The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. What do you remember most about that day? What were you doing?

I was up in a United Arilines long distance flight 1258 from Chicago to Orlando when the pilot informed us due to terrorist activities we were ordered to land at the nearest airport. Needless to say when we landed on the runway and finally found out terrorists were flying planes into buildings I realized **HS** I was in a plane and get me the hell out of here NOW!!!

I was in high school. I remember that as the attacks were happening, my class was in the auditorium listening to a speech being given by some jackass philanthropist. I don’t even remember what I thought about. One of my classes later that day turned into speculation about who had done it.

I was in high school and when we got into class, the teacher was watching it on TV and we all just sat there, watched and discussed. We didn’t even do lessons.

I was sitting on the couch in my parent’s living room with my mother, watching TV. Honestly, I was just afraid. I remember practically whispering “we’re under attack” and my mom turned and told me not to be silly, and moments later the second plane hit. She froze. At that point I started trying to get ahold of my loved ones in and around NYC, which didn’t work, and just scared me even more. I can’t lie, I was terrified.

I was at work and heard about the first one hitting the tower and thought it was a horrible accident. About 10 minutes later I heard about the second one and was chilled to the bone, thinking something was horribly wrong. I told the people around my cubicle and we stood around in silence as the horror unfolded.

I was in middle school when it happened. I remember the day pretty well though. We watched it in tv during most of our classes. One teacher that was a total bitch refused to let us watch it because we were just 7th graders and none of us even probably knew what the world trade centers were before today anyway. I remember walking home from school that day with a friend and watching the rest of it. At the time I didnt really realize the full significance of exactly what just happened but I knew the shit just hit the fan.

I worked second shift at the grocery store at the time, so I was still asleep that early in the morning. Mom’s phone call woke me up, and she was frantic, saying, “Oh my god, this is it, they’re invading!!” just as if there were troops marching up the main street of my town. By the time I was awake enough to think, she’d told me to turn the TV on, and I saw the second plane hit.

I sat there with the TV all day and (of all things) processed some wool and silk for spinning, because I felt that I ought to be doing something constructive. (I still have the sweater I ended up making from that fiber.) Eventually I had to go to work (3pm), where I dealt heavily with the public. Every customer I helped was in a low mood, and asked me if I had heard or seen the news. Yes, yes, I know, they’re invading. <sigh> And while I know it’s wrong and bad of me to say this, there’s only so much of this a person can take in the course of a bouncy cashier shift, so I started pretending that I hadn’t heard. “No, was something on the news? What happened?”—no one bothered to explain it after that, and I guess I can’t really blame them.

I remember watching the TV that day, though, and wondering how it would all pan out in the end. I’m really sad that we haven’t kept that sense of purpose we had right afterward, when we had the sympathy of the world, and turned it into this politicized mess.

I was sitting in my living room watching a morning news show when they cut to the image of the first tower burning. It’s this split second in the unfolding disaster that is forever etched into my mind—the moment I knew beyond any shadow of dount we were under terrorist attack.That, and seeing human bodies falling out of the upper floors along with the continuous rain of paper and debris. I think it’s the most heart rending thing I have ever watched.

I was in 8th grade. The first I heard of it was in the morning when my mom and I were getting ready to leave. She dropped me off and all that day at school we watched the news on classroom televisions. My English teacher was really worried about her son who worked near the site. She left school for the day after our class (first period of the day). I think a lot of us were just shocked – we knew it was a big event.
I think for my generation this was probably one of the first major events we were old enough to cognitively process and remember. The only other event I have memories of is the Gulf War not because I remember the war, but because my grandma worked at a hospital in Saudi Arabia at the time and she sent us letters and photographs.

I was in my 6th grade reading class with Ms. Vandegriff. She refused to turn on the news, and I remember hearing my science teacher joking about the attacks in the hall.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard how do you even make a joke about that? I can’t imagine.

@ANef_is_Enuf I think this was at the point where the towers hadn’t fallen yet and nobody really knew what was going on for sure. Still, that’s no laughing matter, and that particular teacher was kind of a twat anyway, so it doesn’t surprise me that he would joke about it, in hindsight.

It was the morning before school in 5th grade, back when I lived in Las Vegas. I remember my parents watching the news and telling me about what had happened and I remember seeing the footage on TV; I remember feeling shocked and a bit angry. When I got to school, there was this one girl (someone I still talk to today) in front of the classroom telling everyone about it as they arrived because she seemed to know a lot about it. That’s really where my memory of the day stops, but I do remember that.

I was in Italy at the time. My grandfather called and told us the news, probably an hour or so after the fact – it was early afternoon for me. I remember sitting in an armchair with my dog watching the plane crash footage over and over again. Yes, even on Italian TV.
Sometime in the next couple of days I briefly became the target for much sympathy from my classmates. Not too long after the attacks (possibly before Al Qaeda claimed responsibility – I’m fuzzy on the details), the science professor presented the attacks as an act of desperation on the part of people who had reached rock-bottom. I didn’t buy it.

4th grade classroom I think, I really didn’t care all that much. Everyone was crying or silent or pale, some angry. I can’t say that for myself, I was bored but glad that there was less class time that day.

I was living in a suburb of Washington, DC at the time. The day was beautiful and sunny, and I was in a happy mood because of it. My kids were already off to school, and I was getting ready to go to a doctor’s appointment. I had just stepped out of the shower when my (now ex) husband called me from work and told me to turn on the TV. I was watching live when the second plane hit the towers, and I remember sinking down onto my bed, absolutely horrified.

In a numb fog, I got dressed and started driving to the doctor’s office. On my way there, I heard on the radio about the Pentagon and had a brief panic attack when I forgot that my husband didn’t work there anymore, and had to remind myself that he was safe. I tried to call my mother, who worked at NIH (a huge government building) in DC, and all the cell lines were jammed. I also heard that the first tower fell, just as I arrived at the doctor’s. I remember everyone seemed to be moving in slow-motion, we were all just so stunned.

Since DC was now being evacuated, I left the doctor’s and drove straight to my children’s school to pick them up early. The school was only about 25 miles from DC, and I knew traffic was going to be a nightmare. I didn’t want them stuck there, panicking. When I got there, I learned that at least half the other kids had been/were being picked up early, too, but none of the kids still in the school knew what was going on (it was an elementary school, so they thought parents should handle informing such young kids). It broke my heart to try to explain to my young girls what had happened in our world that day.

I was watching TV and listening to music, so the TV was muted. When I first looked, I saw smoke enveloping either one or both of the towers. Since I didn’t see any captions indicating what was happening, I thought it was a science fiction movie like Independence Day, where alien war craft had zapped the towers.

When I heard what really happened, I was horrified. Overcome by my thirst for vengeance, I actually found myself yelling something like, “Go gettem, Georgie!”, when I heard that the US was going to take out the Taliban in Afghanistan. Believe you me, I said that in total privacy.

I was getting ready to go to work when it happened. IIRC, the first person with whom I discussed it was my boss. I said that I hoped this wouldn’t result in the persecution of innocent Muslims, and she agreed.

I don’t know anyone that was directly affected by 9/11.
The only victim whose name I specifically remember is David Angell.

I was in my office finishing up some paperwork ahead of my final doctor’s appointment. I was really looking forward to being free of casts, braces, and self administered blood thinner shots in my stomach.

One of the electricians came into the office as asked if I heard about the plane flown into the world trade center. I thought this was a prelude to a terrible joke and told him that I didn’t want to hear the punch line. Instead he said, “no this is real!”

I went home for an early lunch and watched it on television with tears in my eyes. The second plane crashed and I just couldn’t believe it! What is wrong with these people? I could understand attacking military targets but why a civilian building. Those people that flew the airplanes were simply bringers of death and an example of what happens when you believe, too much, in a religions prophets. Then Bush said that we were going on to a Crusade and I knew things were going to go from awful to terrible.

I curse the fundamentalists that flew the plane, their religious teachers, the Americans that disregarded the signs and the Bush administration that trashed our reputation and good wishes from the reset of the civilized world.

It was a typical workday for me, blah, blah, blah… The most poignant thing didn’t happen until I was driving home from work. At a decently busy intersection, there was kind of a scruffy guy standing (sort of at attention) in one of the medians with a color guard sized American flag, and drivers were honking in support as they passed through. It was probably one of the most organic and soulful street scenes I’ve ever seen.

I was still in elementary school. I can remember sitting on the floor in a classroom and the teacher kept getting calls one by one that people were being dismissed and this was after 9 pm in the morning. Literally there were only 5 kids including me who took the bus that day. I also remember her going out into the hallway and she was having a hushed discussion and told not to say what was going on. Then I remember getting off my bus and my mom came to pick me up instead of me walking home alone like I usually did and she explained what happened and the tv was on in my house. That’s all I saw until I went to sleep that night and I had terrible nightmares that I was on one of the planes and dreamed that I died in an explosion.