What were you doing when you found out about 9/11?

[TheFreshPrince]

I was in 7th grade, in my first class of the day, Health, and a kid came in late and said that a plane hit the World Trade Center. Now, i wasnt sure what the World Trade Center was, so i was like, huh, weird. Everyone was asking the kid questions and the teacher heard, and was really worried because his brother was an airline pilot, so we watched all the stuff on tv for the whole class.

It's weird i remember everything about that moment, including the kid who was late, and the teacher. Another wierd thing was that this was at like 8:30 9:00ish and didnt the first plane hit later than that? idk, anyway what were you doing/where were you when you heard about 9/11. Im interested to hear what some of the real youngings have to say.

 

[umair]

I was in 4th grade. Everyone's parents started picking them up, and I was confused. When I got home, I heard about it, and I was surprised.

 

[44Thrilla]

It was my first year out of high school and I was living at my father's house. I remember waking up at like 10-10:30 that morning and signing on AOL. As soon as I got on, like 5 people sent me a message telling me to turn on the TV.

 

[Karma]

I was in the 7th grade, and I just specifically remember it being a Tuesday. I think it had been a week since school started or something. I was in history class and we're all just sitting in class and the announcements blare and the principal or someone says something about how the U.S had just got attacked. I was quite young and I hadn't honestly heard of the WTC aside from that one Simpsons episode where Homer goes to NYC (sad, but true)...but I just remember my teacher hearing that announcement, then going to the librairy and coming back and telling us what had happened. I remember she said it was a terrorist attack and I remember some girl in my class asking "why would they do that?". Although they didn't stop classes that day, I just remember everyone skipping, even in grade 7, to go to the librairy and watch what was happening on the TV there. I remember walking home that day and not realizing the impact, tragedy and seriousness of the moment, because I hadn't seen the footage...all I knew was that two planes had crashed into a building...but the impact was far much deeper then I had fathomed sitting in history class.

However, I also remember some kids in my school becoming extremely ignorant and idiotic to any brown person in the weeks following the attacks as well. I think much of that had to do with us being in middle school (hence the immaturity), but there were quite a few guys who would just randomly call any brown person a "paki" or a "terrorist" in concurrence with the attacks. This led to a lot of fights throughout the school year.

 

[TheFreshPrince]

^Yeah, i didnt get the big deal until i went home and my mom explained it to me, our school also kept goin, but everyone was super distracted and class wasnt really goin on as usual

 

[umair]

Yeah I hate it when the call paki's or indians terrorists. Why us? They are dumb enough to know that it was afghanistan and iraq. I tell them that, and they are like "So, yall look the same" or "yall are from the same region". They stupid remarks make me wanna beat someone up. And I always get the terrorist comments. I hate, why me? I am from Pakistan, not Iraq or Afghanistan. What does Pakistan have to do with this?

 

[Karma]

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Umair15:</div><div class="quote_post">Yeah I hate it when the call paki's or indians terrorists. Why us? They are dumb enough to know that it was afghanistan and iraq. I tell them that, and they are like "So, yall look the same" or "yall are from the same region". They stupid remarks make me wanna beat someone up. And I always get the terrorist comments. I hate, why me? I am from Pakistan, not Iraq or Afghanistan. What does Pakistan have to do with this?</div>

It's the magic of ignorance. Usually people who are ignorant believe that since they can't differenciate brown people into different countries (Indian, Bengali, Nepali, Sri Lankan, Pakistani etc), they just classify all south asians as "paki", which is much easier to do.

 

[Chutney]

I was in Grade 9 and my science teacher told us that randomly. Nobody really believed her though, and it was only until my lunch, when we went to my friend's house that I learned that it actually happened. It still didn't faze me too much, until I got home and actually saw the video on T.V. Then the magnitude of the event became clear and I remember being really paranoid about my relatives in New York.

I didn't really get any crappy treatment at school, even though I was half-expecting it. I went to mostly brown high school, so that issue never really came up. My dad got stopped on a flight for no reason a couple of months later, though.

 

[Moo2K4]

I was a sophmore in high school, celebrating my 15th birthday. It was 3rd period history class when I found out. It seemed like a normal day until the teacher decided to skip lecture and turn the TV on. We then proceeded to watch the CNN coverage of that for the next week or so, talking about terrorism and what not.

 

[Karma]

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Chutney:</div><div class="quote_post">
I didn't really get any crappy treatment at school, even though I was half-expecting it. I went to mostly brown high school, so that issue never really came up. My dad got stopped on a flight for no reason a couple of months later, though.</div>

Personally, nothing really happened to me either, but there were a lot of soft-spoken brown guys who would just randomly be called Paki or terrorist and because they wouldn't respond back, those kind of slurs continued. However, if you defended yourself, people wouldn't say anything.

 

[monty001]

I was fresh outta highschool too and I remember getting up at like 9am and the TV was on...and I was just like what the hell? I couldn't believe it at first. I was starting college in like 2 weeks and I knew who the blame was gonna go to. I had this jackass of an English teacher my first quarter and man...he really didn't like me because of my skin tone and name.

Anyway...like Junoon said...it's the ignorance of the people. There are plenty of ignorant people. I still get weird looks whenever I travel or go to the airport. I just look back at those people and smile. Most people are cool though.

 

[Mamba]

I was in between classes. When we got to English class, this girl was crying because of a plane crash. Everyone spread rumors about her mother dying the crash, but I didn't believe it. I went to my science teacher and she told me everything. I was told not to tell the class, but I couldn't help it. I told everyone and the teacher verified it for us. She wouldn't let us watch it on TV, so a whole bunch of us left and went into the next class.

That week, some kid called me "one of those hijackers," because of my Arab ethnicity. I proceeded to grab him by the throat and slam him into the lockers, never said a word to me again.

It's still a bitch to go to the airports with my last name, Azzam. Especially because they're is an American Terrorist who is from the county I live in, Riverside, with my last name. They call him Azzam the Americam. Bin Laden's mentor was also named Abdullah Yusef Azzam.

Once we were flying to Michigan to go deer hunting. My dad's a Federal agent, so he carries a fire arm on him because the DEA asks him to be an unofficial Air Marshal on the flight. We make it through security with not much hassle, except they had to check my brother's cast for explosives. Then, when we get to the front desk to board the flight, the bitch tells us that they did everything wrong (when they didn't, she was cool until she asked my dad's name, and then said, "oh, there is a mistake") and we had to be re-checked by security.

 

[TheFreshPrince]

^^That sucks man, i go to a pretty much all white/black school, so i never witnessed much of that stuff. This guy had a dry cleaner in the cities and his name was bin laden, so he had to change the name of his shop which is pretty sad. That pisses me off that people are like that, though im not suprised, i used to go to this really red neck high school, and everyone kind of talked liek that, but no one was there to shut em up.

 

[Mamba]

The thing is, I don't even look Arab. I'm half Arab, half Latin. If anything, I look like a mix of white and latin person. The only thing arab about me is I stay kind of dark in the winter when white people get white. I wouldn't even call it dark, I call it a tan. I don't know. It's pathetic. Racism is almost as bad as it was back in the day, it's just more concealed.

 

[NTC]

I was 15 at the time, I had just woken up, I hadnt heard of the WTC before the attacks funnily enough, so I was just like "so what...." when I turned on the TV and saw it, then I left for school, got to my friends house and he was watching it on TV aswell, and was just like "holy s**t man! check this out!" so I watched on as they showed the plane smashing into the WTC, then it sort of hit me at the severity of what I had just witnessed.

I was lucky that day though, school reports came out, and my parents didnt bother to read mine for like 2 weeks thanks to 9/11, just aswell because it was terrible, lol.

But anyway, R.I.P to all the victims of 9/11, such a tradgedy. Watching that footage over and over is truely breathtaking.

 

[TimmyDMVP]

I remember i was on the school bus heading to school listening to the radio when everyone started broadcasting that we were under attack. then they said IT GETS EVEN WORSE i was wondering what the hell is going on. When i got to school everyone was talking about it, when i got practice the coach told us to gather round the TV and he turned it on, man i can still remember seeing people falling to the ground, i was in tears along with some other players to see people going through that. And as for the racial people, i remember this one kid getting harassed by this group of wannabe gangsters/thugs, they were pushing him around and our team went up to them and told them you mess with him, you mess with us, he had nothing to do with this. They ran like lil sissies.

 

[MainMan]

i was a junior in h.s. and they wouldnt let us watch the tv or anything..they just gave us updates on the p.a. and everyone was outragged because we couldnt watch it...they wanted us to focus on our work...but by the last hour of school i think every class had the tv going...it was a crazy day..i remember i had just got my first cell phone like 2 weeks prior and it didnt work for like a week

 

[antonyo09]

5th grade doing a math worksheet then the teachers started walking back and forth out of the room into the teacher's lounge they told us to keep doing our work then they had a early release at 12 and told us to go straight home and lock the doors. we walked to school cus we lived on the marine base

 

[Laker_fan]

I was in the British 7th grade(12 turning 13). I remember it was around 3:05pm GMT and I got out of lesson early and went onto the school bus. I was the first one on the bus as I got out of school around 5 minutes early. The bus driver told me about it as soon as I got on. To be honest, I didn't know what a terrorist was, all I knew is that someone had flown a place into some building in America. As soon as I got home(around 4.30pm GMT, I turned the TV on and saw what had happened. The next day I went to school there were a thousand rumours about Bin Laden and how he was going to contaminate the British watering systems etc..

 

[Legacy]

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Umair15:</div><div class="quote_post">Yeah I hate it when the call paki's or indians terrorists. Why us? They are dumb enough to know that it was afghanistan and iraq. I tell them that, and they are like "So, yall look the same" or "yall are from the same region". They stupid remarks make me wanna beat someone up. And I always get the terrorist comments. I hate, why me? I am from Pakistan, not Iraq or Afghanistan. What does Pakistan have to do with this?</div>

It wasn't Afghanistan it was Iraq.
I heard about it when I was in 4th grade. I didn't know what happend then my teacher told me.

 

[44Thrilla]

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Carter:</div><div class="quote_post">It wasn't Afghanistan it was Iraq..</div>Wow.

 

[Legacy]

Well maybe some of the people were Afghan but Afghans are not terrorists.

 

[AznxBaller]

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Wll maybe some of the people were Afghan but Afghans are not terrorists.</div>
But some of the terrorists (actually I think all on the 9/11 thing) were Afghan...

 

[P.A.P.]

I was in Grade 7 at the time, and my teacher came in with a paper and read it to us. I was one of the few people in my class that knew what the WTC's were, because of The Simpsons and Tim Duncan-David Robinson. Anyways, we had time to ask questions about the incident after she read the paper, and being the kid I was, and I really had no clue about the severity of the attack until I came home.

 

[thedude9990]

i was in school, (you could of seen the towers from my school) so there was like a fire nd smoke we didnt know what it was and the teachers werent allowed to tell us, parents would come threw the day and pick there kids up, i remeber that day so clearly i think its cause one of my friends dad worked in the building close to it

 

[44Thrilla]

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Carter:</div><div class="quote_post">Wll maybe some of the people were Afghan but Afghans are not terrorists.</div>Nobody said all Afghans are terrorists, but the country was harboring the terrorist group Al-queda, led by Osama Bin Laden, which was responsible for the attacks.

 

[M Two One]

I was a Senior in High School and I was staying at home since I was ill at the time. Then I woke up at 10AM and was getting some breakfast ready to watch some early morning shows and turned on the TV it was everywhere. I was stunned at first, I thought the Network has switched the channels around again. Then when I flipped the first channel I was pretty shocked to see something like that could happen.

 

[Mamba]

Afghans are not terrorists? Like 44 said, all Afghani's are not terrorists, but there are plenty that are. Do you think that when the Taliban had its stay in Afghanistan, that nobody from that country joined them.

To make a statement like that is pure ignorance.

 

[Mr. J]

I was in the 7th grade. It was a regular day, but by lunch time everyone's parents came to pick them up. I had no idea what happened until I was like the only person left in the class. As soon as I got home my mother explained to me exactly what happened. At the time she worked around that area and she saw when the towers collapsed. She said she couldn't believe it; it was like a surreal moment. I'm really fortunate because she could have definitely been one of the victims on 9/11. I still couldn't believe it until a couple of weeks later it kind of settled in on me.

Terrible day.

 

[Apollo]

It was 5th grade and I cleary remember our principal calling our grade into the hallway to tell us what had happen. At the time, I didn`t even know what and where the WTC`s was. The next thing I knew my mom was picking me up from school with tears. I remember just watching all the coverage at home tonight. It`s just so sad that there is actually this kind of cruelty and sadness in our world...