We all know where we were on September 11th. But do you have any real memories of September 10th?
My main memory is getting a huge thunderstorm in the late afternoon, and later watching TV and looking out the window, seeing the bright red sunset with the black storm clouds over it and thinking “That looks like a huge fire.”
Oh, about the same as February 9th, 1996 or say, June 17th, 1989. In other words, nothing. My memory just don’t operate that way. I tend to remember only dates that are personally significant to me in some way. (if somebody else here had their wedding on February 9th, 1996, then they are going to remember it much better than I do)
Some friends of my roommate came over for dinner, the night before they were due to fly back to Japan, which is where they were from. Needless to say, it took them the better part of a week to get home.
Other than that, I think it was a fairly ordinary day.
I worked a normal day and then went home and watched “Saving Private Ryan” on dvd. Wish I’d known that I’d get more than my fair share of watching war over the next several years.
I was preparing to go to MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) for a kid about to join the Marines. I was doing his paperwork and other stuff. He ended up enlisting on September 12th.
I don’t think I could answer the OP, but here’s my next best thing:
I vividly remember September 12, 2001. My appendix almost killed me. It still makes me go :eek:
All morning, I thought that this feeling in my gut was indigestion from all the stress going on, so at lunchtime I left work and went to the local Albertson’s grocery store to pick up an antacid. I was staring at the bottles on the shelf, sensing the discomfort in my gut getting bigger and bigger, and I kept saying to myself, over and over, “none of these will work.” I’ve had very few thoughts that resonated so true at the time as this one - “none of these will work.”
I turned and said to my wife (who came with me, having worked in the same building and doing a fair amount of stressing of her own) that it’s probably no big deal, and I know we’re not terribly familiar with the local neighborhood, but could she please drive me to the hospital right now?
She was awesome, btw. I think my emergency gave her something to think about instead of the attacks. I believe she broke the sound barrier driving down State Street, cool as a cucumber, daring the police to pull her over.
Oh, and that’s the fastest I’ve ever been through an emergency room. From walking in the front door, to getting smeared with brown goop in the OR and anesthetized, it was less than an hour. Though the part where the nurse stabs me in the belly with his finger felt like it went on for days. (For the record, why yes, it does hurt when you do that.) Someone asked me to count backwards from ten, and I said I wanted to name the days of the week starting from Sunday, but I don’t remember getting to Tuesday.
I regained conciousness while the orderlies were wheeling me from the operating room into the recovery room. It was a guy and a girl, debating the finer points of short men dating tall women, and I felt compelled to tell them about this 6’2" woman I dated in college.
Later, still groggy from the painkillers, I flashed my whole family while trying to show them the bandages.
But September 10? I was probably stressing over my Mario Brothers score, or something equally mundane.
I actually remember the day fairly well. I remember being tired because I’d been drinking beer and watching football all day on Sunday. That Monday, I went to work at the standardized testing center I worked at and we didn’t have any real work to do that day. I needed the money so I stayed at work and pretended to study my materials. I was also happy that the weather had cooled down a bit.
It was Monday, I was at work. So normal go-to-work-come-home stuff. We actually got the logs printed through Wednesday that day, which was a good thing, because the next day we got jack shit done.
It was a normal school day. I was lecturing on, IIRC, John Calvin.
All humans have a system in their brains that regulate memory. Flashbuld memory is when you have a significant stimulas that allows you to remember every last detail of a specific time and place associated with the stimulas. Some of us remember when Kennedy was shot - where we were, what we had on, wh was standing around us ad infinitum.
For this Century, the stimulas can be September 11, 2001, the day the World Trade Centers Collapsed from a terrorist attack using passenger jets. Most people in the USA who saw it on TV or heard it on the Radio can remember where they were, what they were wearing, who was arounds etc…etc…
On September 10, 2001 I’ve not got a clue. I was in Phoenix, AZ I know that much.
For more on Flashbulb Memory and how it works see here .
It’s kinda cool.
Same here. It was Monday, and I was at work on September 11th and have no memory of coming back from illness or vacation or anything like that, so I’m betting I was at work.
I remember watching the Monday Night Football game on 9/10/01. Denver was playing; Ed McCaffrey hurt is leg pretty badly, ending his season. Don’t recall who the opponent was, or who won the game. (I have not looked it up to see if my memory is in some way faulty here.)
Other than that, it was an unremarkable day about which I remember little specific.
That’s what I remember! Because Mr. Rilch and Friend insisted I come downstairs to see the replay, and hang with them until it was determined how badly McAfree (I think that’s his name) was hurt, and one or the other of them said,
“That’s probably the most gruesome thing we’ll see on TV all year.”
I remember that morning very well, because it was the day the results of the Bar exam were released. I logged on to the Web site, all nervous and jittery, and fell apart when I saw that I’d failed by only a few points. 
The rest of the day is a blur.
I slept late the next morning because I was so depressed. Only when my dad called from work and told me about the WTC attacks did I turn on the TV and see what was going on. I suddenly felt incredibly selfish for worrying about something as trivial as a test score.
I don’t remember much specifically, but I remember what I was doing, because it’s morbidly ironic… I was flying from New York back to the bay area.
I was in New York that whole weekend playing in the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour.
(There was also a pro tour stop in London the weekend of the subway attacks…)
i had a really bad day at work. on the way home, i’m thinking i need to get a new job.
got home and that tax thing of pres. bush was there. now i’ve got 300 dollars to go job shopping.
go into work a bit early to deposit check at credit union. got upstairs to my desk and a coworker asked me if i know what was going on in nyc. turn on the radio to hear gma go to the reporter at the towers.
sent the 300 to the red cross that night via amazon. one click and zip, there it goes.
finally left that job sept. 2005.
I was at Whitney Portal (the campground/trailhead for Mt. Whitney), spending the day at 8,000 feet to get acclimated for the hike up to the summit. We hit the trail at 4:30AM on the 11th. We didn’t hear anything about the attacks until when we were heading down to Lone Pine to get a shower.
I went out into the front yard to pull a weed and I saw the kid next door kneeling on her porch steps with her forehead against the porch itself. I thought that was very odd and wondered if she was being punished for something.
I don’t remember it at all specifically. I know that it was my one week anniversary of my first good shot at quitting smoking, which, of course, went by the wayside the next day.