Where Were You on 9-11-2001?

i was attempting to read a children's book to a bunch of 8 year olds...

i was in the Philippines. i was about to go to sleep when i heard the news. as an innocent/ ignorant fifth grader i didnt know what it was all about or how big the deal was. until we talked about it in school the next day in our history class.

I was just laid off from an 8 year dream career in June of 2001. Before that I was never fired or laid off. I was devastated and in debt. On 9/11 I was looking for work and living on my severance package. The well that supplied my house with water had just dried up, and then I saw the attacks on CNN.

Ever since that time I am still unable to find a job that is immune to budget cuts or that lasts for at least a year.

I was doing laundry- the TV was on in the corner. I walked in, saw the WTC on the screen- I thought- hmm........looks like a fire at the WTC- hope everyone's okay.....wow......a year or two before I went to New York, and met up with my father- where to meet up? I suggested Tower 1 of the WTC. No problem- a great trip. My sister had one of her brokers with her when the firs tower fell- and this guy had a son who worked for CantorFitzgerald.....

I was just dropping my son off at school in marshall, tx. A friend of mine was waiving us down to show us the news. We made it just in time to see the second tower get hit live.

I was driving to work when the third plane which was destined for tower 7 defected to shove it back up their ass in Washington. You should have seen the look on bush's face when they told him about it in the classroom. ;)

i was in my us history class when the second plane hit

Thanks for starting this, Delia. It was a nice way to commemorate 9/11. Cheers.

I was eight, and in third grade.. All I knew was that all of a sudden people started getting taken out of school. My mom wouldn't explain anything, but I sat in my room and watched the news all day.

I woke up on 9-11-2001 in my recording studio after a late session with DJ Sun (BMORE) and was going to listen to the session when I looked into the lounge thru the window and saw the early morning news on...I loaded up the session and wondered why Tom Brokaw was on this early in the morning...I originally thought that I had slept all day and it was after 6pm est. I cued up the first drum beats and looked away from the computer screen to see the first building on fire and at this point I could not hear what was going on thru the soundproof room. I thought that the building was just on fire.... I listened to the song once more and and happened to see the second plane hit the second tower. I then jumped up and ran into the other room to hear Tom Brokaw ( who at this point didnt even know the second plane had struck the tower) after that everything seemed very surreal....

I was in 8th grade and my home was being remodeled. My family and I were forced to eat crappy mcdonalds breakfast in my parents bedroom. Thats where i watched the first plane hit. My dad was supposed to be on a business trip at the twin towers so my siblings and I were pretty freaked out. After, I walked to the bus stop and 8 us us 13 year olds started talking about WW3 and how this incident is going to change everything.

i remember i was in the 5th grade, just got back form P.E., our teacher told us before we went back in the class.

i didn't get it completely, then realized the magnitude of it later that day. i remember thinking if other people i knew heard about it, then my mom told me that the WHOLE WORLD knew what happened.

i was in 7th grade, first period, and everyone in the school was talking about war and i was worried. terrible day

Delia,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings. Oddly, I feel that in some ways I am STILL working through that event. I have always marvelled at how completely different some things look if one can just manage to capture a different perspective. For example, I was talking to my Son a moment ago about his summer vacation and just for a moment I glimpsed that sense I had long, long ago right at the end of the school year when the summer break seemed to stretch out ahead of me to the farthest horizon and beyond. When I only had nine years of life under my belt, three months seemed like an eternity. At my CURRENT age, on the 4th of July (my birthday) I am already making sure I am all set for my September house payment...I liked that other perspective better...

But taking that thought process to 9/11, I struggle sometimes between two perspectives that seem equally accurate. The one perspective is pretty common -- that this event was nation-shattering and changed the course of American history. That perspective is pretty easy to support considering the wars and death and hundreds of billions of dollars in expenditures by government and private business to improve and enhance security...

But I also can't help wondering sometimes if there isn't an equally valid smaller perspective. By that I don't mean to diminish the dimensions of the tragedy -- by any measure the loss of life and suffering were horrific -- but rather the size and scope of the Bogeyman we erected as a proxy for the hijackers after they were gone. Because of their "success" our society has been shaken to its very foundations...but what if they were really a bunch of thuggish ass wipes who just got really "lucky" in terms of the impact of their actions? What if they never in their wildest imaginations thought that the trade centers would acually fall, for example?

I am probably just babbling, but on the one hand I see this group of terrorists who caused the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world to declare a nevery ending "War on Terrorism." On the other hand, I see a group of ugly fanatics small enough to fit in my kitchen who just happened to hit the "sweet spot" through some combination of luck and skill. For some weird reason, I take a bit of satisfaction sometimes in viewing them from that second perspective and thinking, "You may have most people fooled, but I see you for you who and what you really are: small. lacking. uprincipled. immoral. unethical. inconsequential. cockroaches.

Peace, baby...

I was asleep, considering I was living on the west coast when it hit. I was in 2nd grade, and my father woke me up telling me to see what was on the tv.

I was at home. Adrian called and said 'turn on the t.v.! Americas' Fucked!' I was so upset. I gave $ to celebrity telethons. I watched the news. I wondered why we weren't being shown what happened at the Pentagon. It didn't sink in.

I cried all the way home today, singing the sad songs being played by thoughtful D.J.s. I get it now. Pearl Harbor. We will never forget. 9/11. We will never forget. Seems to me we remembered exactly how to forget.

I was in a classroom in Liverpool, New York. New York
makes sure that if drivers want a 10 % reduction in their auto liability insurance, they take a refresher course in driver safety each 3 years. That's when I heard about what was all over the news that day. I'm glad I tuned in. I've always had this feline gift from God to be in the right place at the right time to catch some evidence, like Peter Jennings criminaly libeling my name by asking someone on the scene if they thought I was one of the terrorists implicated in the bombing. I kid you not. I will sue the ABC network
for torts dating back to 1980, and linked every day of every year since so that the statute of limitations to bring civil action is still viable for that infamous day too

It's about 11:11pm here in NY; the anniversary of 9/11 is nearly over and I just have to say a big THANK YOU to Current and everyone on this thread.

9/11 was a very emotional time for me; not only because of the attacks and because I'm a (proud) New Yorker but because of family medical issues as well. It's still hard for me to come to terms with all of my feelings around that time.

Because of that, I really thought I wouldn't even go near Current today. I thought I wouldn't be able to control my temper with all of the back and forth and insensitivity for what people lost.

In "Lost One", Jay Z says "Can't run from the pain, go towards it" - that was my mentality in posting this thread. And with nearly 200 comments, only a handful of them got hateful, rude or even political. That's amazing (especially on Current!)

I'm extremely touched by the stories that were shared today. It was therapeutic and healing for me to share a sense of unity with you guys, the Current community I love. I hope you all feel the same way and that this thread helped some people like it did for me.

Again, thank you so much!

School. Junior High. Shop class first period was when we realized it was an attack and not an accident.

A kid in my classes mom was a flight stewardess and he couldn't get ahold of her. He was shook up. We were all just shocked.

I was sleeping in. Long night at work. Woke up to a new world.

I was really young, in sixth grade I think. I remember my mom waking up telling me that the World Trade Towers had been hit and I had no idea what that even was( I was living in Utah...). She told me it's in New York, and all I knew about New York was they had the Statue of Liberty. So being 11 years old, and thinking that the Statue of Liberty had been hit when I got up my parents were watching the news as we all watched the second building get hit. That's when I started to realize what was going on. I went to school just like any other day, and I remember the teachers not answering any questions we had. Can't even believe that it's been so long.

I was working for the Red Cross Blood Services. Geez that day would not end. For the life of me I didn't think the line of blood donors would stop. I know that some of the blood was distroyed but all was tested and alot of people that had never donated blood found out they were sick.But all and all i saw people that truely cared and companys sending us food and drinks. And for the years I worked for them every 9-11 there will be people that they remember where they were to.

I was in a drug treatment center. We were in the basement working on some stock project because all the school psychologists from the district were there for some course. Than about 10 or so the teachers left and so did the psychologists. We were pretty cut off from the world in current events. They took everybody upstairs and sat us down. One of the strongest staff members was crying his eyes out, We all thought someone relapsed, But then he told us what happened. We stayed glued to the tv after that. Not believing something like that could happen.

I have an uncle that is NYPD. He was sick that day. If he would have been working he would have been dead.

I still cannot believe what happened. That anybody no matter what their race or religion could do something like that.

A day that will Remain In Infamy

I was in 5th grade and wondering where everyone went. They wouldn't tell us a thing in school, even though half my class left. It's weird to think that was 8 years ago. I'm now a freshman in college, and this is what everyone has been talking about all day.

I had just come home from a late night party when my dad woke up for his mourning routine turned on the tv and started screaming for me to turn on my tv " they just bombed new york!!" he called neather of us knew who "they" was i turned my tv seconds before the second tower was hit. I remember thinking my dad is pulling a prank and this was a movie. As the day went on i pulled myself away from the tv long enough to go to work. My boss and i where in the parking lot looking up at the sky commenting on how scary it was to not see or hear any planes in the sky.I remember saying that the gov will find a way to spin this till no one will ever understand why this happened or who really did this. I still feel like i was right.

I woke up a little late for school,the TV was on I happened to glance over at it right as the second plane hit the tower! I knew right away this was no accident ! School was let out early that day with pretty much the entire school in tears! I was absolutely outraged when I found out later that the US knew as early as 1992, that there were buildings Terrorist planned on bombing! The events sadened many all over the world! The world will never be what it was before the events of 9-11! & We can only hope there is never a next time!

Piloting a 737 from Sacramento to Los Angeles.

I was in grade 3 at the time in Vancouver and heard it on the radio. When we got to my (christian) school, the teacher gathered us around her chair and asked if we knew what had happened. She told us that 2 buildings in New York had been hit and fell down, killing "many many people". We spent the next 5-10 minutes praying for people

It was only years later that I truly took in the gravity of the event. I was able to meet survivors and the those left behind after the tragedy. My heart really goes out to those people

I was In 6th grade and my world was very small and I was at the center of it.
One of my class mates walked up to me and told me that planes had crashed into the pentagon and "the big building" in New York. I thought he Was full of it but when I walked into class the TV was on just flashing images of things I couldn't even comprehend. I just sat In every class watching the second plan crash over and and over again, I must have watch it over a hundred times. Then I saw footage of little figures falling from the WTC, as soon as I realized that the were people jumping I knew what was going on. I cried my eyes out...
After that My little world just feel apart and I knew that I was small.

I was a freshman in high school. I walked into class and saw the others already watching the news. None of the victims deserved it. I was angry that so many innocent people died. However, I wasn't as shocked as everybody else seemed to be. The magnitude of such horrible events occur all around the world more often than people seem to realize. In addition, so many recent conflicts, as well as living conditions, that unfortunately kill many innocent people around the world are a direct cause of intervention by great powers like the United States, whether by force, with the use of propaganda, or or by economic means . Also, did we forget the great United States that people are still always talking about has been gone for a long long time? Americans are some of the most illiterate, lazy, fat people on this planet. This is the truth. (Just to make sure, I AM American, just not the kind you thought of first, and neither the one you thought of second) The United States is one of the main contributors of misery for the innocent and the poor. Americans became so complacent with a life of extreme consumption that they forgot how quickly everything can change. Americans forgot that they weren't perfect, that they weren't always right and that american democracy wasn't always right. It was naive and irresponsible to think of yourselves as an all powerful, all deserving people, that you were never going to experience what most of the populations of undeveloped and even developing nations live through everyday. I don't know who was really responsible for that tragic day, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to sit and cry and then get up and go about my way without questioning our government, letting myself fall victim to this illusion that THEY (ANYBODY THAT DISAGREES WITH THE U.S. GOVERNMENT OR AMERICANS) are the bad guys, the evil ones, and that America, the land of the great, is blessed, is holy, is always right, always safe, always all knowing........... This was the United States government's fault (under our world representative, the mighty Bush).

I was in Monterey county California, getting ready to commute to work. My pro-American Muslim husband turned on the radio and we were both shocked and horrified to hear the events and stayed home. Later he said the only person who was happy that day was the devil, Satan.

I was working outside in my yard.

I was sitting alone in the east village, in my studio apartment, less than 2 miles away from ground zero, watching the smoke billow into the sky and sobbing uncontrollably.

Within hours of the towers falling, the garden behind my apartment was covered in white soot. I remember thinking: "It looks like its snowing - very light and tiny snowflakes - but its hot outside and they're not melting..."

That night, I took wet towels and duct-taped them onto every draft, to prevent any more of that sooty air from blowing inside, but the air in my apartment smelled like burnt rubber for about a month anyway.

I actually do remember this, because I was 6 years old and in first grade. My parents and I had just moved to Northwestern PA, and we had been living in our new house for less than a month. I went to school that day, and I remember that some of my teachers were crying, but nobody knew why, and none of the teachers told us why.... They probably thought that we were too young to know, and that our parents would tell us what happened. Well, I got home after daycare, and my mom was telling my dad about something really big and bad that happened to some big building (now I know that it was the WTC), my dad didn't know about this because we did not have cable, so we didn't have any TV or news source other than the radio. I didn't understand what was happening, I thought that this was something that wasn't that bad, I didn't understand much of what was going on. I can't remember much after that, but I think that my dad put on the radio, and we listened to the radio the rest of the night. The next day when I went to school, some people were missing, I guess because their parents wanted them to stay home with them or something of that matter. Also, I remember that some teachers were missing too, probably for that same reason. I eventually watched the news in school the day after and I saw the video of the towers being hit, and I heard about the other two crashes.

I don't know how to describe my feelings about 9/11, probably because I was so young to really understand what fully happened. But I do feel sad for the families of the victims, whether they were in the building, or outside of the building and they got injured because of all the dust and stuff.

Thanks for letting me share what that day was like for me.
Natasha

I was in middle school, in 6th grade. I was in class when all of a sudden, all the kids were being called to the auditorium and were being sent home. While everyone was confused, the principal announced on the speaker what had happened. Children and teachers alike immediately began to burst into tears. I just wanted to go home, to be safe in my house with my family. My dad works in NYC so I was waiting for him to come home safe the entire day. It was such a surreal feeling, as a child I struggled to comprehend why someone would do such a thing to our nation. I remember seeing on every channel constant repeats of the planes crashing into the WTC. It is honestly a day I will never forget and I hope to never have such an experience again.

I was at a medical appointment at Beth Isral Hospital in boston was a class teaching meditation and using it to relieve cronic pain.We found out whem a member of our group was late and she had seen it on TV,and then heard it on her car radio.She came into class yelling out the news! The class broke up and we watched it all unfold on TV! I'll never forget how I felt as I watched it,all the women in the class were hysterical.I remember when I got to my office nobody was functioning and every TV was on news channels and everyone was watching and commenting.I remember on the street everyone being either really angry or hysterical.I'll never forget that day,on that day they began to remove our Constitional rights,and it continues! That day changed the way we live our lives forever! It gave the facist new world order the public fear it needed to push forward their agenda for world domination! It was the day America,as we had known it,died forever!

i was very young i lived in west virginia at the time all i remember was wathcing it in school i knew some of my freinds who lost some family members in the towers
some more in the war and even more soon in obamas vietnam stop the war and use the money to bulild the new tower i know us liberals and conservatives cant get along but well be very proud to spend our tax dollars on that and katrina

i rembember i was going to board a plane on 9-12. i woke up to the bad news.
sleeping while terrorism striked.
my plane ride eventually got set for 9-14 ive never seen the airports so bare of people, i was in LAX. security was intense. fear was still in the air.

When the attacks happened I was on the first of my two connecting flights, leaving Istanbul for doing my Masters in Manchester, UK. When the first plane landed in Frankfurt, we were waiting on the Tarmac. That's when I heard a businessmen, who probably got the news on his cellphone upon landing, talking about one of the WTC towers collapsing to the next person. At that instant, something began stirring in me, but subconsciously I refused giving it a thought.

As I was transferring flights at the Frankfurt airport, I happened to pass by a crowd watching the TV monitors and because of our waiting in the plane, I didn't have much time left to make the connection. While in a rush to catch my next flight, I caught a glimpse, "Explosion at the Pentagon" on the screen and immediately I thought "that guy got it all wrong, it's not the WTC tower, it's Pentagon!" it didn't make sense but that was what I thought at that time.

I was now on the plane to Manchester, and the cahttering was not coming only from one person, it was coming from all around me this time, people talking Pentagon AND the twin towers. I felt something dark sinking in my heart. Was it because I've been to the observation deck twice and I've grown an emotional connection to the buildings? While that was true, it was not the reason of my shock. It was that I had a sister who worked a few blocks away from the towers and so used the WTC subway station every morning. This was what startled me and squeezed my heart. Out of that heaviness, a huge feeling of disbelief arose. I managed the rest of the flight with towers and my sister faintly in the corner of my mind. I couldn't possibly believe what I just hear, I had to see it.

There weren't tv monitors at the arrivals in Manchester, and I don't know how I made it to the student halls. The little ball of thought about the towers and my sister had been growing. I didn't know any details and I was trying hard to push away images of my sister under a 110 floor rubble. I was in a foreign city, my first evening of a long settling and my brain was all torn to pieces by paranoid thoughts. I left the halls, wandering around in a place I've never been, trying to find a bar with TV. It was already dark, I had tried to call my sister at the first phone, there was no way to reach New York. My parents however, I could reach them. They were worried breathless, not hearing from her either, on the day they sent their son away. I still hadn't seen anything yet. When I eventually found a pub, I barged in, and the first sight instantly vaporized the disbelief I've been having as a shield to protect me from despair all these hours. But there I was watching the horrendous images repeat after repeat.

It was at least three or four days before I could hear from my family that she was ok. It was a huge relief, but it of course did not justify what had happened. Nothing in the whole world ever could.

With all the things New Yorkers endured, on a personal note this was how I started a new phase in my life, living on my own in another country. I was depressed for months, possibly for all the factors being combined.

I wanted to tell my story to point out that 9/11 had great repercussions far far away from its source...

I still feel sad about that day.

i was in my 6th grade math class in the northeast bronx. we could see the smoke and thought it was just another fire but we did know something was wrong because of how tense all the teachers were acting. they'd canceled all lessons and just kept playing Harriet the Spy. by noon, half the students had been picked up and the rest of us were sent to district headquarters until our parents could be located. they were playing Harriet the Spy too. still nobody said anything. i finally found out what had happened from a janitor and instantly started freaking out because my dad works down in manhattan and my bother was visiting a friend down in tribeca only a few streets over from WTC. the staff told me not to say anything because they didn't want any hysterics, so i kept quiet. i wasn't picked up until after 8pm since my mom works as a nurse and couldn't leave the hospital. there were still a lot of kids still at headquarters when i left. one of my classmates was still there at one in the morning. my dad and my brother showed up around 10pm. a little dusty but ok.
the next day all the city schools were closed and i finally was able to figure out what had happened.

I was 12 years old, In the 7th grade. The next thing you know is that the teachers were talking about something and their was was some sort of silence and the students couldn't hear anything of what they were saying. They then shut the school down, made us stay in one class and we couldn't travel to other classes. Next thing you know, my English teacher turned on the TV and we had seen the destruction, a bloodied little girl, it was so sad. We had thought some one had actually bombed NYC, and that the world was ending or a war was coming. They then called all parents, I was scared and crying and all I wanted was to be with my mom, who's job was not far away, and she came to get me.

She wanted to send me home with my aunt, but I didn't go I went to my mom's job.Later that day we went home, and my dad came home(it was also his Birthday) and he took me with him to his 2nd job, there people were watching it on TV, silent , and as we drove home we seen people on the corner holding vigils. Sad day indeed.

A year later, on my birthday which is 10 days before 9/11, me and my dad went to circuit city, and my dad showed the clerk his ID for a purchase, he look at my dad's birth date and said "Wow, what a day to have your birthday fall on"

At school getting physical therapy, heard about it over the pa system

I was nine years old, and I remember waking up and walking downstairs. We lived on the West Coast, so it was only around six-thirty at that point.

It was cold that morning… I took the blanket off my bed and walked downstairs. Because of the angle of the staircase, you face the couch when you first come downstairs, and you have to turn to see the television set.

I reached the bottom landing and it took me a moment before I saw the look on my mother's face… She was watching the news, and I turned to see what was on, and CNN, or KTLA, or whatever station it was, was playing a clip of the towers falling. A chill ran down my spine… We spent all day at school talking about what had happened.

it was a typical day as any, i live in billerica, ma at the time just about 45 minutes from boston, i was in middle school then, geometry is what i was taking, learning about polygons, when my principle came over the intercom and had said 2 planes had hit the world trade center, i was shocked and in disbelief and was thinking how did they manage to pull this off...

i was on long island at the first day of the new semester. it was my junior year at five towns college and i was on campus at like 8:30am. i remember after my first class that people were talking about some kind of explosion in the city but the details were scarce. by lunch time everyone was crammed in the teachers lounge watching the news on the tv, and then we realized what had happened. i ended up leaving school around 3 and the LIE was closed for doctors and emergency vehicles only. i took the northern state pkwy for a while and then took northern blvd back to flushing. the commute that took 45 minutes in traffic took me more than 4 hours. when i got home the tv reception was horrible, we didn't have cable, and the only thing on tv for the next 3 days was news about the attack. i remember seeing the towers fall and will never forget the images and the horror.

I was a freshman in high school in rural PA...a month shy of my 14th birthday.

I had a meeting with a guidance councelor that was suddenly cancelled, and I passed the principal in the hall who told me to get to my classroom immediately. As he walked away he said "lock the gym doors" into a walkie-talkie (communicating with a teacher, I assume) to prevent students from going outside for gym class (I think at that point no one was sure if there was a biological attack as well).

I got to my English class, and my teacher apologized to us as she said, "your world is going to be much different now."

At home asleep...I was woken up by my brother who told me "you know the twin towers in New York, they're gone!"...I said "what!?" I was supposed to be in school, but I overslept that morning.

I was aboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) during our WESTPAC six-month deployment. We had left Singapore several days ago and were on our way to Australia when the attack occured. You can imagine that everyone on the ship was shocked, saddened, even angered, but then I dusted myself off and reminded my shipmates that moments like this are what we've been training for, and we were ready to fight...and fight we did. I guess that's the only reason why I continue to support this war is because some of my friends are still out there fighting, and my mind won't really be at ease until all of them come home in one piece.

To all our brothers and sisters in arms who are still fighting out there, we're with you and don't give up.

I was across the country, in Los Angeles. It was my first day of 6th grade. I remember walking and seeing my parents totally quite and watching the news. It is something that I will never, ever, ever forgot.

I was in my fifth grade elementary class, when I noticed most of the faculty was acting odd. No one told our class anything at all. But, we could hear from other classrooms that something terrible had happened. I felt uneasy but, thought it wasn't a big deal. Then, as my Mother was driving me home, she stopped the car, and told me that some planes were hijacked and flown into a building in New York. She also said that there may or may not be repercussions. Then, for the rest of that day we watched the news. I still didn't understand the magnitude of it until I watched a documentary on it years later.

I was just starting my freshman year of high school during 9/11. While in my Biology class, the PA system announced what was happening in NYC. For the remainder of the day, everyone was just looking around at each other in disbelief, with no real understanding of what happened.

Looking back, it was nothing less than surreal.

.......labouring basically alone in a quiet dark room,.... employed in a commercial aircraft related field, watching my future income collapse time after time after time,..... and being very much aware of it.

I was a sophomore in high school here in Connecticut. I was in a Catholic high school, and one of our priests came on the loud speaker and told us that it looked like a plane had hit one of the towers. Like many people, we at first thought it was a little plane, similar to what had happened to the Empire State Building many years before. My teacher turned on the tv....just in time to see the second plane hit. We watched for a while, and then we had to switch classrooms (for some reason they still made us do that all day till we went home around lunch time). Next, I was in my American Lit class, and saw the towers collapse live on TV. I remember my teacher franticly running out of the room to the phone, as his brother worked in NYC. Living only an hour north of the city, I had many friends whose parents worked in the city, so there were a lot of people who were very scared and worried. My own father had had many meetings in the towers while they were there.

Four days later, I saw the island of Manhattan with my own eyes....thick black smoke still rising from it....it was surreal...

i was sitting at a red light listening to howard stern in north jersey.i had a delivery that day for the airborn division 187. they did not take any.

Mcdonalds, watching the towers collapse...

I was in 8th grade at the time, in homeroom when my teacher asked us if anyone knew what had just happened. None of us did, so she told us that the country had been attacked. After school activities were suspended and we were all sent home early. I arrived home at around noon, and my mother and grandmother, who were outside repainting the house Were dicussing what had happened. My grandmother looked down at me from the scaffolding and said "you will never forget this day my dear, where you were, what you are wearing, how you feel; the course of history has just shifted." She was right. As the weeks went by, my family watched the news more than ever before. I remember one night, a few days after the attack, when Bush was making a speech, and my mother; with tears in her eyes and stress in her voice said "he is pushing for war HARD." I felt so betrayed, as if all those deaths were an excuse to declare war, as though death justified more killing. I never in a million years thought that this war would become MY war, my friends war, the problem of my generation. The reason has been forgotten, and my feeling of betrayal stands strong today. The wars we have involded ourself in are NOT for the reasons we were given, and it breaks my heart that so many have died.

in Highschool ! With a Tv already placed in the classroom before attacks!! We never had tv's in most of are classes until right before 9/11. All my friends said the same thing! Why was there a TV in our classroom already on the news before the attacks happened?

I was in my 6th grade health class in Boston,MA and the teacher turned on the radio for the whole class to hear. My teacher got teary eyed and the whole class was just quiet. I was in shock and couldn't believe it. When I got home, I saw it on the news and saw the twin towers being hit.

It was my freshman year of college in Young Harris, GA, and I was woken up by my roommate saying "Get the f___ up man; the world's f___n' ending."
I followed him to the dorm's common room and watched everything go down on the news. We watched the second plane hit not long after. What a strange first fifteen minutes of the day.

The entire college (it was a small one) gathered that morning, and everyone was crying and even hysterical. It really ripped apart a lot of people's worlds. I just couldn't stop thinking about the Roman Empire.

On a lighter note, classes were canceled, and I ended up spending the day with a chick named Missy who was in my English class. We ate pie and talked about the possible ease of "the terrorists" acquiring nuclear weaponry. She's now my bff (best f___n' friend).

it started while i was at school, my 2nd 11th grade. i was in earth science and my teacher was from south africa... when we heard the news she refused to turn the tv on and let us watch.. when i heard the buildings had fallen down i knew something wasnt right, buildings dont fall down, especially not straight down.

either way, i decided that i didnt feel like being at school the rest of the day and myself and a friend left for my house. we usually walked home anyway and it was only a tad over 2 miles so it wasnt bad, plus it was a nice morning. we had just passed his house and were almost at mine when 2 girls in a CRX drove by, being 17 we yelled at them.. they turned around and picked us up. they were also skipping school in light of the recent events.

quickly we decided it was time to get fucked up, and not in the usual way. so we headed to a porn shop and since they were 18, they went in and bought a case of nitrous, balloons and a cracker. we went a bit further down the street and got a couple 40's, we went bit further to one of the girls' houses and she got some herb, and we all went back to my house.

the rest is history.

I was in college my 2nd year at UCF. I didn't have class until around 11 so I slept through it. Got to UCF and thought it was odd that there was so much traffic leaving campus and SCORE I got a parking space near my class...odd. Then I sit in class and its 5 till class starts and no one's there. Weird, everyone's late, I thought. Then one kid came in and said huh, I wonder if we have class. I asked why wouldn't we? He proceeded to tell me that NYC and Washington have been bombed. My heart raced, I went back to my car almost in a panic and attempted 3 times to call my Dad back home to understand what's going on. I completely took that dumb dumb dumb guy's news that DC was leveled, the President dead and there were enemy planes invading the US. I thought for sure the world was over. My Dad brought me up to speed, but I was still panicked from the words used to inform me. I rushed back to my boyfriend's apartment in tears and glued myself to CNN for days in utter fear, scared to death! I watched the replays of what happened and was shocked, sad, scared everything we all felt. I am sad that I was in college and slept through it and didn't get to experience it with the rest of the country. Just thinking about how I felt that day almost brings me to tears. What a shock to learn that life is not as safe as you thought. Ever since then, I still wonder when something else terrible will happen, we are not immune. One interesting thing was that I had a lot of exchange student friends from Egypt so I got to see their reactions (no where near as shocked as us protected American's were then) and their points of view. That was a very cool learning experience for me and my friends.

algebra 2 class in 8th grade. my weirdo teacher started crying.

I would like all of you to check this video.. Someone recorded it while it was all happening and they released it in 2006

http://revver.com/video/59686/september-11-2001-what-we-saw/

I live in Florida; my story isn't very interesting.
My aunt called me in the morning to tell me about the attacks. I called my mom (she was at the doctor) and she told me it was just a small plane that had accidentally hit the tower. That's what the radio news was saying. I told her the truth and she ran back into the doctor's office to tell everyone what happened.
I watched the rest of the day then I had tae kwon do practice that night. It was a very solemn class. We had a moment of silence for everyone who died.

Come to think of it, I can't remember why I wasn't in school that day...all I remember was that I was home when my aunt called at 9-something. Weird...

Senior year in high school, I remember it was my friend's birthday and we had a little party (cake, balloons) in the school cafeteria that morning (we were all nerds). The bell rang for us to go to class, as soon as we were settled my Government teacher opens the door all of a sudden and says "The World Trade Center has been attacked!" and closed the door, the teacher turned on the TV, the second tower had just been hit. All I remember is a bunch of students being picked up from school soon after, and it was so quiet, that's what I remember, how quiet the day seemed to be. Driving home, there was very little traffic, I saw a man driving a truck holding out an American flag through his window, then just more quiet, very surreal.

@ my girlfriend's (and now wife's) apartment, getting ready to ride the 16ABX to City Hall for work ...

I was on a flight from Boston to Philadelphia the morning of the attacks.
I landed and heard the cab ride from the airport radio reports of a plane crash in Manhattan.
It must have been a small plane which got confused.
It was amazing, even surreal, how the day unfolded.

It was also a long drive home.

at work. my employees brought in a tv and we watched and prayed. i wanted to hold my children and grandchildren close to me that day.

Living overseas in Greece, beating the shit out of a kid that was yelling about how awesome it was. I wish my memory of it wasn't a violent one, but the kid deserved it.

I was at the orthodontist. They had the plastic things in my moth that pull your cheeks away from your teeth. They were working on my braces. Over the radio came the first information about the tragedy..

I ended up laying in the chair with the platic things in my mouth for almost a half an hour. Everyone just stopped and listened. When they finally took the plastic out my lips were red and raw. They were chapped for 2 weeks.

I was with my aunt and I was in 8th grade. I was not as scared as I should have been and not as worried either. Now 8 years later we are still battling...

I was on a small naval base in Goose Creek SC getting getting trained to be a nuke. They announced a plane had hit the World Trade Center. By the time we got out of class, we learned that the entire military base was locked down. The same facility also handles the ordinance for the Atlantic fleet and it was believed that targets were going to be struck down the Eastern Shoreline. For the next week or so, no one could leave at all, to the point that we were running out of food. Our instructors, both officers and enlisted were not even allowed to leave, forcing them to literally sleep in our dorm lounges, class rooms, ect. We went from a facility that never had any real check points (at least till you got to the subs) to a series of sandbags, machine gun nests, and marines patrolling fully armed. It came close to the command actually scuttling the training subs for fear that an airliner would hit the munition area and create a massive explosion. It was weird cause as a nuke, we never really felt like we were part of the rest of the military. What I mean is that we are taught to question authority constantly, barely receive any training outside of our nuclear stuff, and we are isolated from the rest of the navy during the 2 years we are getting trained. 9-11 really shattered that false sense of isolation.

It was weird later in my career when the newer kids would show up and they usually said they joined up cause of 9-11. I just did it to get college paid for and get the hell out of my hometown.

I was in sixth grade at a Catholic school. I had gone to the bathroom during class. When I returned, everyone had their heads down, praying. I was confused. I didn't find out what happened until I came home that day.

I was in my 6th grade science class, our teacher left the room and came back in and told us that he was just on the phone with his brother who worked in lower Manhattan. After telling us what happened, we went back to work not thinking it was serious. Then in our next class we sat and watched Peter Jennings on ABC. We heard a flight over head and we all went out to see and panicked because by that point, air traffic had been grounded, then a few minutes later, Peter Jennings said President Bush had landed at Offut air force base in Bellevue Nebraska, we were in Omaha, so the plane we saw was Air Force One. After that I went home and watched the news all evening.

I was in my first year of high school and my mom woke me up early after the first tower got hit. I saw the second tower get hit and the first fall before going to school.
I participated in a prayer circle outside of the school, although later that would be when I turned into an agnostic, as I realized that praying wouldn't do a damn thing to help the firefighters, policemen, or the people stuck in tower 2. In our history class that day, we watched the aftermath of the 2nd tower falling.
After high school, I tried to enlist in the Air Force, Army and Marine Corp, but was turned away for a knee injury and color blindness.

I was about a month into my freshmen year of high school. someone ran up during second period and pulled the teacher out and told her what was going on. she came in and calmly stopped the lesson and turned on the tv. she said that a plane had flown into a building in new york city. i thought it was a joke. they let us go home early that day. i went home, sat and watched CNN in a dark room the rest of the day and all they did was replay that second plane flying into the tower.

My family and I lived in Virginia. My father worked on the base, one of the heavily weaponed bases. They evacuated our schools and the base. My two brothers were bussed somewhere that my parents did not know about.

Knowing a plane was heading south and not knowing its destination made the day seem more tense and surreal. Do you run from it? stand up to it?

My father was suppose to be working in the pentagon that day. Amazing how such big events can make a day remembered. A day with meaning. A day of strength.

on 9-10-01 i was comming back from washington state to baltimore i arived late at night so i called out of work for the next day. On 9-11-01 i was awoked by my phone i missed the call and notice there were 15missed calls ,i was what the , so i called the last number back and my room mate answers , i said hay james whats up, and he says, DUDE ITS WAR, I said what the hell are you talking about , he said ,turn on the news , and there it was ,one of the towers burnning , i asked what had happed and shortly after the second plane hit i was in utter shock , the next day i went in to work and people ther were happy to see me and i was happy to be there.

Most people in the building didn't really work for a living, let's face it, they lobby to force everyone to buy their insurance. The other blue collar bandits there were stock market rip offs, or some kind of frigging govt ripoff entity that leaches off of society via red tape they create. They had been warned by the 93 bombings, and the ingrained fear of heights everyone has. I don't give a shit about them. Apparently God didn't either.

I had just started classes at NYU. I was still asleep when the phone rang and one of my roommates woke us up and told us to turn on the TV. Her mother had called. At first we heard a plane hitting the towers and assumed it was an accident, but then the second plane it.

We watched on TV for a while, then ran outside to watch. The dorm was on 5th Ave, and we could see the towers. I went back in to get dressed, and try to let my family know what was going on. By the time I came back outside, both towers had collapsed.

I don't remember much else very clearly--standing in line to give blood and having them run out of supplies, lines of empty stretchers that weren't needed outside the hospital, people covered in dust walking uptown past a group of construction workers heading downtown while loudly proclaiming that no one fucks with their city. The missing posters that plastered the city in the days afterward.

Mostly, though, I remember talking to my grandmother. She lived in England during World War II, and I remember being on the phone with her and having her say to me, now you know what it's like.

...on my way to work, listening to NPR morning news.

At first, I thought it was a movie stunt that had gone horribly wrong, wondering why these gneiuses didn't just stick with CGI. But, then a second plane hit the second tower. Suddenly, my tinfoil helmet materialized. 'Okay, it's an invasion, a coup, whatever! It's the end of the world as we know it!' I pulled off the highway, called in sick, and headed over to my coffee haunt to catch the CNN coverage. I would stay parked there most of the day, wondering out loud what happened to the plane that hit the Pentagon. I and a WW2 vet seated two stools down the window bar both had the same question: Where's the wreckage?!

Having the day off, I was planting a my daughter's shade garden in an area near the second gate. My daughter had picked the plants but never got around to planting them so they needed put in soon before they it got too cold to get established.
My husband was supposed to make calls on several clients up on the 'mountain' that day. Something kept him in the store. Thank God. He would have been up there in Shanksville with a van full of furniture finishing supplies.
My husband came over and told me what had happened and I didn't believe him.
Then I heard on the radio I had outside.
My first instinct was to go get my children and bring them home.
When we watched the news and saw the second plane hit it was so surreal.....and then it kept getting worse.
There is usually a lot of air activity in our area. We live near several small airports and hospitals with heliports. At first there seemed to be more air craft than usual and then ... silence... the silence was deafening....
I thank God, Hubba was still at home that morning, I would have lost it not knowing exactly where he was.
There were a lot of 'dead airspace areas' up on the mountain and I might not have heard from him. Plus, the military closed off the area ASAP and he may have been detained for awhile.
Later he got the scoop of what all of his clients saw from their individual shops and farms..... Some of them the first people at the site.
Quite a lot of info not told at first.

I was at work on a PC helpdesk for a pretty large company. News came to all of on the phones through a group IM. We thought it was just some idiot in a little hobby plane... but more info trickled in and everything snapped into perspective.

Shortly after the second plane hit, the Internet congestion made surfing for info impossible. The phone lines fell silent... no computer problem in the company mattered.

Confusion gave way to horrific realization. Realization gave way to a surge of unity. It saddens me that it takes such a tragedy to make us shine as human beings.

Rather than remembering the tragedy, remember the humanity and unity. Let that honor all that perished that day.

It was my second day of school. I was so excited to be back on school when we ran into a close restaurant to check on the TV. I saw when the second plane hit the towers.

After that, people were in some sort of dazing shock, noone could really understand what kind of implications it would bring to the world.

Once we got back to class, the teacher made fun of 9/11 saying something retarded that I dont remember. The very next day, he was apologizing in front of the class.

Anyhow, is clear to know that there was a different world pre-9/11 and post-9/11 - We now live on a strange world. I liked it how things were pre-9/11.

I remember i was in 4th grade. we were doing DOL (Daily Oral Language) and my teacher came in from the office in the next building. She said she couldn't send in our Scholastic Book Orders because two planes just hit the Twin Towers. Since I was, like, 10? I didn't know what or where the Twin Towers were so I didn't really know the significance of what happened. We just disgusted what The Twin Towers were and stuff. I didn't really care until later in the day when i saw the videos on CNN and the planes and people. I was just kinda fascinated by all the details and stuff and just watched until my dad told me to do my homework. I'm just sad at what all this has led up too, but hopefully it gets better. GOBAMA!

I had the news on television while I was getting ready for work. I heard something about breaking news, but I was running late so I headed out. I was driving to work listening to Howard Stern, he was talking about something horrible to someone on a live remote, but I couldn't figure out what they were talking about. My mind was on something else, it was going to be a busy day at work and I was already dreading it. I got to work, went to the cafeteria to get some coffee, and there on the TV I saw a replay of the second plane hitting. Right then I knew the world we knew was gone, and we would never be able to get it back again. All my youthful hopes and dreams for a better world left me in an instant, never to be heard from again. I walked aroud in a daze the rest of the day at work, the final scene of The Planet of the Apes, Charleton Heston on the beach screaming at the sky, kept running through my head, you maniacs, you did it, you finally did it, you blew it up, God damn you all to Hell! I went home and turned on the television and finally saw all the carnage for myself, replayed over and over again. I cried, and I drank, and I screamed at the TV, but it ignored me. So I went to bed, knowing I would wake up to a much harsher, much crueler, much uglier world than I had the day before. And it has been that way every morning since. And every September 11th since, I still cry for the world we had, the world we lost, and world we will never see again.

I had just finished a prison sentence for victimless crime. You should have heard me whoop and holler when they hit the pentagon YEEEE HAWWWW fuck you USA you fucking nation of hypocrites who think you are free.... FUCK YOU.