Where were you.......

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I was on my way home for a vacation to see my family. I was in Denver Colorado when I woke up in the motel and turned on the TV… the first tower had been hit already… soon the second was… then reports the pentagon was on fire (my recolection of events might be off the timeline, just trusting my memory here). I remember the reporter… I believe briant gumble talking about the events when on the “live screen” they were playing in the corner you could see the tower crumbling down. I was freaking out and such and he just kept talking obviously unaware to what what happening live on the station he was broadcasting from. It must have been 30 seconds later when he said somthting about the tower falling in disbelief. By that time I was on the phone to my girlfriend waking her up.

shortly after I was on the highway on my way out of Denver when my girlfriend called me on my cell phone… while we were talking she got quiet and said very calmly, “Oh my god, the second tower is falling.” We were both in shock.

the horrors cant even be fathomed… how horrible can it be that the best option is to jump to your death? What kind of hell decision is that!!! The documentery the other night… the firefighters in the lobby of the first building kept hearing crashes… you could here it over the TV… it sounded like a car crash. The firefighters would just look at each other wide eyed knowing that that sound was a body hitting the ground. …and it happened over and over…

And the war torn countries that have experienced this for decades say… SEE… this is what we live with day after day. Now because the “Great Country” experiences a token of that pain people take notice.

I can understand that thinking…
…its just all so sad…

62

I was home (IE: my dorm room here in Seoul).

It was evening, I don’t recall the time (probably 7ish or 8ish)… I was lying on my bed, doing the final proofreading on the book Tommy Two-Ties and I wrote (an idioms dictionary for Korean students of English, as some of you may know). The TV was on; some sitcom if I recall correctly…

I was working my way through the Gs, I think…

Suddenly the TV flashed one of the “special report” messages, and I looked up because the dialogue from the TV show had been interrupted. They cut to a picture of the first tower in flames.

“Huh!” I thought, “What a bizarre accident!”

I went back to proofreading, while keeping an eye on the TV… the more they showed of the damage, and the more they showed the re-play of the plane hitting, the weirder it seemed to me! I remember being amazed that they would let planes fly low enough in NYC to hit a building (dumb, in retrospect!), and I also remember wondering how the hell they’d repair the damage, and wondering how many people had been killed…

A few mins. later, the commentator (I’m pretty sure it was Bryant Gumbel) said something about another plane approaching the WTC… I seem to recall that he said something about it maybe being a rescue plane? Not sure…

Anyways, the second plane hit.

It took me a minute or so to process that! But I gradually realized that it was NOT an accident!

At that point, the phone rang. It was TTT; he was also proofreading, and wanted to discuss something about a definition… I cut him off, and said, “Dude! Do you have the TV on?” He said, “No… why?” I said, “Turn it on!” A few seconds later, I heard, “HOLY F****** S***!!!” (yes, exactly the same as the headline on The Onion a week or so later!)… we both hung up, so we could watch the TV…

A while later, they went to a split-screen with the WTC on one side, and the Pentagon on the other…

The phone rang again: it was Astrogirl, she wanted to talk about something (and was as yet unaware that anything was happening)… All I could say was, “Honey, they’re attacking my country right now… can we talk later?” She must have heard something in my voice, because she just said, “OK… I love you!” and hung up.

Then the news about the crash in PA…

It was a long night… I think I drank myself to sleep at about 2AM, our time… when I was pretty sure that it was over (for the moment, that is!).

Christ, I’ll NEVER forget that night…

63

I was shuffling around the house getting ready for school and had the TV going like I do every morning. I happened to look over at the screen just as the news station’s camera was being fixated on the towers. The anchor mentioned something about an explosion in one of the towers and I noticed some smoke coming out of the windows. A terrorist attack had not even occured to me at that point. I stared at the set for a minute or two before I saw the second plane come into view. Reality began to sink in as I saw the jetliner tear into the second tower in a big fiery mess. My heart just sank. :frowning:

I was kind of numb as I drove to school that morning. We watched the rest of the saga unfold on CNN during class. The Pentagon, the other hijacked plane, rumours of more attacks and hijackings. The school officials turned off all the TVs later that day because they were too “distracting.” Bastards. And my folks wonder why I graduated early…

All in all, Sept. 11 was one of the saddest days in my life. I often wonder if it is the “Pearl Harbor” of my generation. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this beast. It truly is a cold sad world we live in.

64

I was talking to a couple of people online, when someone (a New Yorker, I presume) told us that a plane had crashed into the WTC. Everyone pretty much assumed it was an accident, while I was stuck on the idea of terrorism… but I was pretty much ignored, since I always seem to assume the worst. Besides that, though, no info was available, so I started up a thread on the Dope asking if anyone had information. I thought it was bad, but I had no idea what was in store.

About 1-2 minutes later, the second plane hit.

I spent the rest of the night constantly refreshing the thread, and chatting in IRC and MSN, but I can’t remember much from those conversations - everything was so unreal. There was a lot of ‘Oh my God’s’, and ‘What the fuck’s?’, and the occasional ‘this isn’t happening’… other than that, I can’t really remember, and I don’t really want to think about it.

As cazzle said, it wasn’t only the Americans who were hit by this… at the time, we had so little idea of what was going on. I’ll never forgot that feeling of utter helplessness when I heard that the Pentagon had been hit - they got the goddamn Pentagon, you know? That feeling where you were sure that nothing was safe. I think, for that night, we all felt that - no matter the location.

65

I was sitting right here at my workstation. My co-worker told me that a plane had flown into the WT center. I thought is was a joke.

66

I had a call right as I got out of the shower, from someone who told me “Jesus Fuck - a missle or a plane hit the WTC. It’s on fire, and the news is going crazy.” I went downstairs, not in a real rush, thinking of the time back in history when the bomber hit the Empire State building. I was watching on TV, the first tower burn, when I saw from the rear of the second tower the explosion from the second plane hitting. The person on the news said “What was that? What just happened?”

Then I had a very strange feeling, like I was in shock. “No way did I see what I just saw”, I thought. I thought they had somehow re-run the initial impact, but…both towers were burning, that can’t be right. Then they showed the replay again and again, and I realized.

I stayed frozen in front of the TV for about 2 hours, watching everything. I called Fierra, and was called by a couple of people. Then I called into work and said “I ain’t fucking coming in.”, and spent the rest of the day online and watching the news.

67

When I was a child, my father told me that he could remember precisely where he was and what he was doing when he heard the news that John F Kennedy had been assassinated. I’ve heard that story so many times that my friends and I joke that we will always remember what our parents were doing when they heard the news. Bear in mind that we live on the opposite side of the world (Western Australia)… our parents had no emotional connection to the actual event of the assassination, but it was of such a magnitude that it remains forever in the memory of their generation and even in the reminiscence passed down to the children of that generation.

A few years ago, I figured that the death of Princess Diana would be the equivalent date for my generation. I thought it was a Event of such enormity that the memory of it which would remain with us forever: we would always remember where we were when we heard, what we were doing. Perhaps, even our unborn children would someday know what their parents were doing on that particular day in 1997. But like my parents and the death of JFK, we had no immediate connection, no real interest in the actual event; rather, we were simply taken by its magnitude.

But I was wrong… and September 11 2001 is the date we will remember forever. I know no-one who was directly affected by the tragedies of that day, nor do any of my friends, but again the sheer enormity of the event has ensured its immortality.

So where was I? A rather prosaic weeknight: working on my computer sometime after 9pm. It was rather warm outside. My brother rushed in and told me to turn my TV on. I did; I saw a replay of the first plane hitting. I left the television and returned to my work. I glanced over my shoulder a short while later and saw the second place hit. I still remember the panicked voice of the American commentator.

I rang my close friends on their mobile phones and sent text messages to the phones of the people I thought might be already be in bed. My dad got out of bed and spent the rest of the night watching television with my brother and me. Next day at university I had three hours of lectures from 9am. My Taxation Law lecturer cancelled class after 10 minutes. He’d taught in the United States before and was noticeably distraught. In the refectory, TVs were set up and we ate and watched in silence.

So, despite the distance between and event and me, I’ll never forget. And my children too will know what I was doing that otherwise ordinary night in Perth.

68

I was on the toilet. :rolleyes:

At work. I walked back across the hall to my office, and my boss says, “A plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

Like everyone else, I thought it was some terrible accident. Like everyone else, we turned on the TV and saw the second plane hit.

Unlike everyone else, we are military. I work at West Point, NY, home of the U.S. Military Academy.

We are a very large, militarily significant target on the bank of the Hudson River. We are only 50 miles north of New York City. And all the planes traveled either directly over us or near us to their targets.

It was very scary here. Security went through the roof. With NY and the Pentagon being hit, we thought we were next.

A lot of the civilians went home early because they were scared sitting in the big gray buildings.

My wife was in hysterics.

Not fun, in all.

69

I guess I am a little surprised by the impact our friends in other countries felt. They can recount the events with detail, and really express their feelings well.

I know I need to talk about it, because so much has been said about the towers, but the pain that some people were thrust into has made me dizzy.

I already told about where I was, but I also remember vividly the first time I saw videos of the jumpers and the sick feeling I got from it.

When I watched “9-11”, the sound of the jumpers landing became the third thing I was haunted by.

70

No real story for me; just at work when I heard the news.

I can also still remember where I was when the Challenger exploded.

And JFK was shot.

And Martin Luther King.

And the Rapid City Flood.

And Princess Di died.

But I also remember where I was when we first landed on the moon.

And when I first discovered the joy of reading.

And when my first grandchild was born.
And so on and so on…
I am not going through life wearing rose-colored glasses, and I am certainly not even trying to reduce the mourning of those who were personally affected. I mourn the death of all those innocents also, and have done what I could to assist with the recovery. And I am in full agreement with what we are trying to do in Afghanistan.

But I will not let the terrorists control my life, which is what they want. As has been said, no one can make you angry unless you let them. OK, so I’m angry. So be it. But part of the healing process is the realization that there still are beautiful things in the world. And I refuse to let those jerks take that away from me.

makes unbelievably obscene gesture in Bin-Laden’s direction

71

I, being a 16 year old (17 now) geek making the most of his last week of summer vacation, was staying up until 8 in the morning, then sleeping till 7PM. My mother was visiting friends in Boston, and had called me the previous night telling me that she was going to try to get an early morning flight back, instead of the next day flight she had originally planned.

I remember hanging out on Internet Relay Chat (EFNet IRC Network, if anyone cares). Suddenly, people started yelling “A PLANE JUST FLEW INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER.” Initially, I figured “Eh. Bummer. Wayward sightseer. Maybe it’ll be on the news.” When people started yelling about a second plane hitting, I went to CNN.com and managed to hit it RIGHT before it went down. I saw a picture of one of the towers burning and thought, “Wow, CNN must have gotten hacked.” I figured that not everyone could be wrong, so I brought the TV down from the second floor of my house and hooked it up. I turned it on to see a FOX anchorman saying “This can’t be an accident” and replaying footage of the second plane crash. All the IRC channels I was in were full of people screaming, wondering what was going on.

When the news broke that some of the planes were from Boston, I became seriously worried that my mom had been on one. I called her BF, informed him of the attack, and we began calling the people she was staying with in Boston. Thankfully, she was fine. She had just walked into Logan airport immediately after the attacks, when the call to evacuate came. Overall, I was lucky. Friends of mine knew people that were killed, but no one I knew died on 9/11. To top it all off, my 13 year old dog was hit and killed by a car on 9/14. School started on 9/17.

72

This is what I posted on Tuesday in my LiveJournal.

Six months ago, my alarm clock woke me up on time. I was beat. I’d started a new internship at Student Legal Services the day before, and I still had lots of nervous jitters to work out about doing real legal work for the first time. But, I had a full day of school ahead of me, so I dragged myself out of bed, showered, and dressed for the day. Normally, before I left, I would leave the TV on some reruns of old sitcoms or something similarly easy to swallow before I have to do any actual thinking.

This morning, just as I was preparing to leave, I switched to NBC for some reason. The screen was covered with “Breaking News” and “Live” banners. And there was a building on fire.

A plane, they said, had just hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Something was wrong, they said. An air traffic control problem? they wondered. And as they were speculating about that, another plane, looking very large, flew in from the right side of the screen. But it never passed to the left.

I grabbed the little LCD TV I’d bought back when I was working and had money, got some fresh batteries from the fridge, and drove to school as fast as I could; staying and watching the news for so long meant I had to rush to make it on time. I flipped on the TV in the last minute I had before class started. They weren’t thinking about air traffic control problems any more.

Somehow we sat through a class on museum and art law. That day we talked about copyrights. While New York burned, we talked about infringement. Class broke a few minutes early, and most people rushed to the law school forum, where a TV had been wheeled out. There was no antenna, so the picture and sound were terrible, but hundreds of students were riveted. I put my little TV on the table in the Commons and watched and listened while I read for Race and Racism. People in the halls were saying that one of the buildings had collapsed, but I didn’t believe it; most of us didn’t. It was too much. I mean, they were among the tallest buildings in the world. Nothing that big just falls down. Right?

I went to Race and Racism, and then to Commercial Law. No one could concentrate in either class, not even our professors, so they let us go early.

We had planned to hold the first meeting of the Second Amendment Student Association at lunchtime. Free pizza, free Coke, please come. There were hundreds of students at the school, but almost no one came. They stayed close to that static-stained image of Manhattan hidden under smoke. We gave away most of the pizza to people walking by in the halls.

One last class, Gaming and Racing Law, at 3:30. Again, no one could concentrate. We all went home early.

There was nothing on TV but news, which was exactly what I was looking for. I went into the #straightdope IRC channel, which was packed that night with about 50 people, and we all watched together. Finally, I was at rest and among friends, able to spare time for myself for the first time that day. We all hurt, and we all cried, and we all stayed up late because you can’t sleep when things seem so unreal.

That’s about it. I was just a pedestrian on September 11th, a passer-by. No one I knew died that day. All I have is the perspective of an outsider. And really, I’m glad of it, because that was more than enough. The pain I felt that day wasn’t connected to anyone specific, but it was plenty real enough. And today I’m keeping it, in memory of those who also woke up on time, who went to work even though they were tired, but never came home.

73

Well, I was on holiday in Greece with my mates.

I had actually gone back to the apartment on my own because I had sunstroke.

I was woke up when they all came back and one of them said “the world has changed while you’ve been asleep”.

He then told me how a plane had crashed into the WTC and that it had been demolished. (early news as ever being unreliable).

We then all went down to the bar, where SKY news was on (the UK satellite (spelling?)news channel) and we got to watch not an accident, but a genuine terrorist attack. I don’t thinkI could ever be as relaxed again.

74

I was at work. I had spent the first hour or so in a part of the building where you can’t hear the radio. When I came out into the main area, one of my coworkers told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Like most people, I first assumed that it was an accident. I said something like “What? How can you not see two of the tallest buildings in the world sitting right in front of you?” As I was standing there, word came over the radio that another plane had hit the other tower. That’s when I began to suspect that it might be terrorism. After all, what were the odds of two planes hitting the World Trade Center within the same hour? Then all Hell broke lose. Suddenly, the radio was full of reports of things being blown up or burning. The Executive Building was on fire. A car bomb had exploded in front of the State Department. Another plane had hit the Pentagon. I was scared out of my wits, as were most of my coworkers. I was praying to God to make the attacks stop. Fortunately, the reports about the State Department and Executive Building turned out to be false. Unfortunately, the rest didn’t. Work stopped as we all listened to the radio and gathered around a little LCD TV that one guy had with him. When the towers fell, we were all totally stunned. It was the worst day I’ve ever had.

BTW, I also remember when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. I was in grade school. The whole class was watching the launch on TV. We had watched a few before, so I knew what a shuttle launch was supposed to look like. At first, everything went OK. Suddenly, there was a flash and the shuttle disappeared into a cloud of vapor. The rocket boosters exited the cloud, but the shuttle didn’t. The room was totally silent. Slowly, it dawned on me that the shuttle had exploded, and the astronauts were dead. The thing I remember most about the Challenger accident is those rocket boosters, careening away into the sky.

75

I was on the New Jersey Parkway on my way to work, and I had just paid the toll at exit 98. I had the news station on the radio, which is pretty unusual, since I usually listen to CDs in the morning.

I heard the reports right after the first plane hit, and no one was sure yet what kind of plane it was. The witness they were interviewing on the radio said she thought it was a small commuter plane.

I walked into my office a few minutes later, [I work at a newspaper], and people had already heard about it of course, and we were still unsure how big a plane it was. We were joking about it like some drunk pilot forgot how to fly a commuter plane or something. Then, a few minutes later, the second one hit, and all of a sudden, it just wasn’t funny anymore, not that it was really all that funny in the first place. I have never heard the office so quiet.

76

I was teaching 2nd period English, and my students came in telling me that they’d heard a plane had hit the towers. I was thinking, you know, a LITTLE plane. A terrible thing, maybe the building evacuated, perhaps up to a dozen people killed.

Of course, we don’t normally have a TV feed in the building, so we’re pretty much incommunicado. I figured I’d check cnn.com during my next break.

A little later, kids were saying that the tower had fallen down. But high school students tend to exaggerate, and to overestimate, so I didn’t believe them. “No,” I said, “The towers would be damaged, but they wouldn’t fall down. Don’t worry, we’ll see if we can get some real news about this soon.”

Then the principal finally hooked us up with a feed to ABC, and I turned it on and we watched the replay of the first tower’s collapse. I was stunned, and so were my students. Some of them were crying. Others were laughing, because they couldn’t understand yet that this was different than a movie. “Show it again,” one of them called.

‘It’s going to be so strange,’ I was thinking as I watched the smoke clear a little bit, ‘getting used to just that single tower standing there.’ I was still thinking it when it suddenly gave. How could something that huge and strong suddenly just collapse?

We watched TV all the rest of the day as we tried to understand what was happening.

77

I was sound asleep. The phone rang, and a very dear friend didn’t even wait for me to finish mumbling “Hello?” before she said “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.”

I woke up instantly, and after she repeated what she’d said, I told her I had to go and get some emails out. I knew so many people who worked in and near those buildings.

Phone calls were impossible, but email worked… slowly. More than nine impossibly long hours later, the last friend checked in. Everyone I knew who worked there was late for work that morning, or in a meeting in elsewhere.

For days, the local newspapers ran lists of local residents who were missing. For weeks, a few cars sat abandoned in train station parking lots, collecting leaves and dust. And when I went into NYC to volunteer, people actually looked me in the eye and greeted me with a smile. Hello, you’re another human being, and we’re both alive today.

78

I’m in Oz too, but on the ‘night’ of the attacks (our time) I had fallen asleep in front of the telly. At around 11 pm, I awoke briefly to see the news bulletin, but in my semi-sonambulistic state I ‘figured’ that I must have been dreaming. I went back to sleep secure in the knowledge that I’d just had a nightmare, but re-awoke at about 2.00 am to find the same pictures on the screen. THEN I knew I wasn’t dreaming!

I stayed stuck to the telly all night, and when the kids roused in the morning, I allowed them to witness the tragedy as well. In fact, I was so overwhelmed by the events that I forgot to send them off to school (much to their delight!!)

It was only in the hours and days that followed that the full implications of the events hit them AND me. Somehow, seeing it on a television transmission makes it LESS real. I think my subconscious still wanted to pop it into the dream basket!!

79

Quite a few people have said that. I don’t wish to be a post-facto smartass, but IIRC, when the first tower went down, I expected the second one to go. It just seemed inevitable; if one could collapse, how could the other be invincible?

80

When the first plane actually hit, I was on my way to work in Valley Forge, PA. At the moment I parked my car, Howard Stern announced that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center and that it was NOT a joke. I got into work, earphone still in place, Howard Stern still on. I sat down at my computer and immediately visited cnn.com. There was a preliminary story on the front page about the incident - only a paragraph or two. I listened to Howard for the rest of his show. He was on until noon. He is never on the air past 11 am. Did a fantastic job of covering the news, I must say.

Anyway, after I arrived into work and found the first headline on cnn.com, the rest of the day is a blur. I was fucking pissed.