Where were you on 9/11?

[Kassiopeia]

I was in my home, having a nap in my bed when I heard from the radio that a plane had crashed in New York to a skyscraper. This was before the second plane, IIRC. I went upstairs to tell my mother and then turned on the television.

What spooks me is that I was sleeping because I was recovering from a strange seizure I had had the same day at school - I had a terrible headache, and more importantly, I had vommited.

Now, I rarely ever throw up. The next time this happened is actually today, a bit past midnight local time.

So I hope nothing happens, because that would mean that I'm a precog or something.

[Mr. President]

Night, September 10, 2001. I went to bed earlyish and slept like a log. It had been a normal spring day in Melbourne and I was looking forward to another normal spring day in the morning.

7:00 AM, September 11, 2001. My mother entered my room to wake me up for class, as is the pattern in my house. But something was different; there was something in her tone, something more urgent when she told me to get up.

I stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen. Before I was even fully awake, my mother said to me, "Someone hijacked four planes, and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The World Trade Center fell down, there's nothing left."

It's not the most pleasant way to wake up. I hurried into the living room where Fox News was on, showing footage of the planes slamming into the towers. I was numb. I wandered about the house in a daze. I almost got in an accident driving to school. My math lecturer never turned up to class, which was just as well seeing as I was in no mood to hear about complex numbers.

Instead I sat on the grass with a couple of friends, facing up to the unfaceable. I almost could not believe that it was real, that the sun shone on Australia while half a world away chaos was being visited on my home city.

[ThePantaloonDog]

I was actually doing homework when a friend came and told me. I asked him like 6 different times if he was joking until I saw it on the TV.

Of course the reason I was doing homework was I had duty the next day. The worst duty day. Ever.

[Col Bigspear]

I was in College, when the course tutor came in and said something big was happening. Someone had crashed a plane into one of the world trade towers. It was only the second day of college so it was a half day. I rushed home and put News 24 on. Shortly after the second plane hit.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I think I've got everyone beat for sheer surrealism of the initial news. I was grocery shopping in a giant store here that also sells electronics (this would be 4-5 pm in Turkey, which is 9-10 am EST). Upon entering the store, the first thing I'm greeted with is a wall of televisions, all of them tuned live to the events in NYC, all of them in Turkish. Most of the stores shoppers have gathered in front of the Wall and are talking excitedly in hushed tones -- and I can't understand anything! The images are riviting, but there's no telling if I'm looking at an accident, an attack, or what.

I grab my groceries and rush home, where I find my daughter crouched in front of our newly-purchased TV, tuned to CNN-Turk; she's turned the sound all the way up in the hopes of hearing the English original text underneath the Turkish over-dub. My wife is also there, but our satellite system was just installed a few days earlier and I'm the only one who knows anything about it. I find the BBC and spend the next 7 hours watching TV non-stop, as various tv-less neighbors come and go and my wife frantically e-mails back and forth with her sister in Manhattan.

[Gangerolf]

I was at my parents' house, lying hungover in bed, when my mum came in and told me a plane had crashed into a building in New York. I got up, turned on BBC World, and watched the second plane hit.
I sat in front of the TV and Internet for more or less the rest of that dreadful day.

[Bereta_Eder]

I was at home. When I saw the first plane hit I thought thius could be a freak accident. When the second hit I was almost sure it was deliberate.

Then I waited for more? because noone really knew what was going on, how well this thing was organizzed, what would follow (if anything).

At a certain point at that day I was taken by surpise by a distinct feeling (which I was sure it was true at that time) that the US is no longer in this world. Meaning that its presence had for a split second there withdrawn to itself.

I felt that my region was less safer and I believed that if *anyone* wanted to take advantage of the situation and start a mayhem in these troubled parts now would be the time. Fortunately noone did.


Even though I was thousands of kilometers away from NYC and the tragedy I still felt a need to call my family and see that everyone is OK and how they were doing.

[rah]

I had just submitted a long running job at work, and decided to kill a few minutes at Apolyton while it ran.

I saw the thread in the OT, and figured it was an onion article or a euro troll. I tried to check out the news sites and couldn't connect. It took a while before I could believe it was true.

Apolyton was my primary source of information for the first hour. I was glad that there was a place like apolyton to share the emotions with on that day. Everyone at work was stunned.

Despite claims of "flash Memory", that's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

RAH

[Alex]

I was at work. When the first plane crashed, I was talking to some co-workers and then one of our colleagues came in and said: turn on the TV, something is happening in New York.

When we turned the TV on, they were showing images from the first plane crashing and we all stood there, silently, watching it and trying to understand what was happening. Then we saw the second plane coming and I remember that one of my co-workers said: "oh my god" in a disheartening tone of voice.

We did not work any more on that day. The internet was down, I smoked more cigarrettes than usual during the rest of the day.

[boann]

driving to work in my car.

[Adagio]

I just got home from school, turned on the computer (as usual), started ICQ. As soon as I got online, a friend of mine told me that two planes has hit WTC, and they believed it was OBL's work. I haven't heard that name before, so I thought he was just making some joke, and included some random name. It just sounded to unrealistic... He told me to turn on the tv, to see it myself... I was a little sceptical, but as I turned on the tv, I was schocked (If I'm not mistaking, the Pentagon just got hit, a few minutes later)... I went back to the computer, and told some other friend about it, and then I left the computer for quite a while, to see the news... Later, I went to McD with the friend who told me about it, and we kept talking about it...

[-Jrabbit]

Right where I am now -- at work, on the computer. With an office full of users, there's always some surfing going on. An email blast titled "Tragedy - THIS IS REAL" (or similar) went out shortly after the first tower was hit. Went to CNN.com and also tuned in local news radio. I heard much of it live. Possible flash memory -- it was 8:17 in Chicago when I found out.

Sat in stunned disbelief as I listened and surfed the news outlets. Someone put together an antenna rig so we could get live TV and a bunch of us just... watched.

Most chilling memories --

1. Seeing the 2nd tower get hit. That's when it became clear that this was a malicious atrocity, that true evil was at work in our world.

2. Talking to one of our engineers (I work at an audio electronics manufacturer), hearing him say "you know both those towers are coming down" and briefly stating why it was so. Then, literally a couple minutes later, watching it happen, live on TV.

I get shivers as I type this last bit...

[MrFun]

It was over a month since I found out about my ex-boyfriend's suicide, and only a little over a week since I have been back home from Ecuador.

I was still in grief over my ex-boyfriend's suicide, readjusting being back home in the states after living in Ecuador for three months, getting used to living on campus after moving out of the apartment my ex and I lived in, and finally had recovered from a combo of diahrea, vomitting, headache, and strep throat on Sept. 11.

That morning, I was eating breakfast in the cafeteria and there are four mounted televisions in our cafeteria. A professor turned the channel to CNN, and there I was, watching the news about the first plane crash into one of the towers, but I had no real reaction at that time--maybe just shock.

Never saw the crashes themselves live, but days later, would watch a recording of the crashes themselves.

That was a day that all the people in the area of Ground Zero had their race hidden -- they were all grey, covered in ash/dust.

[SlowwHand]

Right here, where I first got The News.
Markos and Dan were good enough to let outrage and grief be expressed in their forums.

[BeBMan]

I was at home, and I saw TV while eating something. At first there was a text message during the normal TV programme, it said a plane crashed into the WTC - and I thought: Oh, probably one of those little private planes - Cessna or something like that. I never could imagine that they in fact mean a big airliner.

Then they stopped the normal programme, and started to report from NYC - and I saw the second plane hitting the other tower. I had still two or three hours left before had to go to work, I was paralyzed, staring at the TV screen all the time.

At work it was the same, we all heared radio news all the time - more and more cruel details...