9/11..............

[THE HCP]

Where were you when you found out the WTC had been hit by a plane? Or did you hear about the Pentagon first? What were you doing, where were you?

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

It was my day off and when my brother woke me up to tell me I was half awake, half asleep and it really didn't click until I heard Howard Stern (which I listened to every day) totally freaking out:

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[BrianFromWA]

Flying from BWI to Portland. Got forced down by F-15s in Wichita. Cell phone was "blowing up" when I got off the plane.

 

[barfo]

Asleep in bed. I had been in the PATH station under WTC a couple of weeks prior.

barfo

 

[THE HCP]

Our son was only 4 months old. My wife and I were woke up by a phone call from my mom. She has worked in the Wells Fargo Building downtown for 30 years. They were being evacuated and she was freaking out on the phone. I had no idea of what was going on and she told me to turn on the TV. The first tower had just fallen.

 

[THE HCP]

I had an uncle who was working in the Pentagon at the time. My whole family was freaking out about that. He was on the other side when the plane hit.

 

[Stevenson]

9/11 was my daughter's 8th birthday. Trying to explain how something like that could happen on/to a little girl's birthday was difficult.

She turns 18 this year on September 11. Happy to report that she now says sharing a birthday with such an event made her a better person - more compassionate, more thoughtful, more aware of the world, less self-centered.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I was getting ready for work. It was shocking to watch everything develop.

 

[Haakzilla]

...I was on a fishing trip somewhere on the McKenzie River, my best friend woke everyone up just after the first plane and we proceeded to watch the rest of the war games unfold

 

[Natebishop3]

I was up stairs sleeping at my parents house when they yelled up at me to turn on the TV. At that point only one plane had hit and they weren't sure if it was an accident. The whole thing was surreal. I remember thinking it was like watching a movie.

 

[maxiep]

I was at a breakfast meeting in Union Square, about two miles from Ground Zero. What a shitty, shitty day that was.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

running backstage at a bb king concert, 5000 seat venue, maybe 100 people made it out

 

[speeds]

Waiting to get into an auditorium for class, philosophy I think, had briefly seen the first tower smoking on television before leaving the house.

Some girl at the entrance to the class was telling people it was Palestinians attacking America for their support of Israel. Don't know where she got that information.

 

[THE HCP]

Just watched a doc on 9/11. Sure puts a lot of shit in perspective. Hope you guys spend the day with loved ones and realize how lucky we are no matter what your situation is.

 

[Mamba]

8th grade English class. I remember the teacher telling us that something bad had happened and they weren't sure what it was. She didn't want to tell us but we demanded to know because one of the girls got pulled out of class. I just remember the whole somber feeling the rest of the day. I think it was my earliest memory of feeling hatred run through my blood. Sincere hatred. I felt complete hatred towards a group of people that I didn't know.

Then I remember being freaked out because I had family working right across the street from the pentagon, family who worked in NYC, and my father was in NYC a few blocks from the WTC doing some work.

 

[jlprk]

Yawn. This day should made a holiday and called "Police State Day." After all, we have 4 Veterans Days but no Police Day.

I'm reading articles from NYC that they are really, really tired of all the hoopla every Sept. 11 and hope this will be the last time for the 1-day blanket coverage of where were you, the annual fake alarm of a new terrorist threat after a year of none, etc.

Here's one by Dick Cavett. Look at all the comments following that agree with him.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/the-great-melvino-or-our-mr-brooks/

 

[BlayZa]

i'd just got home from a boozefest in town, i was a complete mess when i got home - but 15minutes later i was pretty much dead sober. i think it was like 2-3am my time , but i rang my mum and dad and everyone else i knew and said to turn on the tv as we could be looking at the start of ww3/heavy shit.

 

[ABM]

Yawn. This day should made a holiday and called "Police State Day."

Dang, we're in a police state?

I was living in Atlanta and was at work. Fortunately, someone had a TV. Like many others, watched the 2nd plane hit live. A sad, sad day, indeed.

 

[jlprk]

This is a day to celebrate all the rights you lost in the Patriot Act, and a day to feel good about the financial destruction of a superpower.

As bin Laden said, his side spent $500,000 on the raid and the US spent $500,000,000,000, which is a million times as much. I read that installing obstacles in front of every Federal building in the U.S. cost $60B.

 

[THE HCP]

^Regardless of how this country/government reacted to this event, it was an absolute tragedy. To bitch about your lost rights or to start off a post with "YAWN" is wacked. Wondering if you are married with children or have any family?

 

[KingSpeed]

I was in NYC about 70 blocks away. It was really scary. When they finally found Giuliani, they asked him what his advice to New Yorkers was and he said "Go North!" I wanted to flee uptown or to Jersey or Long Island but my Dad to told me to stay with my partner and he decided that we stay put. That was the beginning of a very scary three weeks fearing for my life. After that three weeks, I started to settle down.

 

[Mediocre Man]

I was getting ready for work. I worked for US Bank at the time, and they called maybe 15 minutes after the news broke it to say my office was closed that day

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I was in NYC about 70 blocks away. It was really scary. When they finally found Giuliani, they asked him what his advice to New Yorkers was and he said "Go North!" I wanted to flee uptown or to Jersey or Long Island but my Dad to told me to stay with my partner and he decided that we stay put. That was the beginning of a very scary three weeks fearing for my life. After that three weeks, I started to settle down.

Amazing.

 

[THE HCP]

I could not imagine what it must to have been like to be in lower Manhattan at the time. I had never been to NYC until November '04 and we went to Ground Zero. It was silent! We were in the middle of New York City and it was absolutely quiet. Couldn't help but tear up. Been back about 5 times since and took my wife last fall. Must have been surreal this morning.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

In June, 2001, I proposed to my girlfriend (who was living in New York at the time); she broke up with me, and decided to stay in NY.

In August, 2001, I lost my job (kinda glad she said no! That ring was not cheap!)

On Sept 1, 2001, my best friend got married; I was his best man, and put on the cheapest bachelor party in history.

On September 10, 2011, I was alone in my apartment all day and found I couldn't sleep that night. I watched some DVDs, and finally, at 5am or so, decided to turn on CNBC and watch the stock market crash again (it had become a strange pastime of mine since losing my job to watch the market collapse and take bitter refuge in the fact that I wasn't alone).

When I got to CNBC, the first plane had just hit the WTC; they still thought it was a Cessna, and were scrambling helicopters to film. When the second plane hit, I called my parents and told them to turn the TV on, New York was being attacked.

I remember feeling like the world had gone insane, and letting out one of those nervous laughs I get when shit's just hit legitimately the fan.

 

[PapaG]

I was sleeping in bed. My wife had to be up for work at 6, and game at 6:10 or so and said that some idiot had flown his plane into one of the WTC towers. I got out of bed in time to see the second tower hit.

My surreal moment that day was going into my office at a Fortune 500 company. I worked outside for them, but had to go to the Portland HQ. None of the inside people there were even talking about it, and it was business as usual because they didn't have on a radio, and it was 10 years ago, so there were no iPhones, Blackberries, etc. to get live info. I got the hell out of there because I had seen what happened, called a contact to cancel my lunch with him, and worked on trying to get my wife out of her 25th story office in downtown PDX. They evacuated them anyhow, but I remember it being impossible to get cell service for most of that day.

I remember that entire morning in complete clarity. From that afternoon on for about a week, I can hardly recall a thing.

I'll add that my wife was in NYC the weekend prior to 9/11 for Labor Day with friends, and was actually sitting in a courtside box at the match where Lleyton Hewitt went on his racial tirade against James Blake. She left from JFK on Tuesday 9/4, and week later, her flight would have been cancelled.

 

[Denny Crane]

I was watching C-SPAN. They interrupted their normal morning program (Washington Journal) because the House went into emergency session. They said that a small plane (like a cessna) had crashed into the WTC. I switched over to CNN and watched the coverage there. Then the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower. Then the Pentagon was hit.

It was horrific and amazing at the same time. That terrorists could hit the heart of our financial system and the heart of our military made me question our competence. It was like Pearl Harbor - an act of war and on our soil. At one point, Rudy Giuliani had ordered something like 50,000 body bags.

We have good friends who live in PA. He is a United Air Lines pilot and his wife is a UAL stewardess. He almost hitched a ride on one of the planes that went down that day, but ended up waiting for a later plane. They knew every one of the flight crew that lost their lives that day, and they spent a few weeks attending their friends' funerals.

I know I had a really tough time watching the replays and new angles of it all as it was happening and for weeks after. It's tough, even today.