Where were you when the towers fell?

[Danu 19]

I was in Grade 10, at school.My first period teacher had called in sick so we were hanging out with one of our other teachers who was really cool. He had the radio on when the first tower was hit...we couldn't believe it. One of the guys ran down to the media room and grabbed a tv....I've never seen it hooked up with such lightening speed. I don't remember going to any of our other classes that day. I think we stayed in that classroom watching and discussing what we were seeing until ...I don't know when. I was in complete shock and crying for the people who lost their lives.

[Hugglebuggles 60]

I was in the 9th grade, it was sometime during the first week of school. I hadn't heard a thing about it until about 11:30, when I went for my lunch break. Being the nerd I am, I opted to go read in the library with some friends instead of sit around in the lunch room. A friend of mine came up to me and told me what had happened, and I didn't believe him. He was always a big jokester, the class clown all through grade school, played practical jokes on you all the time. After a couple minutes he looked really upset and I realized that it wasn't a joke... then I went up to the librarian and asked her if she could put it on the TV and she did. Just unbelievable. I hadn't met my husband yet.

I do have a nice story to come out of this mess. I have a good friend named Katherine who was living in Pakistan during this time. Her parents were teachers at the international school in Islamabad, and they were all Canadian citizens who were evacuated from the country after a strike on neighboring Afghanistan became imminent. She ended up at my high school for a semester and she was probably the most interesting person I've ever met! She's lived all over the world and taught me a lot about cultural differences and the nature of global politics. I'm really glad I've met her, despite all the chaos and torment that caused us to meet. We've keep in touch all these years, and she ended up moving back to Canada after she finished school in the middle east.

[CDAgirlMI 51]

I was at work. Co-workers said something weird is happening in the US, all planes were grounded. Went home & sat in front of the t.v for a while just amazed that something like this could happen. The people in the buildings that were caught from escaping disturbes me.

My fiance & I didn't know each other Sept 11, 2001.

Right now, as I write this I am sitting in Detroit Metro Airport waiting with my fiance to board a flight.....thinking what this place must've been like 8 years ago today....

[Ban Hammer 13,113]

germany - at the vogelweh shopping center (american px system in kaiserslautern, germany). heard about the first plane, went to the power zone (which is the electronics department) and watched the live tv coverage. when the second one hit, i knew what was going on and went to the bank and withdrew a majority of my money out of the bank.

sure enough, the bank, px, and most installation facilities were closed for over 2 weeks afterward.

[minnew 4]

I hadn't met my fiance yet, I was in high school, I think grade 12. Usually I listen to the radio in the morning when I got ready, for some reason which I can't figure out, I didn't listen to the radio that morning. I did not hear about it until arriving to school that day. There were some teachers that actually taught, but I remember one we were allowed to watch the news instead. My math teacher couldn't teach for about half an hour because she was on the phone with family trying to get a hold of a family member who worked near the Towers to make sure he was okay. I think she eventually did, but she was a write off, she was so emotionally a wreck to teach. I remember my English teacher let us watch the news and also talked about what the Towers "symbolzied" as well as the Pentagon and White House. It was definitely a scary day and even more scary when I realized that these were terrorists who wanted to kill the President and they themselved wanted to die. I was in shock at first, cried alot, was definitely scared to be attending university in the USA after high school.

It is definitely a day that people will talk about and everyone will remember what they were doing and where they were. It sickens me, it makes me angry, it makes me cry, it makes me realize that it was a day that changed the course of history and the laws regarding entering the USA and immigrating as well.

Side note: My fiance was also in NYC with his aunt and uncle in the summer of 2001, has pictures of himself in front of the Towers, he is sickened that just a few months laterthey were gone. My fiance was still living in GA at this time and was attending college. About a year later he enlisted in the AF. We didn't meet until 2005, but had talked online in late 2004.

There are lots of songs out there regarding the attacks, some more political than others, It should be a day to remember the victims of 9/11. I really like Alan Jackson's "Where were you when the world stopped turning" It seems to fit the subject of this thread.

Edited September 11, 2009 by minnew

[Sandrila 1]

I was at home getting ready to take my preschooler to school.

[CanAmCharlotte 0]

I had just started teaching in a high school with a student body of 2,000, 85% of which was Muslim. I am somewhat ashamed to say I knew very little about Islamic faith or culture at that point. Sometimes I think it was destiny for me to be there at that point in history (I taught there until two days before I moved to the US in Oct. '06). I saw firsthand how the events of this day affected those students. For the first weeks following the attacks, they were fearful of reprisals and leaving the school at the end of the day was even a bit scary for me. It seemed that a number of ignorant, closed-minded people painted everyone with the same extremist brush and the threat of violence was very real. To say the students kept a low profile for many months is an understatement.

I had not yet met my current husband and in fact, I was still married but separated from my ex. My God we almost reconciled over the events of this day! He called me from the road and blathered something about the importance of family and how he thought of me first when he heard the news and needed to know I was all right. Thankfully nothing came of it.

To this day I get choked up when I see or hear anything about that fateful day and yet many more people have died as a result of Bush's ensuing War on Terror.

[Y's_habibitk 2]

I was at work and we watched in horror on a little 8 inch tv

[bradcanuck 1]

No offense, I get that many people lost things and it shook Americans confidence and all - but many born and bred Americans agree with me that perhaps it's time to stop asking these questions every year. Haven't 8 years of unjustified war helped quell those feelings yet?

I get it, I really do. It's tragic. But worse things have happened and worse things will continue to happen all over the world (sometimes on a daily basis... IE check the daily child starvation/aids deaths daily worldwide)

[JillA 2]

No offense, I get that many people lost things and it shook Americans confidence and all - but many born and bred Americans agree with me that perhaps it's time to stop asking these questions every year. Haven't 8 years of unjustified war helped quell those feelings yet?

I get it, I really do. It's tragic. But worse things have happened and worse things will continue to happen all over the world (sometimes on a daily basis... IE check the daily child starvation/aids deaths daily worldwide)

You can still remember those events while feeling for other world events as well. Just because there is other tragedy going on every day, means you have to forget what happened 8 years ago? Not everyone wants to forget what happened and stop discussing it. Everyone deals with it differently.

[Otto 83]

I get it, I really do.

Obviously you don't.

[scandal 951]

No offense, I get that many people lost things and it shook Americans confidence and all - but many born and bred Americans agree with me that perhaps it's time to stop asking these questions every year. Haven't 8 years of unjustified war helped quell those feelings yet?

I get it, I really do. It's tragic. But worse things have happened and worse things will continue to happen all over the world (sometimes on a daily basis... IE check the daily child starvation/aids deaths daily worldwide)

No passage of time will ever remove the memory of that dreadful morning.

Just as Dec 7 1941 was a Day that Shall Live in Infamy, so too is Sept 11 1991.

Americans remember the events of these days. Those who died on Sept 11 were heroes.

Just as we remember other tragic events, we remember this one. Tragedy and loss are not lessened by comparisons to other tragedies and losses.

In my case, we were living in California so the attacks took place at 6AM local time. We were in bed, and my sister-in-law (I was still married to my first wife at the time) called us from Brazil to tell us to turn on the TV. We started watching after the first tower had been hit, and tuned in just as the second was struck.

That day we started to proceed as normal - get the kids off to school, drove my wife to work, drove myself to work. After an hour or two, it was obvious that nothing much was going to get done. Even though we were in California thousands of miles from the events, work sites were largely empty. The financial markets were closed, so there wasn't too much to do anyway.

We later learned that Cantor-Fitzgerald had lost hundreds of employees in the WTC, some of whom I had worked with. I will never forget that day as long as I shall live.

[bradcanuck 1]

I get it, I really do.

Obviously you don't.

Interesting, well thought out and educated retort. So much so, I can't really respond.

Everyone picks and chooses what to latch on to emotionally. Personally I find it more tragic that we've murdered 100,000 civilians in several countries over the 2700+ that were killed 8 years ago today in the US. That's just me though, clearly I am the bad guy.

Edited September 11, 2009 by bradcanuck

[Donna A 4]

i was in bed sleeping after coming off the midnight shift and the phone rang. a girl i worked with told me hurry up and turn on the tv and i was like why...and she said, u dont know yet. so i turned on the tv and watched for a little while and went back to bed.

[Rhiannercakes 14]

I hadn't met my fiance yet at the time.

I remember I was in high school (Grade 12) and someone was yelling "The towers in New York are being attacked!"

And then the whole hallway went into a huge panic.

I remember rushing home to turn the television on to see if it really was true.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Rhiann