So Where Were You When You Heard The News on 11 September 2001?

[jman3000]

a sophmore in high school.... had football practice in the morning before school started and pretty much missed everything that happened... somebody had said that a plane crashed into the WTC.. but at the time i figured it was just a cesna or something along those lines... it wasnt until my first class that i saw all the images of the towers burning and the chaos that insued.

[shelshor]

I was in a motel in Green River, Utah. The Indian lady who owned & operated the place with her husband and 2 children had a melt down and was running up and down the sidewalk and banging on every door and screaming "They're attacking New York City"
I was driving the biggest truck Ryder would rent me and had all the stuff I'd salvaged from my mother's house after she passed away
I remember stopping for fuel on the north side of Salt Lake City and watching in astonishment as the price of diesel jumped $0.35/gal and unleaded regular jumped $0.32/gal just while I was filling up

[Bigzax]

driving to work. i heard it on the radio. i thought a little itty bitty plane few into the building. just watched intenet from work all day. had pizza hut for lunch. picked up an 18 pack on the way home and go drunk and cursed the terrorists!

[Bigzax]

i'm thinking of picking up a six pack after work in commemorance.

[Lady Marmalade]

My senior english class....

[samikeyp]

God Bless Bigzax!

[SpursWoman]

At the dentist, listening to it all unfurl on the radio.

[ComfortablyNumb]

I was in bed. and just laid there wondering what the was happening.

[Burn531]

In gym class during my freshmen year of high school. The school had all the hall monitors go to each class and tell the teachers what had happened. This was around 10am.

[Melmart1]

I actually slept through all the crashes. I had worked till 2am the night before and was sound asleep. I was awoken by the sound of my roommate scrambling to get ready for work. He was in the Air Force and was supposed to work in the afternoon but got called in for duty. I had no idea why at the time, I figured it was just some standard thing.

I finally turned on the TV and thought I had mistakenly put it on HBO instead of CNN. Surely, this was a movie, something made up in Hollywood. Was this some "War of the Worlds" hoax? I pulled out every thought I could to try and deny what I was seeing. It finally sank in and I sat there in a trance watching the coverage. I am not really sure if I was actually comprehending or just staring at the screen.

I was jilted out of my trance by the phone ringing. It was my boss, telling me not to come into work today, and he would call me later to let me know about the next day. See, I worked in an airline reservation center. Since all flights were grounded, we had no work. Two days later, we re-opened the call center. More than half the staff had been let go. I was a top seller, so I had my job still but I only worked four days, six hours instead of 5/40. Since I worked off commission, I had a feeling of dread about me. In the days since the attack, I never once worried about my job, I was so numb. But it was time to face reality, and so the the heartache of the attacks mixed with the dread over paying the rent just made me have a feeling of nausea almost constantly. A few times I logged out of my phone to go to the bathroom, thinking I would throw up. I never did.

That first day back was crazy, a bunch of desperate people who STILL had not made it back home from wherever they were grounded. We helped the ones we could but most had to be referred to the airlines directly. I felt robotic, saying the same schpiel about how we couldnt reschedule their flight, we could only sell them a new ticket, etc etc. I wasn't the only one, as all of the sudden someone stood up and screamed "will you cheap asses PLEASE get a ing recording to refer these people to the airlines. I am tired of repeating myself!" Then she burst into tears.

The next day, we did indeed have a recording, and the place was silent. I swear two hours went by without a single phone call. I stared at the loud, colorful posters on the wall of exotic destinations we sold tickets to and wondered how long it would take for life to return to normal. Or if it ever would. Would John Q. Public ever want to go to Cairo again? Would I ever sell another ticket to Fiji?

I fielded four calls that day in six hours. The last one of the day before closing was a guy who said "I was calling to check if there were any good deals in light of recent events." This enraged me so bad. I screamed at him so bad my voice hurt and I started coughing. "Why don't you let the bodies get cold in their graves before you start trying to capitalize on it, you stupid mother er!!!" I hung up on him, thinking that my job was gone. The next day, I asked my supervisor about it and she was like "what screaming incident? I have no idea what you are talking about." Later that day, we were both out on a smoking break (I used to smoke at the time) and we sat smoking in silence. She put hers out, looked at me and said "we all need a good scream every once in awhile", winked at me and went back in. It was the first feeling of relief I had in almost a week.

[T Park]

Congrats Tpark on introducing politics into a non political thread.

congrats on pulling out of your ass as you usually do.

I didn't bring politics at all into it.


You geniuses did.

[Fillmoe_]

i was a junior in high school in my science class, we were all watching the news on tv.......

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

I fail to see where politics was brought into it before your post, Eric.

[FromWayDowntown]

congrats on pulling out of your ass as you usually do.

I didn't bring politics at all into it.


You geniuses did.

I asked why you would want to replay those images more frequently and wondered aloud what justifications someone taking that position might offer. You still haven't responded to that.

[SpursWoman]

I asked why you would want to replay those images more frequently and wondered aloud what justifications someone taking that position might offer. You still haven't responded to that.

I think the best thing that came out of that terrible day and for several weeks afterwards, was the unity and that people were actually nice to each other.

Now? Pfffft. Business as usual.

[mookie2001]

I was in 5th grade

[mookie2001]

anytime we doubt the war in iraq, we should just think back to the day when them towers fell













darryl worley

[FromWayDowntown]

I think the best thing that came out of that terrible day and for several weeks afterwards, was the unity and that people were actually nice to each other.

Now? Pfffft. Business as usual.

Oh, I agree with you about that. I'm not even sure that it's business as usual anymore, since the country seems more divided and splintered than I ever remember it being.

But I wonder if TPark is suggesting that replaying the images of planes flying into buildings with more regularity would serve some purpose like that. To me, the shock and horror of seeing that event unfold was the linchpin of the unity, respect, and courtesy that we all saw after 9/11. Personally, I don't think that more frequent repe ion of the images of that morning would create the same feeling -- I think it would just make us all more callous to the tragedy of that day. In an extremely general sense, what makes it moving is the stark departure from the norm -- making it the norm, I think, deprives those images of that quality.

[SpursWoman]

But I wonder if TPark is suggesting that replaying the images of planes flying into buildings with more regularity would serve some purpose like that.

I was trying to put a positive spin on what he had said, and since that's the only thing good that came out of that day, even if it were only fleeting, I went with that.

[FromWayDowntown]

I was trying to put a positive spin on what he had said, and since that's the only thing good that came out of that day, even if it were only fleeting, I went with that.

Fair enough.

My post is detracting from this thread -- apologies to all for that.

[atxrocker]

all the youngsters on the board make me feel old. i slept through the first one then i got a call from a friend telling me to turn the tv on. i turned it on right about the time that the second one was hitting. i was still pretty groggy so it took a minute to sink in. i was working as a credit card collector at the time and they gave us all the day off. i went over to a cousins house and pretty much sat in front of the tube all day watching the news discussing all kinds of throughout the day with some cousins/friends. i can't believe that was 6 ing years ago. that day was insane.

[Spurminator]

Oh , I almost forgot... I worked at the calling center for my school at the time. My job involved calling alumni to ask for donations.

We did NOT get the day off. Those were some fun calls.

[Slomo]

I was driving back home from work when I heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the WTC. I remember not thinking much about it except "that pilot is in a lot of trouble" - I had automatically assumed it was some small plane with an inexperienced/drunk/unlucky pilot and wrote it off as a minor accident.

When I arrived home I switched the TV to CNN just to see the second plane hit.

I spent a lot of hours watching TV the next days...

[Mr.Bottomtooth]

I was in 4th grade and when it happened the teacher rushed us into class to tell us about it, and I was like WTF are you talking about?

[Mr. Peabody]

I was sitting in my Ancient Philosophy class when just prior to the start of class the professor, who is from New York, came into class with tears in his eyes and canceled class.