Where were you?

[interpathway 9]

i remember i was in gym class, 9th grade and someone told me about the attack on the first tower.

i was just watching a minute by minute montage on the history channel, anyone else remember where they were and what they were doing?

may all those rest in peace, may all the families affected rest peacefully tonight

[AnthonyJTa 0]

.... working at State Street Bank in N. Quincy, MA. Our break room had a window view of the runways Logan Airport, believe it or not. I literally spent mornings (including that morning) just reading the paper, and gazing out the window & watching the planes take off while I had my coffee and ate breakfast. Kind of a somber thought, but yeah... To think that I could have literally watched one of the planes go by is a lil' eerie.

[Smitty34 0]

I was in 5th grade at home, getting ready to go to school in the morning. The TV was on and the footage was being shown over and over again. I knew it was tragic, but I don't think I was quite old enough to get it as it was happening.

[interpathway 9]

didnt two of the four airplanes took off from Logan?

[LkptTiger 1]

I was in the school cafeteria. I remember which table I was sitting at, who was sitting with me and what I was eating.

[mxihockey 0]

I was in second grade. School principle comes into class and tells us there was a small plane crash and no one was hurt. Still pisses me off till this day that she lied to us like that.

[Rustpot 1]

Chemistry labs, doing a simple aluminum analysis. Another prof. walked in, turned on CNN and we worked with it in the background. Then we learn the school is doing an information blackout and all the kids who knew were given a lecture to not let any details out lest "someone with family in New York become panicked and have it spread."

Watching it live was unreal, the gravity of the event never sank in until the whole country got up in arms. I had no real knowledge of the WTC or twin towers, nothing about the previous terrorist bombing there. I had always associated the Empire State building as the NYC skyline honcho. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.

[lotus 2]

In Spanish class, 8th grade(start of high school here) with my best friend whose father worked on one of the top floors of the second tower.

Was the longest year of my life, helping out his mother with my family. Unemployed mother raising 3 kids. I'm happy to say she's doing well for herself now, my friend goes to NYU, his sister just got into Columbia U, and the youngest should be entering junior high soon. The lone daughter has been somewhat....almost bi-polar since, however. Drastic mood swings.

Nicest family I've ever seen though, father included. My friend read some of the names of victims, his fathers included, at the memorial earlier today.

[cbj05 0]

I was home sick from school, lying in bed watching it all unfold on TV. Being only 11 at the time, I did not really understand the severity and magnitude of the attacks.

[JR Boucicaut 3802]

I was in bed, I sleep with the radio on and the station that I listen to in Orlando is talk radio til midnight, then starts up talk at 6am. At the time, they had Howard Stern in the morning. I woke up and heard about a small plane hitting the WTC. Turned on the TV and I didn't have my contacts in, but when they had the video, I immediately knew it was a 757 (I used to work for an airline)

I then went to class and the second plane hit, then we all left class and watched the first tower fall in the student union. Went home after that in shock.

[Jeff 0]

I was in bed, I sleep with the radio on.

I had just had ACL surgery a day or two before, and was kind of illing it. I had fallen asleep with CNN on, it actually played into my dreams.

I remember dreaming that I was in a high-rise building, and there was an alarm going on. Everyone was clearing out, and I remember thinking "WTF? How am I going to go down 50 flights of stairs with my pegleg?"

The scene then shifted to me sitting in a small room in the highrise being interrogated about airplanes. Next thing I know,I open my eyes to see the 2nd tower falling.

It was a pretty intense moment trying to piece together wtf was going on.

[JR Boucicaut 3802]

I had mentioned in a previous thread that my aunt almost ended up on the first flight. She decided to not change her flight and left the day before.

[Tailboard Jockey 25]

I was at the firehouse, asleep (about 6:45am Pacific, we didn't have to get up until 7am). One of the guys from the oncoming shift came in early and woke us up to let us know what was going on. We thought he was just joking around, so we got up a couple of minutes later. Like everybody else, we couldn't believe what was happening. I did know that our lives would never be the same. We ended up running an average of ten suspected anthrax calls per shift in addition to our normal call volume, during the anthrax scare. Being in the Air National Guard, I ended up going to Iraq for the initial invasion, and Afghanistan later on.

[LegoDoom 0]

I was going into work late because of a doctors' appointment. Needless to say, I didn't make it to either and spent the rest of the day calling a few friends that worked in the building. Actually got through to one friend. His cell phone rang on the ferry going out of the city when no one's phone was working. Probably one of the best calls I've ever made was to his mom letting her know that her son was okay.

[Aussie Joe 0]

Watching late night news after the West Wing season finale. They were half way through a story and the girl interupts and says "We've just had an unconfirmed report that a plane has crashed into one of the twin towers in NY" At first I saw the pics and thought it was a light plane, but they soon started to explain the size of each tower and I thought "Thats a jet airliner!"

The part that sticks in my mind was waking up my parents, putting it on the main TV in the lounge and just gasping as they showed pics of people jumping out of the higher levels, it was about 23:00 here.

I visited the site in late 06. It really is as solemn as people make it out to be.

Amazingly it was on every channel here for about a week and abit. Its all people talked about, I think depsite the distance most Australians knew this would change our country and the world forever.

[D-MaN88 0]

I was in 7th grade English class. Teacher got a call from another teacher and was like "oh...my...god" and turned the T.V. on. Of course being as young as we were, none of us really knew what the twin towers were and stood for but we all knew two planes flying into them and seeing the people jumping off buildings, and then the eventual collapse of both was just shocking and devastating. Every year from then on out I still here my teacher saying "oh...my...god" in everything I remember about that day.

The other eerie thing about that day was, my family has some family in Pennsylvania and my grandparents were coming home (driving) and when flight United 93 crashed into the field, I think my grandparents were like 4 or 5 miles away. They both told me about how they saw a plane flying what seemed extremely low but thought nothing of it. I don't even think they had heard what happened in NYC til' my mom called them and eventually told them.

Still to this day, the most shocking and ill-feeling triggering event I have ever witnessed. Still saddens me all the people that were lost in the towers, United 93 in Penn., the Pentagon and the rescuers that came to help and do their job. All of those people and their families will forever be in my thoughts and prayers.

[interpathway 9]

it is amazing how everyone has taken a snapshot of this moment in their minds, what they were doing, who they were with, etc.

all the stories you guys have are amazing, JR your aunt, Jeff's story of the dream, in fact that entire day seems like a dream to me (and some of you guys' too, i'm sure)

i live, and my father works, in the D.C. area but our involvement is nothing near the magnitude of the new yorkers... legodoom I'm sure your story of that phone call reverberates to new yorkers (and beyond I'm sure) across the state and a heartfelt god bless to you all.

[kosydar 0]

It was my second or third day of high school. Its all surreal because it coincided with me becoming a freshman, which was obviously a major change in my life. I'd never been to NY or seen the towers, and to this day I have no idea of how catastrophic it really was, nor will I ever. I remember getting ready to walk out the door and my mom calling us back to see what was happening. To this day I still don't understand how class wasn't canceled.

The craziest thing for me personally about it was riding to school with my sister and have her say to me "I bet it was bin Laden and Al Qaeda". I was with her the whole morning and nobody on the news had even mentioned them by that point.

[Stampeder 2]

At the time, they had Howard Stern in the morning.

That would have been quite the show to hear, I really don't think they will ever play it again.

Anyways, I was just about to get on the bus to head to school when they were showing the first plane on tv. I got in school and the tv in the classroom had it on in time for most of the kids to see the 2nd plane hit. We never went to different classes that day we all just watched the tv all day, which I'm sure taught us more than any class would have.

[fatwabbit 93]

saw it on the news on the way to work. Obviously with the time difference I didnt see it till quite a number of hours later.

I still remember walking to the front door, and caught a glimpse of what was on TV... stopped me dead in my tracks.

[mack 44]

I was in my girlfriend's car and we were late for class and I was fumbling for something to hear and the radio broke the news. Didn't make it to school that day. My mother and sister had tried calling me all day but couldn't get thru so that rattled them a bit.

[steve66 45]

University hadn't started yet, so I was out all morning playing golf, then when I got in I started flicking through the TV then a few minutes later I saw it on the news (due to the time difference) and watched that for the rest of the day and night.

[DEATHTRON 19]

I was in the 10th grade, sitting on my parents couch, we had late start that morning, and I remember sitting there eating my eggs when the second plane hit. I dont even know how to describe how I felt. Like someone else said, I dont know why class wasnt cancelled that day.

Zach

[Allsmokenopancake 0]

My wife had just left the pentagon about 40 minutes before flight 77 hit (although she was at the metro, which is at the other side, so was not in any real danger).

I was in my office in Greenbelt, MD at the time. We put on the TV in the conference room, and it was just completely surreal.

At the time we lived on columbia pike ( This is where we lived, you can see how close we are to the pentagon), less than a mile from the pentagon. The actual plane hit the side that faces our street. The tops of the streetlights were taken off at the very bottom of the road because of how low the plane came in.

It took us about 5 hours to get home. The city was in lockdown, and my wife works downtown. One of her coworkers drove her to her place, because public transport was halted, and I wasn't allowed into the city to pick her up. By the time I got round the city (beltway was jammed), and then home, it took 5 hours total, to travel 22 miles. We had to show ID just to get on to our street as they were on extremely high alert and no one was allowed near the site (but we had to get up to our home)

By the time we got back, we had several messages from people at home who were trying to get in contact with us (we are both from Ireland), so spent a few hours calling people with the news on.

It was just the most surreal day ever. My wife is from Enniskillen, she's had a massive bomb go off in her town (google the enniskillen bomb for details), but while that was tragic and horrifying, it was also something that was not out of the blue, in that bombings were a somewhat common occurance. This was different.

[DarkStar50 679]

I work 10 minutes from midtown Manhattan in NJ. I had the all news radio station on in my truck when they broke in with an update from the traffic guy in his helicopter that a plane had crashed into WTC. No one was sure what happened with the first plane. I went inside Ice House and the TVs were on showing WTC burning. Then the 2nd plane hit the building. It was a totally frozen moment to watch on TV. When both towers had collapsed within 90 minutes, the feeling was surreal. We closed the building and I went home. I watched it on TV with my wife, who was home with a broken ankle from an auto accident. Around 3 PM I drove down to a friend's house. He worked down on Wall Street. His wife and kids confirmed he was ok, just having a hell of a time getting out of the city. He got out by boat, the only way since subways and bridges were shut down. I remember driving to his house and I could see the smoke in the sky from WTC that was 20 miles away. I knew 2 young guys who died that day. They both used to come in to the sporting goods shop I had previously worked at when they were kids.

About a week later, we went to a show on Broadway. The NYFD firehouse on 44th or 46th in the theater district was covered in flowers and candles. That house lost 10 or more guys.

And bin laden is still alive. Fucking bullshit.......