In college. Sleeping in because my first class wasn’t until 11:30. My mom called to let me know what had happened, and that she and my dad were OK (both had been scheduled to fly that day). My roommate woke me up to take her call. I got off the phone and told him to turn on the T.V. By that point one tower was already down. As we watched the second one fall, he (the American son of Pakistani immigrants), said “God, I hope it wasn’t Muslims who did this.”
Classes were soon canceled, but we hadn’t gotten the word yet, so a bunch of us still attended. It was that or keep watching the horror on T.V. The professor, a stoic German mathematician, proceeded with his lecture as planned. But that hour and fifteen minutes of abstract algebra never felt more surreal.
Going to work. I was getting on my bike when my mom told me that two planes flew into the WTC. I thought “Wow, that seems too huge to be a coincidence.”, but didn’t think much of it after that.
I then rode to my first day on the job being a cook at KFC. I didn’t hear much about anything else for most of the day, not even about the buildings collapsing, the Pentagon being hit or the plane crash in PA.
I got off work at about 6pm and biked back to my moms. They were watching the news. It was only then, for the first time, that I realized how bad it was. I saw, first-hand, for the first time that day, how bad the devastation was and how high the death count must have been.
I watched the news for the next two days.
Singing in the choir at school. The phone rang in the middle of our practice, and our director didn’t come back for a long time. When we saw him come out of his office, we instantly quieted down, without even having to be told. We knew something bad had happened.
Right after he announced it, we turned on the TV, and, like in every other classroom, it never went off that day.
I was the cook, I worked in the back and didn’t ever come into contact with customers. And if anyone on the later shift came on (I remember seeing just one guy), they didn’t say anything to me, probably because I was the new guy. Same with calls. If so, I wasn’t aware.
I was at home, sick. I was sitting with my head over a bowl with one idle eye on the TV when the news broke into whatever crap I was watching. That was just after the first plane hit, so I saw everything else live as they broadcast. I remained glued to the TV for the rest of the day, by myself, unable to do anything apart from sit there feeling like shit and crying. My partner had just started a new job a few days before and didn’t feel confident to stand up and relay the info to the rest of the new office, so although I was texting and called a couple of times we couldn’t even really have a conversation about it. And being a work day, everyone else I knew was at work. It was surreal and horrible.
A few days later we were at some kind of event in Hyde Park (I can’t remember what) and at the end they played the Star Spangled Banner. All these thousands of Brits suddenly knew all the words and were crying and singing along. That was weird.
Channel surfing. It was 6 pm. Thought I had seen a bad movie and moved on. Came back two minutes later and called my mother when I realized what had happened.
I was about half a mile from the newspaper listening to NPR on the car radio. They had been talking about the first tower, and then the second tower just as I turned the corner. I pulled into the parking deck and rushed to my desk and got onto the internet. About two minutes later my phone rang and it was my husband. He said “Dear?” I said “Yes.” He said “Holy shit.” I said “Yes.”
I was working nights, and so I was asleep. My mother-in-law in Mexico called and woke me up, and was talking about some “torres gemelas.” Not having a clue, I passed the phone to my wife, and after a couple of minutes she told me to turn on the television. The second plane had already struck by that time.
I was driving to work and heard a very sketchy radio report about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, with no further details given. Some idiot in a Cessna, I figured. I got to work, and people were talking about two planes hitting the towers, and of course that was the moment of sick realization that this was a deliberate act.
I worked in a small office (<10 people), and not much work got done. We had a radio on in the offica and a TV in the lunchroom to follow the events. I remember one manager from a different location calling me multiple times with work-related issues, insisting that we had to “stay focused on the business.” I thought he was a douche then, but I later figured his chosen reaction was just not to deal with it.
Meanwhile, my parents, who had retired and moved out of state less than a year earlier, had flown in for a visit the previous day. We kept our plans to go out to dinner that evening, and dined in an eerily empty and quiet restaurant. A week later, they ended up having to rent a car and drive home instead of flying.
Like others, I thought it must have been a small plane when I first heard the news. Then it occurred to me that it might not have been a navigational accident. The word that came to me was “sabotage.” “Act of terrorism” didn’t seem to be in my vocabulary at the moment."
I was working second shift and had that was the first of three days off after working a long string of days. My wife’s a teacher and had been at work for awhile. I had just gotten up and was eating a bowl of cereal (Lucky Charms, how dignified) while watching Sportscenter. Wife calls during her conference period and asks if I have heard anything about a plane hitting WTC. I thought she was asking a historical question and mentioned something about a plane hitting the Empire State Building.
Then I realized she was talking about that morning and I changed the channel. Just in time to see the second plane hit. Pretty soon that was all that was on any channel. Returning to work on Friday was unreal, they still had tv’s out so everybody could follow the news and had only come off of lockdown that day.
I was one of the last people in America to find out about it. I was doing an acting internship at the VA and I had worked all weekend, so that was my day off. I had “slept in” until 7AM (I was getting up more like 4:30 at the time), dicked around on the internet, and then set a bunch of music up to download over my dialup connection.
I went back to bed and slept until late morning, then got up and cleaned my apartment. I read and worked on some other stuff without ever getting back to the computer. Finally about 4PM I came here to the SDMB, where there were a lot of odd threads asking NYC Dopers to check in.
When I finally disconnected the computer and checked my voice mail several people had called to tell me to turn on the TV.
What’s weird is that I can recall very few days before or since when I was so completely cut off from the world and the media.
Working, painting a set when I was first told about the first plane. Everyone went into the shop and we all stood around listening to the radio. Thank you, Bob Edwards for staying on later that day, you provided a bit of calmness. Did that for about an hour, then said “Fuck it, I’m going across the street to the bar. They’ve got a TV.”
It was during my week off before starting a new job out of state and I was at the Dr. office in the waiting room watching the first reports…thought it was a small private plane and thought “now what the heck…why can’t people just not do stupid stuff?” When I went into the exam room, I mentioned to the staff something was going on in NYC, had my exam and went home. Don’t know how the rest of the day went at the Dr.'s but I was glued to the TV all day and most of the next when I otherwise would have been packing for my move. I had recently bought my new Panasonic hi-contrast TV and was really admiring the picture…gosh, I’ve had it nearly 10 years now. Started the new job the next week amidst lots of flags and patriotic emails going around.
At work, sorting out some bills to be paid by which account they had to be paid out of. Phone rang, it’s a friend asking me about a TV show about Broadway shows that was on last night. As I was talking with him, John came in. When the phone range, John answered. I hung up just in time to hear him say “Turn on the TV. A plane fell into the World Trade Center.”
Of course, the TV had been knocked out. We spent the rest of the day with the radio and Internet on in the office.
I was driving to class. I had just pulled onto campus and decided to turn on the radio instead of listening to the CD player.
I heard Howard Stern talking about the attack and thought it was a sick joke of his. I turned it off, but then turned it right back on. His coverage was disjointed at best and very confusing.
I pulled into the parking deck, parked my truck, and ran to class. It was a CS class, so I had a computer. The first thing I did was go to CNN’s site to start reading. This was an 8 or 9 a.m. class, so the second tower hadn’t been hit yet. The class was only an hour, and I had a gap after it and before the next one. I went back out to my truck after class and tried to leave campus. Apparently, there had been an order to evacuate, as everyone else was leaving, too.
For some reason, my bike was in the bed of my truck. Rather than wait for traffic to move, I parked the truck in a staff lot, grabbed my bike, and pedaled the three miles back to my apartment.
I was driving into work listening to sports-talk radio host Tony Bruno who was just giving Michael Jordan hell for wanting to come back to play ball for the Wizards. He was working with Andrew Siciliano and I remember hearing Tony say “CNN is breaking from their wall-to-wall Michael Jordan coverage to bring us pictures of a building on fire.”
I was at They Might Be Giants’ Mink Car CD release party at the Bowery Ballroom the night before…just barely made the 1:30am Metro North train back to CT, otherwise I’d probably still be in NYC when 9/11 went down…
By the time I woke up (safe in my home in CT) the towers were already down. It sounded like one big joke at first, until my mom got home from her preschool class, most who had parents who worked in NYC…4 of which didn’t come home…