September 11, 2011

[Blubbartron]

I remember where I was, but the most poignant thing I remember was the horrified looks I got from people when they remembered I had talked a couple days prior about how America was due for another war. Couple people took to calling me Mr. Cleo, lol. But yeah, I've been tired of hearing about 9/11 since about 9/12. There have been a couple shows on TV that adequately describe my disgust with humanity in regards to the people who freak the fuck out over it when they weren't even personally affected. A Rescue Me episode comes to mind, in fact. The 9/11 support group where only the firefighter was involved *at all*. No friends or family members lost by the ingrates who were sitting in their circle crying and emotionally jerking each other off.

[FallingHigher]

Was in secondary school in chemistry class, I swear that's all I remember, no memory of people around me reacting or watching the news or anything. Can't say I remember experiencing the impact of anything what happened like most people did.

[pohibaba]

If you guys are interested, this site is an archive of the entire event. It has news footage from all around the world starting from about 30 minutes prior to the first plane hitting until a week after the event. It's pretty shocking stuff and I could only watch a few minutes of it before I started feeling anxious. It is a great historical record, though.

[Takedown3]

http://www.ooze.com/articles/art/heckofajoke.jpg

[Callisto]

was a freshman at DePaul...there was this girl from Texas I had met during orientation when my mother told her mother I would help move all of her shit into her dorm room for her before I had even met her, but she was all kinds of hot so I was all for it...I was in English class and a security guard came in and told us classes were all cancelled and the school was closing for the day, but gave no details as to why. The public train systems all got completely shut down so I was stuck in the city, and randomly ran into the girl at while walking around. Noone really had any idea what was going on yet and there was confusion all over, we went to get lunch at the caf and they had a projector screen up showing the news where they were just saying it was an 'explosion'.

We went back to her dorm room, 2nd plane hit, everyone started shitting their pants. Spent the rest of the day just gaping at the news. Entire day spent in this girl's room, not once did my wiener get touched. National tragedy, indeed.

[Cantih]

We went back to her dorm room, 2nd plane hit, everyone started shitting their pants. Spent the rest of the day just gaping at the news. Entire day spent in this girl's room, not once did my wiener get touched. National tragedy, indeed.

Man, you just never catch a break, do you? =|

[Callisto]

worst part is until I saw this thread and got reminded, I had completely forgotten how hot that girl was and how I didn't get any and p. much never saw her again, fucking terrorists

[Telliani]

Senior in college, was in studio and went to check mail. There was a huge crowd watching the tv and I got there just as the first building dropped. I had NO idea what was going on at all, and freaked a bit.

Guy standing next to me turned around and said "Don't worry, they got everyone out." (it's weird how I can even remember his voice as he said it, as if it wasn't a big deal at all, everyone was going to be okay!)


Couldn't call anyone because the lines were all jammed up. Finally got through to my mom to find out if Dad was working there that day or not, but he'd been across the river watching it happen. He was one of the guys that put the antenna up on the tower years back.

Found out my Uncle (back when he was a cop) was getting ready to go up when the first one collapsed, so they pulled a bunch of people back a few blocks. He said it was really surreal afterwards. Dust, ash everywhere, like a really thick fog. The sun was no brighter than the moon and there were birds chirping away like nothing was wrong.

[Effluo]

I was in VA. Beach, VA stationed at NAS Oceana, I was a YN in the admin department. We were already getting ready to go on deployment September 19th and had a ton of people on leave before we hit the water for 6 months. We were pretty much just packing up our stuff when the SDO (Squadron Duty Officer) came hauling ass out of the CO's office. Suddenly every pilot in the squadron was in the Ready Room or anywhere else there was a TV. We watched it all happen on CNN. The whole base went on instant lockdown, no one in or out. We started to recall everyone who was on leave because we weren't sure if we'd still be leaving on the 19th, or sooner. In the end, we ended up leaving on the 19th because it's pretty damn hard to get squadrons from all over the US packed up and on the boat in a day or two...

We spent more than 6 months at sea, off the coast of Pakistan doing figure 8s and dropping a shitton of bombs. I even signed one "To Osama, with love". We broke the record for the most consecutive days at sea, 159 days of haze gray underway. I think the scariest part of it was when we went through the Suez canal to get to the Indian Ocean. We went through at night, darkened ship, with gas masks and Atropine/2-Pam passed out to everyone in case of NCB attack; security forces were all over the ship, and the .50 cals were on standby... 10 years later, me and the guys from the squadron still talk about it. I have to say, it made us all pretty good friends.

[Auspice]

I was a sophomore in high school and was walking into the library since I was a student aide and the librarian and a few other teachers were huddled around a TV about five minutes after the news broke about the first plane. For the rest of the period we were all glued to the TV watching the events unfold and nobody really checked any books out. Every period after that in class was followed by each of the classrooms watching the events unfold.

The gravity of the events didn't really hit me until the second plane hit since at first a lot of the news said a fire had broken out at the WTC and we didn't realize what was going on. It wasn't until after watching the second plane hit on live TV and the news about the pentagon being hit that I really started getting worried.

There was a girl in my class who had a family member who worked at the WTC who sat in stunned silence all day. I'm pretty sure her family member was killed that day but I don't remember for sure.

Seems crazy that this happened a decade ago already.

[Ddz]

I had just walked into my 7AM math class in my first year of college when my instructor walked in, greeted the class, and broke the news that planes had hit the towers in NY. Everyone sort of just looked at him and at each other in disbelief. The WTO building in Seattle was just about 4 blocks from the school, and he says "I don't even know why we're here right now." Everyone packed up and left the class for the rest of the day. The videos were awful, where you could see the frightened people jumping out of the windows to their deaths makes me feel sick still.

[Militant]

My Best friend's uncle is a Union Carpenter in NYC and the surrounding area. He had guys working on the 101st and 102nd floor the morning of the 11th. He was coming back from vacation monday night, and would have been there, had his flight not been delayed, and him getting in real late in the middle of the light. His uncle is a great stand-up guy, and these 3 guys were basically mexican/guatemalan guys that were working toward their citizenship and bringing the rest of their family over to the states. I know he gave each of the wives/gf's something like 10 grand each to help them out, which in the grand scheme is not a lot but he didn't have to give these guys much of anything, since they were off the books. I know it fucked with his head for a long time.

[Necronus]

Ya know, this thread resembles a lot of common news stories about "where folks were" and how it affected them. And I get it, I really really do, especially for areas near the incidents, or people with friends in the affected areas, or for people dealing with flights that day, etc. But theres always been one thing I dare not ask people that I'll ask now, and that question is, is that HONESTLY how people not directly affected by the attacks felt AS IT HAPPENED as opposed recounting emotions that formed in the days AFTER and were superimposed retroactively by your memory? I realize that may make me sound like a prick or something, but hear me out. I lived in northeast Pennsylvania at the time, in an area that, well, didn't get out much, it was a rather self contained valley. As such, my experiences AS IT HAPPENED as well as what I recall of those around me, were a hell of a lot less impacted. I figure my hometown took at least a half a day before a majority of people were actually thinking "wow, this shit means something". Here's what I remember of that day.

So it was a few weeks into freshman year of college. Happened while I was driving to my first class apparently, so I knew nothing for a while. One student had a TV on in an adjacent open computer lab and I overheard someone mention a tower got hit, but me and my entire class thought literally nothing of it ... just an accident.

Then when the second one hit, someone came over from the lab and let us students near the back know. This of course interrupted the class as the news whispered forward ... eventually after a minute or two, the teacher was finally like "screw it, go ahead next door and check it out". So we all did, and we just stood there watching it, relaying piles of baseless rumors and news from websites we were checking at the same time. Also, I should mention that when I say we stood there watching it, it wasn't mouth agape in shock ... it was more like watching reality TV. I distinctly recall two students more interested on debating whether the towers could collapse or not. So eventually the teacher came back a minute or two later, and though I don't remember his exact words they weren't nearly as heartless as I'm about to make them sound, but the net effect of what he said was basically "ok, you've been watching buildings burn for minutes, nothings gonna change, lets get back to class ... anyone with family there are excused". So we did .. but not for long because we were interrupted again by the lone student in the lab who let us know a tower fell, so the teacher kinda sighed and cancelled class a tad reluctantly, he knew he lost our attention.

Either way, eventually after both collapses and the Pentagon crash, I just proceeded to my next class. The college operated as normal, and besides people checking it out between classes the rest of the day went on like nothing happened. Really, unless people had family or friends in New York, from my observation, most people didn't really become emotional, enraged, or concerned until they got home and watched continuous coverage TV at home for like 8 hours straight.

I dunno, sorry if that makes me sound narrowminded or heartless, its just what I observed. It may have been America, and in the hours and days after, the real implications eventually hit people, but the AS IT HAPPENED reaction of the hundreds of people I was near resembled the standard "its not here so what do I care" attitude. Honestly, for those first few hours especially, the average reaction of those around me was no different than if I were to tell someone right now that a civilian house in Iraq just got bombed. Is it tragic? Yes. Does the average person give a fuck? No. Thats what I saw in the first few hours of 9/11.

[archibaldcrane]

I was old enough to understand the importance for the country of a major terrorist attack at the time, so beyond just the people who were killed there, I knew it was going to fuck shit up for a very long time. Having a sister in the Army only amplified that.

And boy has it ever.

[Tagus]

All I really remember now from the actual day, is being really freaked out because I had friends and family in downtown Chicago working at the sears tower and they kept saying on the news that it was on the shortlist of possible targets. I kept getting calls from people trying to get out of the building, and you could hear the panic in their voices and in the background noise... Looking back it's tough to truly remember the chaos of it, now that we know exactly what was going on. I went to see ground zero a few months later, and the thing that really struck me most was the size of it. The area of destruction was just so freaking huge it just felt beyond comprehension, like looking into the grand canyon or something.

[Militant]

I was old enough to understand the importance for the country of a major terrorist attack at the time, so beyond just the people who were killed there, I knew it was going to fuck shit up for a very long time. Having a sister in the Army only amplified that.

And boy has it ever.

See I lived about 15 minutes away, and though I wasn't DIRECTLY effected per-say, I was close to a number of people who did lose people, or witnessed it on the ground first hand and almost died. That said, I didn't understand the full scope of how this was going to effect us in terms of a nation (I was only 15 at the time). You look at things like the Patriot Act, Body Scanners, the end of Posse Comitatus, it really did change things beyond what people would have perceived 10 years ago.

[aduidarnenye]

It's strange to read all these posts from people who were in school (I was 25 when 9/11 happened and finished with school). But the really strange thing is that everyone watched the events on TV in their classes. When I was in school we had 2 or 3 TVs that were wheeled around and not connected to cable.

[Militant]

It's strange to read all these posts from people who were in school (I was 25 when 9/11 happened and finished with school). But the really strange thing is that everyone watched the events on TV in their classes. When I was in school we had 2 or 3 TVs that were wheeled around and not connected to cable.

Pretty much the same deal here, the tv's on the cart with the strap holding them on, and a shelf below for the VCR/DVD player. I just happened to have a TV in my woodshop class that was used for showing us safety videos and what not, we took a piece of coaxil cable that was laying around, and used some metal rod and made a make-shift antenna which allowed us to get a pretty clear signal in the basement of the school.

[Omniyoji]

It's strange to read all these posts from people who were in school (I was 25 when 9/11 happened and finished with school). But the really strange thing is that everyone watched the events on TV in their classes. When I was in school we had 2 or 3 TVs that were wheeled around and not connected to cable.

lol, I'm pretty sure everyone saw it on those types described. Not on HDTVs. Not every class has a TV. Certain teachers would share one etc. Antenna + Local Station > CNN

[Necronus]

It's strange to read all these posts from people who were in school (I was 25 when 9/11 happened and finished with school). But the really strange thing is that everyone watched the events on TV in their classes. When I was in school we had 2 or 3 TVs that were wheeled around and not connected to cable.

The TV from my story was a TV on a 3 shelf cart, but was connected to cable in the "hang out between classes" computer lab. Students and occasionally even teachers chilled in there, especially thee one who created an entire class on video games for one semster just to get a free MAME cabinet with every emulator possible, 4 players with 6 button configuration, 2 pinball plungers, and even 2 track balls JUST for marble madness out of it as a "year long class project". That's actually the same teacher from the 9/11 class I mentioned.