Do you remember where and what your were doing the morning of 9/11?

[spunkfunker]

I was in my junior year of college, but I had to take a lighter class load because I had federal jury duty from July until December of 01'. I was also getting my ass kicked by ragweed really bad that year, so I had taken a lot of allergy medication the night before. Since I didn't have any Tue/Thur classes that semester I stayed up late and was going to just sleep in. I was awaken by my mom calling to tell me what was going on, since she knew I wasn't going to be up that early. She worked at Verizon and they were told they had to stay at their offices until further notice. I was out of it and just said"What?" and then "Oh OK that sucks" and turned back over thinking it sounded like terrorism again, and what is the world trade center? I was then woken up again by my best friend when his mom called to wake him up and let him know what was going on. He was working third shift at Target at the time and had just come home and crashed. We both went into the living room about 1-2PM and just watched television like zombies until about 5 or 6 pm when I said I had to get out of the house and away from the TV.

I had planned on going out and buying Jay-z's Blueprint album and the Glitter Soundtrack if they were any good. However the mall, and the music shops were all closed by then. So we went to Burger King got food and went over to my mothers house and watched TV all evening. Ironically, I had said to myself that there surely wouldn't be any courts open tomorrow! However I was wrong and wouldn't you know that my name was on the list for the next day. Suffice it to say that I didn't sleep well that night, but I was downtown at the courthouse at 9 AM the next morning. I looked and felt like crap, but I sat there for the next few days and did my civic duty since I got put on a case.

 

[peeonme]

I was at work listening to Imus in the morning and he said that plane had just hit one of the towers of the world trade center.

 

[Rickrock]

I was at work in downtown Cleveland on the 32nd floor. Someone said that a plane hit the World Trade Center building. Then they said that the second building was hit. I thought how long have those buildings been there and were never hit? How could they get hit now? I thought it was an accident. When they said the Pentagon was hit then I knew it was terrorists. Then they said that a plane was headed for Cleveland and we all had to evacuate downtown. That was the one that turned around and later crashed in Pennsylvania. I had taken the train to work and had parked my car at the suburban station. Then they said that the trains had stopped because the downtown station was underneath the Terminal Tower Building. We weren't allowed to use the elevators to leave work and had to walk down 32 floors. My knees and legs were like jelly by the time I got downstairs and I had to concentrate to keep my legs stiff to hold me up. Downtown was deserted. My boss said she would drive the people from our department to their outlying train stations to get their cars. Sometime during that time I heard that some panicked parents had pulled up to schools and left their car doors open to run into their children's school to take their children home.

 

[Rickrock]

^ Rereading my post I should have said my legs were like jello (wobbley) instead of like jelly.

 

[ShadowCat]

I was 13 and in 8th grade. The thing of it is I honestly do not care about 9/11 I guess I feel disconnected from it because I am not from there, I am not saying that it wasn't awful what happened it truly was, I am just saying that personally I dont dwell on it I stopped listening to all the broadcasts like 3 days after it happened. Yesterday I didn't even have the tv on and listened to cds all day so I didn't have to hear about it, I even went so far as to block every post on my facebook feed.

 

[72-Jay]

I was getting ready for work/eating breakfast, then my father came in & said there's been a big terrorist attack in New York (he'd been listening to radio). I went over & turned on the TV (something I'd normally never do.) just to see what was going on

At work there was a radio/small black & white TV unit, that'd been sitting around unused for who knows how long. I pulled that off the shelf & plugged it in. It pretty much ran all day that day, and then same for the following days as well.

 

[justaguy]

Here in New Zealand it happened in the middle of the night. When I woke up in the morning I turned on the radio, a station that often jokes around etc. When I heard them saying that the twin towers had been hit by planes and had come down, I just thought it was one of their practical jokes. I was thinking that it wasn't a good joke because it was too far fetched. After 10 minutes or so I started getting a bit concerned and I turned on the TV. It was surreal.

 

[EJMichaels]

I was watching the morning news before going to work and saw it in real time. I called my boss to tell him I'd be working from home that day, and he said something about it not affecting us, being in New York. I told him they hit DC too, where we were. I remember the images on the news, and exactly where I was standing, but little else about the rest of that day after the phone call. One of our trial patients was visiting the Pentagon that day, but was late because he stopped for coffee and missed being part of the destruction. One of our NYC patients called to ask if it was okay to delay his appointment because the hospital was overrun with WTC injuries and couldn't take him.

Unrelated, I remember watching the Space Shuttle Challenger explode.

 

[rareboy]

In the office and on the phone getting organized to fly down to New York that afternoon to see a couple of shows with friends. It was our vacation for the autumn.

I remember the first news report about a plane hitting the tower and thinking it was a small plane, commented that nothing like that would be fucking up our holiday.

And then I heard that the second plane hit and then the one at the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania and knew that our whole world as we knew it up to that morning had ended.

I wept for days. As I noted in the CE&P thread, one of our friends who had just started a job in the towers was having breakfast at Windows on the World that morning with their team.

 

[belamyi]

Jaca. In the military. We (ok, I think 'I') had opened the office again at 15:30 after lunchtime, and there came my sub-lieutenant with the crashing news.

 

[medic1]

I was lying on my sofa watching tack on the tv when my soulmate called me at home and said get your telly on there has been a murderous attack in America.

I spent the rest of the day getting my emotions pulled pillar to post, but even then i realised that the world had changed.

 

[PrinceCory]

I had driven to work that morning as usual. When I got into the office, my boss asked if I knew about the plane hitting the WTC. I don't know why it wasn't on the car radio yet. I always listen to the radio rather than music CD's while driving. Maybe it was just early enough that the networks hadn't figured out what was going on. I remember standing in the office and watching the second tower getting struck by the plane. Then a directive came down for high up in corporate to fuel up every car, truck, and service vehicle we had. Employees were even allowed to leave and fuel up their personal vehicles so that they would be able to get to work for the next several days. They expected a fuel shortage if we went to war.

 

[belamyi]

(...) Employees were even allowed to leave and fuel up their personal vehicles so that they would be able to get to work for the next several days. They expected a fuel shortage if we went to war.

... Kansas..?

While Spaniards were jokingly teasing us, poor military conscripts, with the idea of being sent to war...

 

[Latimer]

Surfing at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz. Didn't hear about the attacks until maybe 9:30 AM PDT or later. Didn't see any footage until I stopped in a downtown sports bar around noon.

 

[SpaceBear]

I was 6 years old and it was my first year at the elementary school. We discovered it while watching tv after class. It was everywhere. I remember that it fascinated me and probably was the reason why I began to like disaster movies when I was a child. Even if we knew that it was a very awfull thing, we did not get it completely with our childish mind. With my brother and my friends we drew some drawings about the towers during the next months. Now that I think about it, these drawings were pretty awfull too, as we made fun with horrible details like people falling and screaming, people in fire, etc. It is only when I got older, like 11 years old, that I started to realize how shocking September 11th was, how many people died and the fate of the heroic firefighters who went there.

 

[Cormac135]

Playing Crash Bandicoot.