Where were you at 9/11/01?

[DigitalAngel126]

I said it once, I'll say it again...

Originally posted by DigitalAngel126
"Even from nightmares, a dream is born."

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We will never forget...

[Imthachamp]

i was asleep. it was like 5am in cali.

[moe.ron]

I was at work. I always have my office TV on BBC. Looked up and thought it was a new stupid movie they're making. Then realized it was real. Shocked. Called my sister who worked across the street from WTC. Couldn't get a hold of her. So I called another friend in NYC, but couldn't get a hold of him. Nothing more I can do seeing that I'm in AFrica, I continued working. Pretty much everybody kept on working in this part of the world. Just a brief shock.

[mmcat]

i was grading papers at school with the radio on and cnn on a tv above my head. i remember the radio saying a plane had hit the trade center. my first thought was, ok a small plane. then i turned my head to the tv...
a few minutes later i walked over to get my attendance and another fellow came in and said a second plane had hit.
we just watched the tv and shook our heads.
normal schooling was out of the question that day.
my parents were scheduled to fly to boston that day. they called me at 11, saying they had turned around.
interestingly enough, southwest grounded eight planes in el paso. the plane refugees had food vouchers for the cattle baron, a cushy steak place close to the airport where i sometimes go for a drink on my way home. they had stories to tell.

[swissmiss04]

I was on my way to school and had plans to meet my roomie @ Starbucks before our classes. I flicked on the radio in my car and the DJ was apologizing for making fun of "a situation" that he thought was a hoax. I was like, WTF?? So I kept listening and when I heard a tower had been hit I nearly pulled off the road and threw up. I just kept going until I got to campus and parked and went into the union building. I looked all over for her but couldn't find her, probably 'cause I was far more distracted by the TVs in the lounge. Eventually I got coffee and trekked to class. Campus was so empty. The 2 classes I did go to that day weren't even functional. We just talked for like 10 minutes then left. My mother was in a panic, though honestly I was more worried for her and my family (they live in the #5 spot in line for a terrorist attack, so I was freaked out). I was really in shock for the next few weeks. Such a crazy time.

[bafromkc]

I have a clock radio that wakes me up in the morning. I heard someing about a plane crashing when I hit snooze. When I finally woke up, I heard more about it and then rushed to the tv.

I'm watching Fox News right now and they are showing footage from 9/11/01. The tribute they showed this morning at Ground Zero was stirring.

[White_Chocolate]

i was having an extremely bad day
my body is really sensitive to the world around me
i couldn't shake this extreme anger feeling that i had

then, i got to work
and everyone is on the phone and upset
and i'm like, 'what's up?'
they told me
and i just sat in my chair like i had known all along

it freaked me out

I was walking to class, a broadcast journalism class by all means. When I got to class, we didn't know what happened until our professor came in and told us.

[krazy]

I was working a new job, and di not have class that morning. We had the radio on and heard the news. We had a TV and asked to turn it on, but my "boss" said it wasn't a big deal, and wanted us to keep working. After the second plane hit, I walked out th door and went next door to see the news. Everyone in the office followed. My "boss" later apologized to us all. I am watching the coverage on FOX news, and they just had the most heart wrenching collage of news clips on TV. It is important to see those, b/c we need to remember what happened to our loved ones on that day. Too many liberal comedians act like we are involved in this war b/c Bush is an a**hole. That is not the case, we are reacting to the horrible day of 9-11-01. Keep the US in your prayers.

[MSKKG]

I was exercising at Curves when someone came in and told us what had happened. One of the ladies is a flight attendant, and she does a lot of international trips--she was off work for a while since there were no flights. It was so weird not to hear planes flying overhead. I remember watching the coverage with horror and disbelief, sorrow and anger.

My anniversary is on the 10th (we celebrated our 20th yesterday) and a friend's b'day is on the 11th. My friend said she is changing her b'day. I remember how eerie it was that Mr. MSKKG and I had just celebrated our anniversary the day before with happiness, and the next day all that sadness engulfed our country.

[ilovemyglo]

I was staying with my boyfriend the night before and his roommate came in around 10 and said "Get up classes are cancelled and we are going to war". My boyfriend grabbed his gun and we went into the living room and saw what had happened to the towers, and then we saw them collapse. The replays over and over and people jumping out- I was bawling like a baby and my boyfriend was so unsympathetic. I got in my car to go to the sorority house to go to class and I was so shaken I couldn't see. I remember looking in the cars around me, everyone was totally in shock and disbelief. No one smiled. I remember I was at a light and my cell phone rang. It was my dad and all he said "I have been calling you all morning... when something like this happens I want to hear my family's voice" and I lost it. I just bawled. The sorority house was like a block away and I turned in and parked and went inside. Everyone was sitting on the couch watching. I remember one of the girls sister is in school at the fashion design school near the WTC and she hadn't heard from her and she was totally a mess. We all held her and took care of her. Her sister finally called ona friends cell and told her she was okay but she was evacuating and to pray, just everyone pray.
I had a class in the Garrett Ballroom and I got there, it is a journalism class. One of the girls was just freaking and crying... her roommates father was on one of the planes, and he had left a message on their machine...
That was bad. She didn't want to be alone so she had come to class. We just sat there hugging. I was so out of it, tears kept coming down my face and I didn't even feel them.
Our professor came in and said he wasn't keeping us for class. This was our generations' JFK- we would remember this day for the rest of our lives and tell our grandchildren about it, so leave, go watch, and pray.
So then I walk out and there is a big screen tv int he ballroom seating area. There were about 40 students sitting around watching it. No one knew each other, but everyone suddenly starting holding each other's hands. I didn't know any of these people but there we all sat. I finally got up and stumbled back to the house in a daze. My friend is the in Marine Reserves and he called me and we went to get some lunch and come back and watch more CNN. We sat there and I kept hugging him cause I knew he would get activated and he was so afraid about what and where he was going to.
I don't remember anything except watching tv for the next few days. Some guys had asked my sisters if I was okay cause they had seen me going to class that day and saw how shaken I was. We went to church that night I remember that.
And the girl in my class who's roommate lost her dad didn't come back for another week. When she did she couldn't talk about it.

I will never ever forget 9/11 and why we are fighting the terrorists. And I pray for them and will tell my children and grandchildren about that day when they arrive here.

[Cloud9]

I was in Manhattan. I lived on 14th St. and 3rd ave. I woke up to my suitemate running into the room saying, "Yo, the twin towers exploded." I said, "haha, that's very funny," and she said, "I'm serious, come look." My roomate and I first turned on the tv and sure enough, it was true. Then the report that a plane hit the Pentagon came in, and we started freaking out and crying. I basically thought we were screwed, that there were 100 planes flying over the country looking for targets. Then I remembered a news story I had seen a week before about a terrorist leader and started shouting, "I know who did this! It's that guy, something laden, bin laden, it's him I know it!"

We then ran downstairs, went outside and saw the towers burning. The streets were filled with people walking uptown in a steady stream, or standing in the streets staring at the towers. It was so much more horrible to actually see it happening in real life than on the tv, larger than life disaster before your eyes on a sunny day. All I could do was stare, and then I started worrying about my friends. Many of them lived in a dorm on Waterstreet, a few blocks away from the towers. My boyfriend worked downtown on campus. My friend's father worked in the WTC. My family on Long Island must have been freaking out. I ran back to try and contact people, but I couldn't get through to anyone, and all cell phones were useless. My roomate and I decided to stay where we were rather than migrate with the throngs below into brooklyn until we knew more about what was happening.

Then on the tv I saw the first tower falling. roomie and I ran to a neighbor's room below us that had a balcony and looked at the huge clouds of dark smoke and debris rising from the collapse. A little while later I saw the second tower fall. There are no words. It just didn't seem real, it was like all those action movies that I always scoffed at as being "so unrealistic." Two of my guy friends showed up. They were also numb.

We went back to the room. It was weird, even after all that, no one showed any emotion. I guess it was shock. We joked about it being the apocalypse, talked about classes...and then one of my friends excused himself and threw up in the bathroom.


Much of the rest of the morning is a blur. Once things died down a bit I went downtown to find my boyfriend. He worked at the NYU student gym. I entered, and saw that it had become a refuge for the students that were evacuated from the Wall Street area. The entire gym, courts, exercise rooms, etc., was filled with mats and makeshift bedding. And students. Some dirty, some bleeding, and all of them traumatized. Many of them had a close-up view of the towers. Most had a clear view of people jumping from their dorm window. I heard one girl screaming and sobbing that as she fled from ground zero, body parts had fallen on her. I found my boyfriend, who had been drafted into helping with the chaos and would be there until evening. We left and walked through Washington Square Park, where I had always been able to see the towers peeking over the arch. Then through Astor Place, silent and dusty. You could smell the smoke very strongly even there, and the air was dense and dirty.

As evening came we walked around outside again. Union square was turned into a huge chapel, candles everywhere. It was covered in candles. From a block away it was like the park was glittering. Candles and people. Lots of people, crying, staring, embracing. But as I walked, a new fear struck me. I worried about the backlash of angry people eager for a scapegoat. Looking for anyone to take out their pain on. I knew they would find it in Arabs, in muslims, even in Indians, anyone who was brown or wore a turban. I worried about one of my sisters, who is Indian. I later heard that she had been harrassed, and people had thrown vegetables at her. I overheard a friend saying that he wanted to go to the local gas station with a bat and beat up the muslims who ran it(I quickly slapped him and told him he was an idiot).

I went to bed and felt...I don't know what. Cold, sad, empty. The clouds of smoke were still there the next day, and the next. And then it was as it the towers had never existed, and everything and about them and that day was just a fantasy I had made up.

I've heard that everyone who was in NYC that day suffers from Post Traumatic Disorder, and I think it's true, even two years later people just don't really talk about it. I never thought about it, only the issues that surrounded and had emerged out of the event. This year somehow I was drawn to open those memories again, to affirm that it really did happen. Maybe because now the fiery political speeches are past, the tourists gaping at the hole and buying souviners at ground zero are gone, the endless media frenzy has died down, the ornate ceremonies are over, and now we can really just quietly reflect on what happened. I dunno. Anyways, that was my experience.

[greeklawgirl]

We were in bed when the alarm went off so I could get ready for work. Howard Stern came on and they were talking about the WTC and the time it was bombed in 1993. Then they started talking about a plane hitting the tower and I said to my husband, "Wait a minute, I think they're talking about something that just happened."

We turned on the television just in time to see the second plane hit the south tower. I ran to the phone to immediately call my mother and see what was going on and if our relatives were OK. We were glued to the television set. A little while later, we watched the towers fall down. I'm ashamed to admit that I had a panic attack when the second tower fell. Thank God that I didn't know at the time that my first cousin was in the second tower attending a Port Authority meeting; I probably would have suffered a nervous breakdown.

The rest of the day was spent crying, calling my parents, and attempting to reach my family in New York. No one could get through--all the lines were busy. GC was down, and no one knew why. I emailed back and forth with OTW, LeslieAGD and KillarneyRose whenever anyone had an update about relatives in the area. I still have the emails. We didn't find out until late that night that my cousin and his wife were safe and in a makeshift bunker with Mayor Guiliani.

Another friend of the family was not so lucky. He was in the North Tower above the crash line--never had a chance to get out. He left his wife and two sons behind.

I will never, ever, forget the horror of that day.

[shadokat]

I was at work with a photographer taking photos for a brochure I was working on. Some guy comes up to me and says, "a plane hit the Pentagon!". I'm like, get the hell out of here...that's a low building! He says, "it did, and 2 hit the WTC!". I'm like, "shut the hell up, that's not even funny!". So he made me walk into his office and look at cnn.com, and there it was. I was disgusted and scared. Here I was, in between these 2 cities under attack...we were just worried it was us that was next! We left work at 11 am, and apparently so did everyone else, b/c the streets were just clogged with people and lines formed at the pay phones. Cell didn't work. I went home with a friend of mine, as she didn't want me at my house alone. When I finally got home at 4 pm, I had more than a few frantic phone calls.

The thought of that day still makes me feel physically ill. The courage of all of those people is what makes me know that if we made it through that, we'll be ok.

God Bless America.

[AlphaGamDiva]

thinking about this day still makes me ill......

i was as usual running late for class......i was living in the sorority house at the time, and came downstairs. one of my lils came into the kitchen and told me to go watch tv....i told her several times how late i was running, and she was like, "GO WATCH THE TV NOW"....so i went into the living room. all i saw on the tv was all this black smoke and the words "the pentagon" on the bottom of the screen. i was terrified. how could something happen to the pentagon. i sat there for a moment, found out about one of the towers, and then went on the class in a daze. when i got to class, my prof had the tv on and we watched the second tower fall. never in my life have i felt so ill.

then she turned it off and said we were going to proceed with class. i left.

this was right after air force boy had gotten to AIT, too, so i called his mother and we tried to figure out how to get a hold of him. she called me later that night saying she had talked to him and that he wasn't worried at all......couldn't understand it for the life of me.

that night i went to the top of the hill with some friends, and we just talked about the whole thing......the rumors we had heard, how many ppl we thought were gone.....and we cried. nervous about how safe we had always thought we were...............

doesn't seem like 2 years ago..........