“How long before chunks of the buildings appear on eBay?”
Not long at all 
.
When I saw the first tower crumble while standing on the street on my way to my office, I thought “ok, I have to figure out the best way to tell my boss that I think I’m too upset to stay at work.” For some reason, I pictured the office going about general business, and me having to really work up a case for why this was upsetting.
Needless to say, everyone was as stunned and horrified as I was, we couldn’t go home because all transportation stopped, and we immediately started working to accomodate displaced persons who also couldn’t get home in our school buildings for the night. In hindsight, that was much better than going home, because at least I was doing something and not glued to the TV having a panic attack.
Also, whenever the news said “the President is doing so and so,” I pictured President Clinton, not for any political reason, just because I’m so used to him being the president. When the first pictures of President Bush came on, my very first thought was “but where the heck is President Clinton?”
I thought: My parents are going to visit my neice next month, going to fly back from Philly to LAX. Someone would kill them and it’s everyone’s grandma and baby sister going away to college and father who made a sweet business deal…I just kept personalizing it, filling thoses planes with every friend and faily member who ever got on a coast-to-coast flight.
But I was standing on the Renal floor with meds in my hand and I had to actively not think about it.
I thought of Superman, too. Where is he when you need him? Related to this - I thought of the massive destruction depicted in comic books, like when some super powered goon from outer space levels buildings with his powers and the artist (Jack Kirby comes to mind) will draw terrified Citizens running down the street, with closeups of same in the foreground…also, immediately thought, there goes the semi-legal curbside parking at the airport from now on…finally, I called my husband at work and told him maybe he should come home. (He thanked me for my concern but said terrorists would hardly bother to attack his workplace when they could just go after the nuclear plant a few miles away and so kill off more of the population.)
As soon as I found out the airlines I thought
“poor American Airlines can’t catch a break”
While it was happening, I turned on the TV in the classroom I was teaching in. I mentioned to the students that I was 37 years old and this was the most significant event to take place in my lifetime.
Later that day I had these thoughts:
When I was 5 and 1/2 years old we landed men on the moon and brought them home safely. When my son was 5 and 1/2 years old the worst act of terrorism in history occurs on our own soil.
Fifty years from now some producer will want to make a movie to tell the story of September 11, 2001. It will be a love story.
I didn’t hear about the attack. My son called from college and was really upset and told me to turn on the tv, and then he started telling me that we’d been attacked. I didn’t believe him. The station that came on was ABC and I saw the first building start coming down, and my brain just froze! I kept waiting for it to go back up, like one those implosions that I’ve watched on TLC. It was the oddest sensation.
It was the hardest thing to get that someone could deliberately aim a jet WITH THEM ON IT at a building, knowing that they would die in the process. It just didn’t want to compute. It’s still difficult… and thinking on those Americans KNOWING they were going to die, taking more people with them haunts me terribly.
Realizing that I had devoted a significant portion of my mental resources to contemplating various aspects of the affair, it occurred to me that I was “in a New York State of mind” (Billy Joel).
“Oh, christ, another stupid WTC bombing thing” (all right, I’m very ashamed of this. It was what I thought when I heard about a first “explosion” and no plane had been mentioned)
“Somebody ought to go arrest Tom Clancy”
“I sure am glad Cranky Jr is too little for me to have to explain this”
“I shoulda done the windows on the world tourist thing when I had a chance”
“It is poetic justice that my sister’s dumbass ex-husband chose to get remarried this day. Hell of an anniversary date to remember”
“Maybe my dissertation advisor is out of town and is now trapped somewhere far away” (this with fingers crossed)
“Hey, maybe she was in the WTC” (I am ashamed of this thought. Maybe if you’re a long-suffering doctoral student, you’d understand)
When I heard that the 4th plane was supposedly headed to Camp David, I thought, “How stupid, it’s in the Catoctin Mountains and no one will see it.” Then when I heard that the White House was targeted, I thought that the Capitol would have been a better choice because the White House is surrounded by enough land to keep other buildings from being affected. The Capitol is surrounded by residential areas, so the terrorists could both destroy an important American symbol and kill a lot of Americans.
It’s just a bad habit to think of much more efficient ways to accomplish tasks.
I know this is bad, but it is an odd thought I had, actually sometime after Tuesday.
Back in the 70’s when I was in college, a popular poster looked like the inside of a room looking out a window, the window filled most of the area of the poster, just outside the window was the nose of an approaching passenger airliner.
It used to be funny.
I remember that poster.
I wondered why the pentagon doesn’t have surface to air missiles aound it. Haven’t they read Tom Clancy? (actually I still wonder this).
I remembered when me and my friends used to like flight simulators and one of the things we did for a challenge was to fly between the towers. Also to fly under the various bridges. Both are possible, at least in a smaller plane.
Also kind of black humor, but honest to God my first thought when I finally figured out what was going on* was
“Well, at least Tech Stocks will stop going down for a little while.”
*I do not turn on the TV or the radio when I first get up in the morning, and I only have a CD player (no radio) in my car. It took a while for me to figure out what was happening, and I didn’t see any pictures until very late on Tuesday.
I wa stragely affected by that too. Also, that same camera when the first building came down, the guy saying “Holy Fucking Jesus”. It struck me as oddly funny because the guy had a British accent. I have always thought the British seemed so stoic and reserved, it was odd to hear that accent freaking out.
Then, when Rather comes in and says “We apologize for the language”, I thought “You know, I’ll bet some dipshit is going to complain about the language”
As if that was the most offensive thing about that video :rolleyes:
I learned of the events online (here at the SDMB actually) and so I saw text and still pictues before moving ones. The thing that went through my mind was, 'Fuck! It looks just like that movie where the meteors hit New York. Those special effects guys really do know what they’re doing!"
One of my coworkers stuck his head in my office door and told me and my roommate “you want to see something horrible? come here.” He had a video feed from abcnews.com on his PC, and they were saying that a plane (they thought a small one at the time) had hit the WTC.
My first thoughts? Almost simultaneously, “This is a movie, right? This isn’t real.” and, “What a horrible accident.” Then we watched as the second plane hit, and we knew it wasn’t an accident.
My first words, though, were, “Bets on any work getting done today?”. I didn’t get much work done that day. I didn’t think anyone would (and I don’t think anyone did).
I’m still too numb to feel it yet. I’ve watched both hits and the towers fall over and over again, and it isn’t getting any more real. I’m a little worried about what will happen when the numb wears off.
“Dude, the plane…HIT…the fucking BUILDING. That does NOT happen.”
That’s all I’ve been able to say about the whole thing all week. That’s all I can think. I went to bed tuesday night thinking that over and over and over. I can’t wrap my mind around it. When my grandkids ask me about it some day, I think that’s all I’ll be able to say. I’m still really too stunned to get my mind around the human element.
My mother-in-law called my wife to tell her someone had hit the WTC. Thinking it was another crackpot like that idiot that got hung up on the Statue of Liberty with a parachute, I thought nothing of it. Finally my curiosity got the better of me, and I turned the TV on. Saw the smoke for a few minutes, then saw another plane. I had just enough time to think “What kind of jackass would fly THAT close to a burning building?”. One second later my question was answered.
Chris W
I started watching during the lunch hour when the reporters were already going on about bin Laden and the possibility of a military reaction by the U.S. government. The silly thing that popped into my head was an image of me working in a factory for the war-effort, like our grandmothers did. Lol. And I was kinda afraid to leave the house, even though I live in a small city in Canada.
I had just turned on the TV and the Today was starting. They showed a picture of the building on fire and said that a plane had hit it. I think they were discussing how it could have happened by accident. I was looking at the footage and it was bright daylight with not a cloud in the sky and I thought,
"How could that have been an accident?
And… I work for a mutual fund company in Denver which had offices in the WTC #2. (all of our employees are Ok) We have TVs which show the DOW/NASDAQ, and they often scroll announcements over the TVs.
When I got to work, the TVs were scrolling… “We have had a national disaster. Expect overtime.”
Kinda makes you mist over, don’t it?
daere