[OT] Sep. 11th was the day that I...

[Paka]

I woke up next to my girlfriend. We had spent the night together for the first time that night after a long, awkward courtship.

I kissed her on the cheek and went back to my apartment. My roommate's mom called and told me that a plane went into the first tower. The television went on just in time for me to see the plane hit the second tower.

Growing up on the Jersey Shore you get to know the Towers as facts of the horizon, like mountains or stars. Watching them fall was a terrible thing.

Working as a Youth Advocate, I had to go take a kid to school. He told me that he didn't want to get out of bed and I told him, "Yeah, you and everyone else in America. Get up."

School would be a good place for him to talk with his friends and his teachers. Also, he hadn't wanted to wake up the day before, so perhaps this was just an excuse, neh?

On his way to school we talked and he shared his fears, "I don't want to be drafted. We're going to go to war and I'm going to be drafted."

"It isn't going to be that kind of war," I assured.

September 11th was the first day I kissed a woman I loved in the morning and then went to work.

 

[Buttercup]

I was at work. The husband of one of my staff members called to say that a plane had hit one of the twin towers. I went into the staff lounge and wheeled the television out into the area where all of us were working. We heard about the pentagon, saw the footage, and then watched as, live on CNN, the second plane flew into the other tower.

We wondered if it was the beginning of the end. I called my husband, and told him that I loved him. I thought about my dog, peacefully sleeping in her crate at home. I got out the emergency handbook for my organization, and reread the part about civil disasters. I watched more TV.

By the end of the work day, we no longer feared that WW3 was about to start, but we were all weepy and horrified, and filled with a cold anger. I was never so happy to see my husband & my dog as I was that night. Both safe, warm, alive.

It took me at least 3 months to be able to think of that day without shedding a tear for all of our dead. I think that, for the rest of my life, I will be able to close my eyes and see that second plane fly into the building, and the bright orange flames blossom like a giant, hellish flower.

 

[BOZ]

the political ramifications hit me as soon as i realised what had really happened. as my friend kept sending me more and more details e-mails, i went from believing it was a joke on his part, to thinking it was an air accident, to seeing how it was probably terrorists, to mentally preparing myself for war - all in the space of about 15 minutes. at that time, both planes had hit the towers, and as i kept up with yahoo.com's news page i saw the devastation unfold. i even printed out the news page every 15 minutes or so, to get different stories as they happened. i discussed it with my manager and my supervisor, knowing full well that some sort of military action would happen - and when it finally did, though i wasn't a bit suprised i was definitely still shocked. we might not have really solved anything in afghanistan, and now we might be baiting an old enemy into who knows what.
that is scary, but the part that really makes me sad, was how i could not think about all those people without getting choked up for so long. if i thought about it, i had to stop thinking about it. even now, when i see a commercial or TV special intended to tear the heartstrings, i will get mad and change the channel thinking "how dare they force me think about that again!" most people are largely recovered a year later, but i think there's some lasting damage in each of us.

 

[Vargo]

I live on the West coast, so I was just getting out of bed when the first plane hit the WTC. I stumbled out of bed, did a bit of morning routine, got my wife up, then made my way out to the living room to feed our cat and turn on the news. I turned on the TV, and the anchor was reporting that a plane had hit the WTC, and that they had no further info at this time. They had a camera live at the site looking at the burning building - it was surreal.

I yelled to my wife that a plane had hit the WTC, turned back, and as she yelled "what?" saw the camera tilt back and follow the second plane directly into the tower.

I didn't say anything back.

She came out, and I managed, somewhat numbly, to tell her to watch the TV, they knew everything I did. We started trying to get through to various news websites, but nothing was accessible.

My wife panics easily. She was afraid that this was going to happen everywhere, and I had to take some time and calm her down a bit - I'm fairly well versed in the political structure of How Crap Like This Happens - and explain that while the WTC is a "good" target for terrorists, a small 2-floor building that counsels at-risk youth in a second-rate town probably would not be a primary target for a terrorist attack, at least not at this point. I then had to make the same point again for my work - slightly harder, considering I worked at the time for a major corporation, but the structure of the buildings on their campus made me feel like they weren't a major target either.

And then we had to go to work.

Work for me that day consisted of repeatedly checking any website that was relaying information - in my case, hardocp.com and arstechnica.com served as my primary newspoint. I was picking up what I could from my local NPR affiliate - listening as the Pentagon was hit, then the PA crash - and watching my work roommate freak out. He had been Special Forces in the Persian Gulf Skirmish, and apparently was suffering some serious PTSD. I tried to talk him through the worst of it. (For the record, my wife has a Masters in Psychology, and I do computer work, but I read most of her Masters-level books, and helped her with her papers, so I've got a fairly good understanding of what counselling is) He was vaccilating back and forth between wanting to find the bastards responsible and removing their spleens through various orifices, both existing and newly generated, and being totally unable to comprehend how somebody could do this.

Not too much work got done that day. Still, nobody was sent home.

Since then, I've been wracked by a major depressive episode, laid off, spent seven months unemployed, and started a new job about two weeks ago.

And celebrated my 3rd wedding anniversary on 7/11/2002.

 

[Rel]

September 11th was the day that I knew for certain that the world was about to change dramatically and that I had not a clue as to how.

What I probably remember most was holding my daughter, who was then a month and a half old, late late into the night while watching the news channels. I cannot really describe how having my newborn child in my arms at that moment was somehow an immeasurable comfort and the source of a seemingly bottomless pit of fear.

I just wish that she could grow up in a world in which that never happened. But I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that it is not the focal point of her childhood.

 

[Feliath]

I'm a Swede, so I was comfy and far away. But I used to live in north NJ when I was younger, though I'm born in Sweden. The thing I remember most from NYC is being eight and not being able to bend my head far enough back that I cound see the top of the WTC. I remember that on my grandmother's burthday, she had come over to visit us in the US, and we ate at the restaurant that was at the top of one tower.

Anyhow, this is September 11th, 2001:
I was sick. I had had a cold for two days. I was in my dorm room at school, and another guy in the dorm came and knocked on the door. (I always kept it locked.) He said "Holy BLAP! They crashed a plane into the WTC!" This guy is an annoying joker, for the most part, so I looked at him skeptically. But I heard sincerity. "Seriously?" I asked, slightly taken aback. "YES!!" So we ran off to the coomon room, where the good TV was. The short way there, the only non-expletive in my syddenly brimming mind was "Can not be happening."

Many of the others in the corridor were there already. (The others filtered in as they came back from school; the time gap made it early afternoon.) So I sat there, completely numb, seeking solace from people I mostly disliked, and we saw the second plane hit the second tower in real time. I said it out loud: "What if it falls?" Soon after, one tower was completely obscured by smoke - or so it seemed - and one of the others sensed it had happened. "Oh my god. It's GONE. It FELL." Sure enough, seconds later they showed footage of it going down. And from there on it's just a jumble of numbness, aside from calling my dad, who had flowen to Boston on a business trip that morning, and my mom, to see if they knew already. The next thing i actually remember is the next morning in school, saying to a classmate:

"I just hope I never have to start telling a true story with: 'Once, there was a city.' "

Seeing it is still unreal. I don't think it'll ever become real. I saved all the newspapers from the following day I could.

/Feliath

Edit: this puts it best of anything I've seen so far.

 

[Bragg Battleaxe]

I was in a classroom teaching 25 ninth graders English. I had been teaching less than a month and suddenly, I found myself trying to explain to kids who probably have never heard of the WTC and couldn't point to NYC on a map why they should care about this at all, and why their lives would never be the same, whether they knew it or could understand it. I will never, ever forget that day.

 

[Gadodel]

I had just got back from my morning run. I saw it on the news as the story unfolded. I immediately called a buddy who works for the goverment. He was already packing. He couldn't tell me where he was going and didn't know when we would talk again. He asked me to call his parents for him and tell them he loved them. I told him to that he already knew what he had to do and if he did it, he would come home alive. After hanging up, I called my mom and said that I wished that I could enlist in the military. Health problems would keep me out. We talked as we watched the news, for the next two hours. Then, I called and talked to other people before I went off to work that afternoon.

I have only heard from my buddy once. He told me that everytime he felt tired and weary, he would think of all those times how we would sit around a campfire, drink beer and tell stories. He wanted to live so that he would have more stories to tell. I told him to keep doing the wetwork the gov surely has him doing and to remember he was not alone.

I could ramble on about goverment policy, but won't. I would rather take the time to thank all those whom serve and do the work that needs to be done. And I hope as many of them as possible come home, alive and free.

 

[Leopold]

I was at a job interview of all places at a government facility. Needless to say the interview stopped once we heard the news.


Another thing about living in florida was that the president was in town giving a speach. Once he heard the new he boarded the jet air force one and took off.

Now being as that i was 20 miles from the airport i saw this puppy take off. Air force one is a monster. It's like a dragon taking off, it's huge, it's big, and it's damn fast. I saw it go off and saw the fighter escor from McDill air force base shadow it.

I knew the country's leader was in good hands then. After that I was glued to the TV to see the towers fall.


Needless to say I didn't get the job but they always remembered me for that day...

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

Living in Australia, September 11 was almost over for me when I heard I found out. I was flicking channels before going to bed when I saw the towers smoking. I thought, "Wow, that's the WTC on fire. How did a fire get into both towers at the same time."

The commentator said that it was a plane crash. I couldn't understand how a plane crash could set both towers on fire.

Then the comentator said it was two plane crashes. I found that hard to believe, I mean what a fluke, that two separate planes would crash into each tower on the same day.

Remember, this was live and the second crash had happened only minutes before.

I needed to have the comentator spell it out for me - that this was a suspected terrrorist act. The sheer audacity of such an act astonished me. Watching it live was an indescribable experience.

I wept and prayed for the dead and the dying.