanes, and everyone was sent home, i watched videos of the airplanes hitting, buildings collapsing, and then i went and played nintendo.

[Dr. Gonzo]

i was sitting in class in 8th grade, doing absolutely nothing, when another teacher ran in and told us that someone bombed the pentagon. 2 minutes later she said they also bombed the WTC. shortly afterwards we got clarification that it was airplanes, and everyone was sent home, i watched videos of the airplanes hitting, buildings collapsing, and then i went and played nintendo.

What game?

[Gutter92]

I was in 4th grade on 9/11/01. We didn't have a TV brought in or anything, our teacher told us what had happened but didn't talk about it very much at all, so I only got to see what happened when I got home. It was the first time I had watched the news for longer than 5 minutes, but I didn't really understand why the planes flew into the towers..at first I thought they were just accidents, rather than hijackings. It was really weird, because I remember the reactions my parents had. My father was in disbelief, and my mom got scared, and said, 'You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air.' I whistled for a cab and when it came near The license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought, 'Nah, forget it. Yo, homes to Bel-Air!' I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 and I yelled to the cabbie, 'Yo homes smell ya later!' Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-Air"

[DesignatedT]

7th grade math class. Watched it on the tv in there.

[Dr. Gonzo]

All of you n-words with an "a" at the end instead of an "er" are young.

[SourCandy]

grade school. channel 1.

[CuckingFunt]

My girlfriend was scheduled to fly back from New York that morning, so I spent the day watching TV, working, and trying to make sure she wasn't dead. Good times.

[Dex]

Walking into Pre-Cal, 10th grade. They didn't dismiss our classes, so had to wait until I got home to see the news and find out WTF was going on.

[BlackSwordsMan]

at edison high watching kids from ROTC crying thinking they were gonna get drafted to fight in the war

[Darrin]

I was 17 and had just dropped out of high school (I eventually went back and graduated two years later than my original class). I didn't have a job, either. I had been up around 4AM and had turned on the news. Shortly thereafter, I fell back to sleep with the NBC affiliate still on. My mother had gone to work, and she had tried waking me up before she left, but I still fell back to sleep. My brother and father were doing some repairs on a house they were working on. I was at home alone.

I was drifting in and out of consciousness and started dreaming that the news events on the TV were a part of some sequel to the movie Independence Day. I woke up around 9:20AM and both building had already been hit. Matt Lauer and Catie Couric were talking, but the volume was turned down. I was wondering how both buildings had been hit. I thought maybe they had been shot down by the US military or something. That the two planes had missed each other and had landed in the buildings in some freak accident. I finally turned up the volume and heard we had a terrorist attack!

I wanted to know who had did this? Were they sure it was terrorism?

Despite the bombing of the USS Cole (2000) and the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998) had put Osama Bin Laden on the map, this was the US mainland. I assumed, as did everyone, that they couldn't get over here and do that kind of damage. I was confused.

I wasn't fully convinced it was terrorism. It wasn't until reports that the Pentagon had been hit that I knew this was an historic day, a dark one. I watched the buildings collapse, heard about all flights being grounded, the Stock Market being shut down, the evacuation of the United Nations. I was convinced we were going to war. You have to remember that we treated terrorists like Timothy McVeigh before this day. The idea of going to war with a terrorist network was a new one.

As the day wound down, about 4PM, I had been flipping through the news stations. It was on MTV, local Detroit affiliates were broadcasting CNN--19 (of about 64) stations were carrying the attacks. You couldn't watch anything else. I landed on MSNBC and heard a harrowing story about a firefighter that had run blocks and blocks. He was at a loss for words, and I began to cry. That's when it really hit me.

New York and Washington, DC are still far away from the suburbs of Detroit. It was still on my television and I was young. I was disconnected from a lot of this and I never imagined that our government could fall. I wasn't thinking about the dead. This wasn't real to me during most of the day of watching the coverage. That firefighter changed that.

[RandomGuy]

I was playing an online space strategy game with the news on in the background showing the first tower after it was hit.

It was a "gee, that is tragic, but unusual" sense, until the second plane hit.

That was when it was glaringly obvious that it was not an accident.

I remember immediately thinking "Osama bin Laden", and realizing that the terrorist group he was involved with was most likely responsible.

By the time the news about the Pentagon was confirmed, I headed over to see my wife who was in training for a job that day and informed her of what was going on.

Her training was canceled, and we went home and watched the news.

I had one of my first accounting classes for grad school later on that day, and I will always remember that the professor very pointedly didn't cancel the class, and taught the entire way through. I have always admired him for that.

My most vivid memory of that day was of watching the coverage where a reporter was following a woman whose husband worked in the upper floors of the towers. She was unable to find her husband for a while, and right about the time where I thought "lady, you need to accept that he is gone", she found him. That was a point where I could no longer keep up a sense of detached analysis and just lost it.

My wife and I have had some serious conversations about what/when to tell our sons, 8 and 4 now, about this. The 8 year old asked a few questions about Bin Laden already when he saw us watching the news on TV.

(edit)
I do remember also telling my wife that I might get my 30+ year old ass back into the army. As an intel analyst with some Arabic training (stateside during Desert Storm), I thought that I could probably do some good. She didn't like it, but understood.

I went to a recruiting station the next day or two and found out I was a bit past the cutoff age for officers, so I decided to simply pass that burden on to those serving and youngsters.

To this day, I still mull over working for the CIA/FBI or State Department, though.

[Sense]

I was in 8th grade .. match class.. they didn't say anything they just announced that everyone turn the T.V. on, on the news... there was a lot of chatter.. and once we tuned in everyone was just quiet..

It was more weird than anything.. even today I don't remember feeling sad or anything, it was just weird... I'm not sure if we finished school, but I do remember going to other classes and not doing anything other than watch T.V., some teachers tried to keep going but eventually we did nothing..