Where were you when you first heard about 9/11?

[Seele]

Well I just woken up and started to read the paper with one of the morning shows on as background noise when they announced a plane just crashed into one of the trade towers. When the 2nd plane hit, i just said to myself right that instant, this is no accident so I started calling friends. I left home to a friends house where everyone is gathering right when the 1st tower fell. We were all glued to the tv that day. And later on while one of my friends was on the phone to her mother, we heard 2 sonic booms go overhead but we were all really stupid and didn't reconized them at all. The mother heard them and my friend started to freak out. Then the local news (WHIO in Dayton, OH) said there was a heavy smoke pile near the VA center and a plane may have crashed there. We live near an airforce base so we thought something was going on over there. (It wasn't till later that night that all this chaos got sorted out because of all the panic going on that day.) And the smoke pile was just some local yokals playing a joke and the sonic booms was fighter jets intercepting Air Force One flying by.

[Kuja]

I ask this because it was said by a few people I know that you'll always remember where you were when you first heard about the attacks.
Personally I was in my loungeroom eating breakfast, the event itself happening about 7 hours beforehand, I was eating my Pop-Tarts. I turned on the TV, saw what was ging on, I thought it must have been the tenth anniversary of the bombing or something. I saw the plane clip and the world hasn't been the same.

What about you?

Let's see. We had a fire drill that morning, and when we came back to math class, the TV was on, showing that the first tower had been hit. A few minutes later, the second tower was hit. I was walking into Psych. class when the first tower collapsed.

[Mr Flibble]

I was sitting on icq when one of my friends told me to turn on the TV, that a plane had crashed into the WTC, I assumed that it was a light plane, and was shocked when I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit. I immediately told my dad to turn on the tv, and then I moved my tv into my bedroom, so that I could watch it in bed, I stayed up most of the night watching the coverage.

[Darth Yoshi]

I was in the boy's locker room, getting ready for Tennis class, when my my friend asked me about the WTC. I said something along the lines of "huh?" Then he told me there'd been a terrorist attack and that it was all over the news, and that school had been canceled for the day.

[Hamel]

I checked the battlereports.com forums, saw a message about a nuclear attack on NY, and i'm like "wtf", so I turn on the TV and just barely missed seeing the second plane hit

Half the town was thinking we were being invaded or something

[Stravo]

Getting dressed for work. I was a little out of it from working extremely late the night before. The phone began ringing and soon it became a torrent of phonecalls. I usually ignore the phone early in the morning when going to work because I always run late and anyone trying to get in touch with me can call me at work. It just kept ringing so I picked up. The first member of my family who thought I worked in the Towers (I work in midtown) called frantic that if I was alright and had I heard.

Then my brother clicked on my call waiting and I immedaitely switched on NY1 and there was the video of tower one on fire.

Then the part I will NEVER forget. I'm on the phone with my brother discussing whether it was an accident or not. I was sayiong this HAS to be an attack and he was saying that he thought it might be an accident.

THEN the second plane came in LIVE and crashed into the second tower and my brother and I simultaneously excalimed "OH SHIT"

We both said "It's a fucking attack" (I said fucking he did not)

THEN the news of the Pentagon came in and there was this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. We were under attack. It was a sense of surreal panic that I will never forget.

The phone never stopped ringing all morning and I called my boss and he said don't even think about coming in. My mom called crying hysterically happy because she knew that I didn't work there but had been there only the week before on Friday at a business meeting. The first and only time I had ever actually been in the WTC and remember commenting to a friend that I had to come again to see it because like any good NYer I never visited the tourist spots. She said "Don't worry, it'll be here forever." She called me the day after the attack to remind me of her words and how it struck her now.

THEN the truly awful phonecalls came from moms of friends of mine that DID work in the towers wanting to know if I knew whether so and so had gone to work today.

In the end I lost several freinds and many acquianteances as well as having friends who knew people that died and to this day are still very scarred by it. One friend of mine ran out of the towers and was greeted by the sight of bodies landing around her. She still has nightmares about it.

It is a day I will never forget nor will ever forgive those who committed the attrocity. Every time we kill or capture one of them I think of my friends and hope that this may make it easier to live without them.

[Skelron]

At home, it was the tail end of the Holidays, and my friend was coming over, while I was waiting I caught something on the TV. My sister was watching the news, I asked her what was going on and she started to explain that a Plane had the hit the WTC, thats when Number two hit.
I remember saying, 'This can't be an accident to my sister then.' I know obvious at that point but I don't care.

When my friend came over he hadn't a clue what had happened, being on the bus while all this was happening. We sat there for a while watching Strange black blobs falling, not knowing then what they where, when I found out, I remember feeling a little sick.

[Col. Crackpot]

i know i posted already, but i just wanted to add something.....one thing will always haunt me. About 2 or 3 weeks before the attack my fiancee (then girlfriend) and I went to NYC with a friend visiting from Miami. the morning of the second day we took the subway into Brooklyn and walked over the bridge into manhattan. we took some great pictures of the skyline that i will cherish forever. anyway to my point. working in both the lobby and the observation deck on the 110th floor there were these girls....17 18 years old. I could tell by the accent and looks that they were recent immigrants from some southern African nation.They were taking your picture in the lobby and selling it on the 110th floor. Well the night after the attack i remembered them, and i thought to myself, they were on the 110th floor...they didn't have a chance. not only that, but they had just gotten here and were obviouly trying to get a start on a new life....what did they ever do to anybody....<sigh>....

[Larz]

When I walked into my first period world history class and the television was on...

[Slartibartfast]

I can't remember what I was doing... I think I woke up and my mother told me somebody had crashed into some towers in New York.

It was a few days after some big fire that destroyed several blocks and killed some hundred people or so around here somewhere, mostly people with illegal fireworks.

[Beowulf]

Driving my GF to breakfast at Krispy Kreme before school started. It didn't really sink in until after I got to school, and started watching TV in first period... (Yes, my teacher decided to cancel the lesson so that we could watch CNN...)

[irishmick79]

I was just getting done with class at the Tech school I go to, and had some time to kill before I had to begin my drive to work. I was sitting in the cafeteria, reading a book, when I noticed a big crowd gathering in the hallway. At first I thought that it was just a tour of some sort, but then I realized they were gathered around a television. Out of curiosity I walked over, and saw the first tower smoking. The second tower hadn't been hit yet. Right away, I just went numb. One look at the smoke pouring out of the building aptly demonstrated just how bad it was. The commentators were still confused as to whether it was a terrorist attack or not, and were leaning towards describing it as an attack, so I still didn't really have a good idea of what happened. All they were saying was that a airliner had crashed into the Trade Center.

I watched the coverage for a while, and as I was driving to work listened to the news radio describe the catastrophe. I didn't realize that the second tower had been hit, until I glanced at a TV monitor in the break room a short while after I arrived. Later in the day, I got a call from my mom, who was crying about it. We have several relatives who work in the city, and one of my aunts sister was working in the trade center. We didn't know anything about how they were doing for a while, and that was scary. Since my branch of the family lives out in Wisconsin, it took a while for news to finally get out to us. Eventually, we found out that our relative who had a meeting scheduled that morning in the Trade Center wasn't in New York at all because the meeting was cancelled, and we found out that the aunt's sister had survived. She had managed to get out, and walked seventeen miles home in her bare feet.

Another relative of mine was married to the police chief of one of the neighboring counties on Long Island. His unit was called in to the city, and they lost some men. I don't know how many, but they were saying that for three solid months they did nothing but go to funerals. I couldn't imagine having to go through that. Pretty much everybody in our new york branch of the family was freaked out for a while afterwards, and it was tough to watch them go through that.

For me, I guess the weight of the tragedy didn't really sink in until well after the events of September Eleventh. Months later, i saw this picture of a dust covered lady walking in New York, confused and scared, and on the verge of tears in a magazine afterwards. I don't know what it was about that picture that got to me, but for some reason I just sat down and started crying. I guess the enormity of so many people losing so much in their lives in such a short amount of time just overwhelmed me at that point.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I ask this because it was said by a few people I know that you'll always remember where you were when you first heard about the attacks.
Personally I was in my loungeroom eating breakfast, the event itself happening about 7 hours beforehand, I was eating my Pop-Tarts. I turned on the TV, saw what was ging on, I thought it must have been the tenth anniversary of the bombing or something. I saw the plane clip and the world hasn't been the same.

What about you?

I heard about it while driving on the freeway to school in the morning. Though I really didn't find out what was up until I had some free time and managed to look it up on one of the major news sites on the Internet. (And how many of you remember the servers of CNN, Fox, and the others turning into steaming piles of slag when people heard something was up?)

I also recall having a class to teach on that day. I went right ahead and taught my class up to the point where they announced that the classrooms would be closing early that day.

[Keevan_Colton]

That particular September the 11th I was at a party.

[NecronLord]

Going home from work, heard it on the car-radio.

Just like me. Later I followed everything on CNN.

Ditto, only replace car with Taxi.

[Darth Servo]

I was at work on my way to talk to my supervisor. A co-worker mentioned that a plane had crashed into the WTC. I thought it was a small private plane and then someone turned on one of the networks on the TVs in the conference room.

[Captain Cyran]

I was sitting down in Biology lab, the period was just about to end when they told us that a plane had struck the World Trade Towers. I'd thought they were just talking about some little biplane that had accidently struck it, no big deal. My next period was lunch, and they had a tv on...that's when I saw what had really happened.

[Dalton]

Buying breakfast in the school deli after an early class...as it was happening...

[aerius]

I came out of my morning class and wondered why everyone at school was so quiet and depressed. Found out shortly after that both towers had been hit by planes and that one of them had fallen already.

[Coyote]

I was doing temp work at my girlfriend's office in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Any time there's a terrorist attack, the radio quits playing music and have this 'beep-beep-beep' alert. We ignored it because it happens a lot . Then the announcer started talking and Sarit stopped and looked at the radio and me, and said, "some plane just hit the trade towers, in New York" I thought something like a small Cessna, with a pilot having a heart attack or something like that.

"No, two planes," she said, "flying into both towers, on purpose". Then the phone rang. Her friend, our roommate, Tamar, called to tell her what was going on on the TV at home. Then we learned about the Pentagon attack. A few minutes later she translated the radio announcement of the crash in Pennsylvania. Then, "The American air force is telling all the planes to land or be shot down. They say there are more planes." I was disoriented; it felt surreal.

We went home and watched Sky News. We saw the towers crumble and of course the phone starts ringing. I had just flown in to Israel a few days before; Sarit and I had vacationed in NYC the previous year. The news said they didn't know who did this but Sarit and I looked at each other and said, "Arabs, who else?". I wanted to go out and kill Arabs-- especially after seeing the Palestinian shits dancing in the streets.

I was on the phone to the Embassy to register where I could be contacted in case of a mobilization of the Reserves. Within hours, a small gazebo across from the Embassy was covered in flowers and flags and memorials, and everywhere you looked there were US and Israeli flags flown. People were wigged; New York is a popular spot for Israelis and it stands as an icon for America.

A few intense days there...

[haas mark]

Going into my first period orchestra class in high school.

[RedImperator]

I was in international relations when it actually happened, and between the end of that class and the beginning of the next (liberation theology) I heard people say something about a plane crash or a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I figured some idiot in a Cessna had run into them and didn't think very much about it. Apparently, nobody in liberation theology knew about it either, because while the second plane was hitting and the first tower was coming down, I was sitting in class alternating between staring out the window and doodling a little airplane crashing into the WTC and the top third of the tower breaking off. I also distinctly remeber thinking, "They'd never collapse from a plane crash. They're built like fortresses. Too bad. They're ugly as sin." I still have the doodle.

Later, after that class, I was roaming about the building waiting for Russian politics to start, and I noticed someone had taped a note to his door saying, "Class cancelled, pray for the victims and their families" (Catholic college, you know). At which point I had my first WTF moment, because I was still stuck on the cessna idea, and I thought, "How many people could have been killed by a Cessna?" Then I thought maybe there'd been a big plane crash, like TWA 800 or something. I still hadn't connected "An airliner hit the World Trade Center". At one point, I though there'd been a big plane crash and a small plane had hit the WTC and I thought, "Someone at air traffic control fucked up today". At that point, I walked past a classroom with a TV on.

My second WTF moment came when I saw both towers burning. I thought, "How the hell could one plane have hit both buildings?" Then CNN switched to footage of the south tower coming down and I noticed the "America at War" graphic and the "Terrorists hijack four airlines" text and my emotions just turned off. I walked to my girlfriend's dorm and asked her if she knew what was going on, and she explained that her next door neighbor had been the pilot of one of the planes. Then I called my family, explained I was all right, and turned on CNN in time to see Palestinians dancing in the streets, which got me to note, "Let's see how good you dance when the Marines come, you assholes."

[consequences]

My roommates woke me up about a minute berfore the towers started to come down, the first thing I did was to get all of my gear ready, then I called into my unit. If I'd known it would take them a year and a third to activate me, I probably would have let it affect me more at the time. As it was, I used my powers of black humor to keep from thinking about it to deeply.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Geez, everyone remember the disturbing displays of uber-patriotism that followed? Frankly, that scared me more than any terrorists could.

I totally agree.

I third that.

God, protecting the nation doesn't mean fascist displays of pomp and stupidity.

[Sektor31]

I go to a school 2 blocks smack next to the WTC. At 2nd period, the building shook. Thought it was an earthquake at first, but then we soon knew what happened.

Damn it was hell getting back home. Manhattan bridge, LIRR, meh.