# Anyone over 30 who can't remember where they were when they heard about 9/11? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 28, 2016, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921 "2016-05-28T20:45:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/61 "2016-06-01T03:28:33Z")
I’m missing this quote. What’s up? Somebody claiming a PhD from a degree mill? And now wants to be an expert in the bs field they got their degree mill in? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/62 "2016-06-01T04:04:25Z")
I was in college. My mom called and woke me up, told me to turn on the tv. Both towers had been hit. I said I bet it was Bin Laden. I was on campus later and the tvs in the common areas were all showing the towers falling, over and over again, like people wouldn’t believe it otherwise. Lots and lots of people just staring at it. I was kind of a spamforbrains later after the wars started. I just worked two jobs and minded my own business, paying off the college debt and not really wanting to follow it at all. I thought at the time the Iraq war was Vietnam II, and I just didn’t want to know the details. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/63 "2016-06-01T13:37:37Z")
That’s one memory I’ll never lose. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/64 "2016-06-01T13:39:10Z")
**spamforbrains** , were you either on a rural farm, or hiking in the wilderness, or in some secluded location? Because I’m having a hard time picturing how someone could go for two days without 9/11’s news reaching them. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/65 "2016-06-01T22:54:46Z")
I will say that I knew about it but did not watch any of the coverage. I heard it on Imus in the Morning on the way in to work and listened to coverage but never watched the TV. The first time I actually saw it was in a movie years later (The Barbarian Invasions) - a closeup of the plane at full speed into the second tower. It hit me really hard since it was my first time seeing it, and out of nowhere in this movie. I thought the Michael Moore decision to not show the attacks at the beginning of Fahrenheit 9/11 was brilliant – just the audio track. People watched it over and over again enough that just the audio was enough to conjure up the images. ---
**Author:** ![Lsura](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Lsura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lsura)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/66 "2016-06-02T01:13:25Z")
I’m 42: I was at the second day of an internal auditing seminar. I don’t remember the exact name of the one I was taking, though I know a boss and a coworker were in 2 of the others that were being held in the same place that day. I remember there were several people who lived in Manhattan taking the seminar and one military person taking the same seminar. Since the sessions were local to me, I drover over from home and was in the room a little earlier than those who just had to come down from their hotel rooms. One of the women who lived in Manhattan came downstairs and said that a plane had flown into the WTC. The instructor assumed it was an accident - and recounted the old story of a plane flying into the Empire State Building. The military guy left at some point around here. Then we heard about the second one, and at that point we all ended up sitting out in the hotel lobby watching the television for, well, the rest of the morning (until they said they were canceling the rest of the seminar). I was sitting next to my boss - she was worried about another of her employees who’d been on a plane to NY that morning for a work trip (and other employee was a bad flyer at the best of times). Eventually we all went home - and though traffic was really bad, I was lucky that I’d been at that seminar that day. Normally I’d have taken the train into downtown Atlanta, but IIRC, Atlanta shut down the MARTA trains pretty quickly. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/67 "2016-06-02T01:16:31Z")
> [@lorene](#): > > I lived right in the flight path of Logan airport at the time. It was weird to have no airplanes overhead for days. I don’t recall how many days it was, though. Yeah, I live just north of LAX. It was truly weird _not_ to hear any planes. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/68 "2016-06-02T01:19:22Z")
> [@Tzigone](#): > > Speaking of memorable events, while not exactly a single event, how many here are old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? How many were really scared v. didn’t think nuclear weapons would be launched? I wasn’t born yet, and I always hear about the fear of that time, but I’ve wondered how universal that fear was. And how it varied in different countries and so on. I was in fourth grade. I was so stressed thinking we were going to be incinerated any minute that I actually ran out of adrenaline … I think. I just was numb and wanted it to be over. I was **really** scared. Oh, I was in Los Angeles. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/69 "2016-06-02T01:34:18Z")
2 events I recall in the context you mention, 9-11 and (dating myself, though I was very young) the Challenger Space Shuttle blowing up. A 3rd comes to mind but not with the same intensity, the blackout that took out the NE US. But with that said I remember many many times of kindness extended to me, people taking me into their homes, paying for my meals, hotel stays paid, offering me the use of their cars, and many many more such acts of kindness ‘seared’ onto me, remembering clearly what I was doing as equal as to the shuttle explosion or 9-11. The good has far outweighed the bad and the faith in humanity has been restored. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/70 "2016-06-02T03:26:57Z")
I was in college at the time, and in the library studying in the quiet section, and then I went and called home, and it was my mother that told me what happened. I couldn’t get into the computer lab, since it was full, but when I got home, I turned on the TV. (The funny thing is early is in my first class, one of my classmates said to me that he heard something like, the U.N. building had been bombed, or something like that, and we both just shrugged it off as some stupid rumor.) ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/71 "2016-06-02T03:50:11Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > (dating myself, though I was very young) the Challenger Space Shuttle blowing up. “Dating yourself” because you remember the Challenger explosion? Really? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Azeotrope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/0ea827/32.png) [@Azeotrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Azeotrope)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/72 "2016-06-02T14:34:52Z")
40 here. I remember that whole day with almost perfect clarity, from the headlines in the newspaper to what I was wearing. I was on vacation that week, so I got up and was wondering what to do with myself when my mother called a little after 8 and asked if I was watching TV. I wasn’t. She said, “WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS CRUMBLING AROUND YOUR FEET AND YOU’RE NOT EVEN WATCHING?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?” I said, “…😕…😕…😕… huh?” because what the shit kind of question is that at 8 am on a Tuesday? “I SAID, WESTERN…” “I heard what you said, but what the hell do you mean?” “JUST GO TURN ON CNN!!! ::click::” I turned on the TV. The Weather Channel was talking about how all flights entering the US were being rerouted to Canada, which was odd. So I put on CNN and saw one tower and thought that something wasn’t right, and then a short time later the other tower collapsed as I just kind of stood there and stared at the TV with this expression: :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2016, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/73 "2016-06-03T04:31:31Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > I haven’t watched live TV since hmm, I was 12? Better alternatives were invented. I’ve never listened to the radio. I don’t read newspapers, who does? It was not all-consuming for many of us who prefer to live our actual real lives. If you are so disinclined to put your thumb on the pulse of the world, what are you doing tearing up these here interwebs? Surely there is a mountain somewhere without a budda gracing its peak… Also, you said, upthread, that 9/11 hasn’t affected you life in any way. Uhhh… wrong? 9/11 was the most significant event since the end of WWII, with perhaps the end of the Cold War giving it a run for its money. It’s changed the world. Everything is different. Some things, subtly, others, vastly. If you think it hasn’t affected your life, you aren’t paying attention. 3.8/10 ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2016, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/74 "2016-06-03T08:43:27Z")
While watching the towers fall, the worst thing for me - who had lived in NYC for 25 years - was wondering whether anyone I had known had been killed. It was several days before it was confirmed that two friends had worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, and were trapped on a top floor of Tower One. To this day, I’m haunted by the possibilities of exactly how they died. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2016, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/75 "2016-06-03T09:55:36Z")
Re: OP. I was at home with the babies - one of whom was almost 4, and the other was about 9 months. We watched news exclusively until The Boy finally asked “Mommy, are you going to cry, or can you cook supper tonight?” Wilmington Island, Georgia, September 13, 2011. Re: someone genuinely shocked by a major event, days later. One of my father’s Army buddies left Panama at the end of his enlistment, and went home to work for one of the Letter agencies. (His colloquial Spanish was very good, in part because the Canal Zone was the drug and prostitution capital of the world at the time!) Anyway, Uncle Slick was in the woods on his annual hunting vacation in late November of '63. By all accounts, he emerged from the Ozarks, found a hot cup of coffee and a newspaper at the nearest civilization, and immediately called his mother to assure her that he hadn’t ever been to Dallas. As for the Bay of Pigs, I wasn’t born yet. My father was on a landing craft a few miles from Havana at the time. The tension was horrible, as I understand. I’m 47 in a month. My “I remember where I was” moments to date are 9/11, the Challenger explosion (in my high school library, watching live,) and the American evacuation of Saigon (probably not watching live, given the technology of the day. But Walter Kronkite summed up the story as I fidgeted with the orange and green shag carpet and watched the helicopters struggle to leave the embassy. It was the first news story I remember.) ---
**Author:** ![Mince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@Mince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mince)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2016, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/76 "2016-06-06T02:47:48Z")
[QUOTE=kanicbird] (dating myself, though I was very young) the Challenger Space Shuttle blowing up. [/QUOTE] > [@panache45](#): > > “Dating yourself” because you remember the Challenger explosion? Really? :rolleyes: **kanicbird** should date other people. It’s more interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Mince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@Mince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mince)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2016, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921/77 "2016-06-06T02:52:01Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > How so? Never affected my life at all. Quotation by **spamforbrains** : > [@](#): > > …other than making me extremely reluctant to fly… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-over-30-who-cant-remember-where-they-were-when-they-heard-about-9-11/755921.md?page=3)