Where were you on September 11, 2001...

[lizz]

I called in sick to work that day with bronchitis and was in an urgent care center in the waiting room. All the doctors and nurses were crowding into the waiting room to watch the TV and see what had happened.

 

[njc]

DH and I had just started our senior year at Virginia Tech. He was enjoying the easy life of late classes and I was interning with the publications department. Our editor always listened to the radio and when they reported about the first flight crashing into the WTC he casually said it loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. No one thought much about it... just thought it was strange. Then he told us there was a second flight. We all went down to the directors office and watched everything unfold on the TV in his office. No one talked. I was supposed to have class at 11, but instead walked to DHs apartment. On the way I passed the local Red Cross where they were turning people away who were trying to donate blood. For the rest of the day we bounced from one friends apartment to another checking on everyones family and just stairing at the TV.

 

[Chas!]

I was working in the early morning shift at UPS at the time. 4-8:30am and I landscaped then after till 4PM. I was listening to 1010wins (a radio station for fast news in NY) and I thought I was listening to another station because they seemed pretty quiet and calm. When I realized that it was the right station, I was trying to determine what they were talking about. By the time I got home, my workers were at my house talking about it and we sat in my house for hours watching TV.


My brother in laws brother died (he was a fireman) His brothers were actually looking for him for a few days after. At the time I cut my sisters lawn and in the back yard on her deck was her brother in laws fireman boots (all dirty and broken). It freeked me out. Gave me complete chills just seeing them sitting there.

One of my friends brother actually worked in the twin towers and was on his way to work that morning when he spilled coffee on himself in the car and turned around to go home to change. His co-workers all died.

Another friend is an arcitect that works in the city and always was in and out one of the towers for business but happened to not be there at that time but was expected to that afternoon.

I was able to see the smoke from Long Island (where I live) but never did see ground zero until this summer breifly passing by in a car.

 

[IrishAngel7982]

I was a sophomore in college. I had an 8am class (central time), and was waiting for my 9:30 class to start when my friend rushed in and told me that two planes crashed into the Twin Towers. I heard what she said but I couldn''t process it...I kept asking ''What?'' Just then, my prof came in and said something along the lines of ''We all know what''s going on, but we need to go about our day.'' Needless to say we weren''t dismissed, and I for one got absolutely nothing out of class that day. I was freaking out the whole time and when class was over, my dorm never seemed so far away on my tiny campus.

I ran home and called my mom at work...her school was on lock-down. She said no one had heard from my cousins in the military yet (one of whom was of very high rank at the time). My RA heard me crying and came to tell me that everyone was on-call, if I needed anything to let her know, and to inform my roommate when she came home. I sat there glued to the tv trying to take in what had actually happened. In the meantime my roommate came home and watched with me...we got an very welcome email and a message from our RA that classes for the rest of the day were canceled. I was dreading having to work through my 4 hour Organic chem lab. Around noon we had an impromptu mass in one of the chapels...everyone was scared, crying, worried, numb, you name it. We found out a few days later that all of my cousins were escorted to safety, for which we are eternally grateful.

My life has never been the same. I was very lucky to have not lost any family or friends on that day, but I still cry thinking about it and each year it''s still difficult. I went to New York and Ground Zero for the first time this spring when my FF moved to New Jersey. It was overwhelming. All I can do is remember those who lost their lives in each of the buildings and on the airplanes, and be especially grateful for the heroes who ran in when everyone else ran out.

God bless.

 

[phoenixgirl]

I was doing my student teaching in high school English. During our free period, another teacher ran into the English office crying and told us what happened. It's all such a blur, but I believe both planes had hit at this point since we weren't free until about 9:30. We watched the towers fall in the library. No students were allowed in there, and teachers weren't supposed to put on the television, but some did anyway. Then they mistakenly reported that congress had been hit, and my sister-in-law works for a senator, so I was worried about her. I went outside to try to call my brother on my cell phone, and some security guard at school thought I was student and said something like, "Must be nice to get to make phone calls at school." He must not have heard yet. I didn't even bother to explain to him who I was or what I was doing; I just ignored him.

My husband was finally finishing up college a couple of years late and was studying abroad in Paris. I know the experience of being out of the country at that time was difficult but also inspiring because, unlike now, the French had a lot of sympathy for us.

Another teacher's father was in the towers, and I remember feeling helpless. I didn't know what to say. My cooperating teacher did a good job of distracting her at lunch, but I just sat there thinking, "How can she stand to be here right now?" Then, to everyone's relief, her cell phone rang, and it was her dad.

This is a sidenote, but that's when I learned how grownups can behave like teenagers too. There was this teacher whom nobody seemed to like, and she ran into the office asking what was happening. Everybody ignored her, so I told her. I remember because she grabbed my hands as it sunk in. I just don't get it. There are people I don't like, but I wouldn't not tell them about a national crisis.

 

[Paul-Antwerp]

I was in Salzburg, Austria, just returning to the hotel after a jewellery-show, when I received a text message talking about planes hitting WTC and the Pentagon. We spent the rest of the day glued at the tv-set.

During that show, I had decided that the European market was not that interesting to work on, and that I was going to propose a project to my boss, based upon super-ideal cuts for the American market.

A few weeks later, my boss torpedoed my project, because he did not believe in the strength of the U.S.-market after 9/11. I then hesitated for about a day, quit my job, and decided to try and set up the Infinity-project on my own.

 

[MelissaSue]

I was in college junior year, living in the dorms. It was a tuesday.. and I had a 9:30 am class. Never turned the TV on before class. I think I had a roommate and she slept longer than I did.. But that day my class was cancelled for some reason. I walked to class, found out it was canceled and walked back.. So it must have been about 9:45 by the time I got back to my dorm.. maybe a little earlier. I was always early for class..
The way our dorm was, if you came up the central stairs you came up into a hallway and then shortly after the stair well it turned and there was another hallway that lead to the hallway I lived in. Well I remember coming up the stairs and coming to where the hallway turned, and there were two guys that lived in the room in the corner, so you walked toward their doorway when going to that curve.. well I came up the stairs and they had the TV on in thier room and they said to me.. even though I never ever talked to these particular guys "A plane just hit the world trade center".. I stood there and watched their TV for a few seconds.. I''m pretty sure they still thought it was an accident then.. And then.. I think I went back to my room and took a nap! Only to wake up later to the news that it was actually a terrorist attack and the towers had fallen.. and it was all just insane.. It was so hard to believe that we were so close to it (we were in western NY..maybe a 6 hour drive from NYC) and life was still sort of NORMAL.. but nothing was normal in NYC..

 

[ladykemma]

I was living in london england (hubby doing something for the oil bidness) housewife at home. i was hand sewing an elizabethan payre of bodies (corset) with linen and waxed linen thread.

the tv was on - 3 in the afternoon when the bbc channels started broadcasting the first plane hit. i thought "man, that pilot needs to learn to fly....."

then the second plane hit. at that point i knew it was on purpose. i called the hubby at his office, no answer - to tell him to find a tv or listen to the radio. no answer. no answer. no answer.

i didn''t know he had gone into downtown london from leatherhead for a meeting. when he got home, almost midnight, he said the busses, tube, trains, the entire city had shut down. he was stranded. phone lines were full so he couldn''t call me.

 

[justjulia]

I was at home, watching the morning news, and saw the second plane...

 

[Cehrabehra]

I had a baby just about 5 weeks old and had gotten up to pump milk and I turned on the TV to pass some time and be entertained... it was 5 or 6am. The first channel showed something I wasn't interested in so I turned the channel - it was the same thing. I focused and was like oh, the building is on fire, hope they can control that. Then I saw an explosion in the other building and went okay now that's too coincidental... they must be bombs... then I was scared... then I started seeing the footage of airplanes hitting and I was like WHAT?? then the lady was like a chunk has fallen from the building and it was a few minutes before we realized the building was *gone* and I turned the TV off... I couldn't watch any more. My milk would not let down and it didn't for a long time. I heard a bit later the other one fell. I had a playdate with some girlfriends... we all decided to still get together but the mood was eerie to say the least. It was like being in a fog or a dream, feeling like life would never be safe and secure again. I thought 50 thousand people had died... when I'd been at the towers years earlier they told me 25 thousand people worked in each building and I just thought the worst, that they were all dead. I felt sick and crushed and remember the skies being so silent... and when the planes started again I remember being afraid. Every time I saw an outline of a plane I felt panic. It has subsided now... life has mostly gone back to normal... but knowing that anything could happen at any time and have it be REAL has changed forever. I always knew it could happen but it hadn't. Now it has. And it could again. And yet I refuse to profile or live in fear of a race or religion.

 

[galeteia]

I was in Montreal, watching the news early in the morning because I woke up uncharacteristically early. I was watching the news when the second plane hit.

Shortly after the second one they were already speculating who did it, and I got a call from my Morrocan boyfriend who was hysterical because 'they [were] blaming muslims' and he and his family were barricading themselves in their house. Later that day I took the metro downtown, and there were no middle eastern people anywhere. It was creepy. It made me realize that half the people I was used to seeing on the metro were middle eastern of some sort (makes sense, with all the french colonies) and they were all hiding in their homes for fear of being targets for blame.

My cousin was actually on a business trip in NY at the time, close to the twin towers. Her father was dying of cancer, so they didn't tell him about the attacks. She was safe, and called him that night, pretending that everything was fine. He died the next day while she was stranded in the US. Trying to get to northern Ontario for the funeral when travel was at a standstil was a nightmare. I won't even go into the ugly things that happened at the funeral.

I remember thinking of the 'global village' and about how this affected all of us. My heart went out to all the people affected, especially to the familes of the victims on the planes, in the towers, and the firemen and police, but also to the peasants in Afghanistan.

ETA: "And yet I refuse to profile or live in fear of a race or religion." Cehra, I just got a little teary reading this. It's so easy to blame a faceless group, and when something so traumatic happens, it is hard to see past the profile and to see people as people. You are an amazing woman, and thank you for being that strong. *sniff*

 

[larussel03]

I was at the Bursur''s office at my college picking up a reimbursement check and I remember hearing it over the radio. I only caught bits and pieces of the news, so I thought that another person had tried to fly a small plane into the White House (which had happened before I think earlier that year or the year before). I had no idea the large scale of what happened until I returned to my dorm room and turned on the TV. It was unbeleivable, I felt like I was watching a movie, like "Independance Day" or something b/c that''s really what it looked like. I remember some people in the dorms being really scared b/c the phone lines were all tied up and no one could get through to anyone. I also remember it was my friend''s birthday and she was worried about someone as well, so she came over with another friend and we watched the news all day long.