What were you doing on September 11, 2001?

I was heading to work when I heard the news on the local rock station...I thought it was a joke. I got into class and turned on the news and I felt my body turn cold because of the footage.

 

I was in bed, I was woken up by my mom knocking at my door talking about "another pearl harbor or something."

I turned on CBS to see pictures of The Twin Towers attacked, and The Local Air Force Base warning everyone to stay off its property. Hard to believe it was just a year ago

 

Running towards the East River! Scared!

 

I was on the west coast here, but I had to teach a really early morning college class. So i was in early listening to the radio. These DJs started joking around about "some idiot" flying into the WTC. Then a few minutes later, they got really quiet, then announced the 2nd plane, and the pentagon. The change in their voices was almost as creepy as the news. So then I just went into class and told a bunch of students about it.

 

After a day at university, where my biggest worry was about an assingment I had to hand in, I headed home. Ate dinner, and watched The West Wing.
During the final ad break, the news came on, saying that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. I told myself that it was probably nothing much, just a small aircraft with engine trouble. After the West Wing finished, the news came up again, but this time it was direct from New York (NBC or CNN, I think). Which is very odd. They were showing pictures of the WTC, when another plane came crashing into the 2nd tower. That is when I got worried....1 plane could be counted as an accident, but 2 is something worse. A short while later they reported that smoke could be seen from the Pentagon, and another plane had crashed in a field. That is when I started to get really worried and scared.

After watching the news for a couple of hours, I prepared to go to bed (it was after midnight), right when the first tower collapsed. By now my whole family was glued to the TV, and I remember my dad saying "Whoever did this is gonna get there asses kicked." I stayed up until about 2:30AM, and after a restless night, got up at 7:30am and headed off to uni.

 

I was out on my daily run before work.

I was listening to 96.7FM here in Austin and one of the DJ's mentioned they heard a plane hit the WTC. They were laughing about it because they thought it was some drunk pilot. They were comparing it to the moron that got his hot air balloon stuck in the Statue of Liberty a month earlier. So of course I thought nothing of it. After my run I took a shower and turned on the TV to catch Sportscenter. They were showing live feeds of NYC in the aftermath of the first plane hit. I was confused to see nonsports on ESPN. After about two minutes I gathered what had happened and was in total shock.

I now wonder how those DJ's on the radio felt about their joking comments in retrospect, which unfortunately were on the air.

 

I was waiting for the cable man to show up and fix and cable. I didn't know what happened at first. My brother called me to ask if I was OK. I asked him What's going on, and he said that's what I wanted to ask you. He told me what happened. While we were on the phone the second plane hit, and I turned on the radio to listen.

I then hung up the phone went outside and watched the mayhem. I saw the flames, people were everywhere. I left some medicine at my wife's house(she was my girlfiriend then and we didn't live together) I finally got ahold of her, and we she made her way to my house. It was scary as hell, just seeing people who had been there and talking to strangers and neighbors about what was happening, and seeing guys in business suits completely covered in ash, and dirt walking around in dazes. I tried to call other family memebers friends over and over, but the phone lines were pretty jammed up. It took just over a day, and that was pretty much it. I felt numbed and over come with all that had happened and everything that was going on.

 

At the exact moment that it happened I was waiting for the bus to pick me up for school. I didn't find out about it though until first period when my algebra teacher came in crying. I thought for sure a family member of hers had died or something. I remember my stomach dropping when I heard the news, and I went into a state of disbelief.

Unlike you DrewP none of my teachers made us do work. We weren't supposed to be allowed to turn on the tvs but almost all of my teachers did anyway. What an awful day!

I will never forget that look of my algebra teacher first walking in though. Bone chilling...

 

I was asleep. By the time I woke up, both the towers had already collapsed. It took me a while to get caught up on everything that had happened. I kept seeing the live footage of where the towers had been and looking and looking and thinking that surely the towers are there, I just can't see them because of all the smoke.

It actually took what seemed like a long time before the station I was watching replayed tapes of the planes hitting the towers and of the towers collapsing. It just seemed so surreal since I had gone to sleep with New York intact only to awaken with four planes having been hijacked and crashed and two massive buildings just gone (and one massive building seriously damaged).

It also seemed like it was all over by the time I woke up, so I didn't really have any fear of continued attacks throughout the day. There was still some question about a flight to Cleveland or something that was vaguely being mentioned on the news, but by then, I figured we'd be shooting down anymore hijacked airliners.

Amazingly, I didn't even think to contact any family members or anything. I eventually emailed my mother because I know she worries about how things affect me (If you can help it, don't pick a mother with a PhD in Psychology), but I didn't think to call my father (to this day, we've not had any discussion related to the events of 9/11 or their aftermath) or my sister or any of my numerous step-mothers. I briefly considered calling my cousin who lives in New York, but I figured he'd probably be busy working since he's an editor for the New York Times.

After about an hour of getting caught up on what was going on, I put a DVD in and watched movies for the rest of the day, stopping only to answer email from time to time (and the first email I received was from one of the actors with whom I was working on a feature. He didn't mention the attacks at all. He just wanted to know when we were shooting again).

I was shocked by the images I saw while watching the news coverage that day, but it wasn't until reading about the people who lost their lives and those who damn-near came close that I had any real emotional response to the attacks. (And seeing the outpouring of support from around the world also choked me up, as well as seeing Americans band together to do the best they could to help one another).

 

I was at work when I heard about it. Several co-workers had radios and were listening to it. It seemed so unreal to me. I mean I sat there and said "This isn't happening..." I also spent the whole day reading the Hangout to keep updated with what was going on in NYC, DC, and elsewhere.

It was also on the Hangout that I really got emotional. Several posters that I didn't really know at the time were talking about our foreign policy and it just rubbed me the wrong way. That was the maddest that I have been in a long time (BTW - I have made up with those posters and everything was forgiven).

I didn't watch TV for like 3 days, but on that Friday, I turned it on NBC and saw this woman whose son was on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. She was recounting what he said to her because he had called her on his cell phone. The whole time she was crying and just thinking about it now is bringing tears to my eyes. I had no choice but to turn the TV off or I would have started bawling right there. and I really don't want to talk about that anymore because it is so hard for me to think about that

 

Now that I think about it, I think I read the Clutch board and posted from time to time, too.

 

I was at work surfing the BBS when across110th (I think) posted that a plane hit one of the WTC buildings.
Went into the breakroom next to my office and turned the TV on, pretty soon all the employees were in there watching in awe.

Actually heres the thread
http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21805

 

I was at my dad's house for his birthday. We were gonna spend the day together, and just have an all around good time. Then all hell broke loose. I can still remember crying while looking at the chaos on my tv. I have one relative who died that day. I wasn't very close to him, but we met and talked from time to time. I instantly thought of him, because I knew he wasn't going to make it, and started to pray for him and EVERYONE in the world.


Tomorrow is going to be a really hard day for everyone


Cod

 

I was in college, and still sleeping when it all went down. When I woke up, I got on my computer and one of my online friends told me to turn on the TV. The first thing I saw was a far away view of the WTC area, completely engulfed in smoke as far as I could see on the screen. At that time, I was seriously worried that there had been some kind of nuclear strike and that all of NYC had been destroyed somehow. I was relieved to find out that wasn't the case, but not too relieved to find out that things had still gone very, very badly that day. It will not be a morning I soon forget, if ever.

 

I was sleeping without a care in the world. My college started in late September, so I was enjoying the waning days of my vacation. When I woke up in my PJs, I saw my sister watching TV in the game room when she was supposed to be at work.
"Someone just crashed a plane into the WTC."
My eyes were still getting focused and when I saw the television, I wondered if it was real.
"Are you serious? Is that real?"
And I found out that it was two planes that did it, and I thought, "Oh ****, there's going to be some riots around America today."
Even though I lived in Orange County, CA, the threat of attack was still large and people were being sent home from work.
I watched a lot of news, more than I really should have. It was just mindnumbing, I felt like I was at a seafood buffet, just eating and eating without that satisfying feeling but only that empty drive to eat more so that I would be at the point where I was not only full, I would be stuffed.
I went online while watching TV, and I acted normal. I went on some of my routine sites and wondered how the day would go on from there.
I didn't feel anything. The death count was tolling on by the minute, and though I did have automatic responses about how horrible it was and some random flashes of anger and bitterness, all were temporary and by the moment.
I spent the day in confusion and routine. I talked to some of my friends with the same automatic responses and in retrospect there was some hidden relief that all my acquaintances were still alive, even if we were 3000 miles away from ground zero.

It was the night after that I laid in bed, pondering the infusion images and chaos I had seen for two days straight that I began to cry and wonder what kind of direction humanity is going to be.

 

I was actually asleep for the start of it. I had gotten the day off because I had tickets to Smackdown over at the Laptop (yeah I'm a wrestling fan, almost a wrestling encyclopedia for my friends) and my mom woke me up saying "A plane just hit the World Trade Center!" I thought she was exaggerating, that maybe someone in a Cessna had gotten mixed up and hit it (it had happened before with a military plane, I think). So I wake up and turn on my TV to Fox News just in time to see the second plane go in. I thought I had mi**** the remote and had it on HBO or something. I just sat on my bed watching it all trying to come to grips with what had happened. Then the news about the Pentagon hit and I just got up and got out a uniform because I knew that work was going to call any minute. Sure enough, my boss calls about 45 minutes later and says that he needs me to come in for an "emergency" prayer service that evening (I'm a security guard at a large area church). So, I got to watch the whole thing and etch it into my consciousness. Then I got to go to work and stand at the entrance to the church, gun in VERY plain view, and watch bewildered, scared, and angry people shuffle past me looking at me as if they were afraid I was going to tackle them and arrest them there on the spot.

Being a big time History major had I actually started to think about what the ramifications of that day were going to be, who had done it, etc. I guess until then I hadn't really realized that my schooling had started to make me think like a historian.

 

A B25 bomber hit the Empire State Building many, many years ago (1945). Perhaps that's what you're thinking of?

 

Let's start at September 10th, 2001.

It was the afternoon, and I went to the store to go refill some water.

A few friends of mine who were still in highschool were some of my wrestling buddies. I went to go meet them at the Cy-Fair ISD TV studio, because they were going to film the board meeting. (those are actually kinda fun, because you sit there eating either Jason's Deli, or Papa John's while watching cable TV.) I busted out some Smackdown! tickets out of my pocket, and gave it to them because the three of us were going to go see Smackdown! on September 11th, 2001.
The next day.

I wake up to the tv, blaring loud, because my dad is an *******, and he turns the tv up really loud in the morning. Jackass, I am trying to sleep. I got up anyway, around 8:45ish, and I passed the living room. I saw the news and I saw the WTC. I was like ****. What is going on here? That was some crazy ****. Was I dreaming? I went to wash my face, and went to watch some TV. I am an idiot, but I switched to every single broadcast to see who did the best broadcasting. Later in the morning, EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL carried their news. MTV, Nickelodean, and other Viacom Networks carried Dan Rather, and MSNBC and others had Tom on it, and ESPN, and so on had Peter Canadian Jennings on it. I hit the internet to go read more on it. Out of habit, I go to ESPN.com, and the biggest news is the picture of the WTC with an airplane, and with great reason of course. I go to other sports websites, and it's all the same. I went to CNN.com, but they had to redirect you, understandibly. After watching all of that, I went to go take a shower, still in disbelief.
I went to my high school to go pick up a friend, because he has Co-Op. He attends Jersey Village High School. I went there, and people were just regular, not too loud, not boisterous, kind of humbled. I saw alot of parents parked there, and running in the school.I am sure they made announcements about it. I went upstairs, with no one harassing me, surprisingly. I went to the TV room to say wassup to everybody I knew, and they were watching television and stuff. I went to the editing room to go find my friend and he was there working. or sitting there and let somebody else do it. We went to wal-mart to go buy some posters for smackdown. As we were in the car going to wal mart, we were listening to the radio of the reports, and the stories, like this one lady, who didnt go to work early because her daugther wanted her to make a sandwhich. Good thing she did, because if she didn't, she would have been in the towers. Crazy how **** works. Apperently we learned smackdown was gonna be delayed til Thursday for a live showing.

I went around driving the city that day listening to the radio. No Music of course. Just the DJ talking. It was different but it was good.

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I went drivng around. I went past the compaq center to look at the marqee, because i tried calling them, to find out what the deal was. it was postponed til thursday. an NSX almost ran me over as i was getting on 59 from I forgot what road. all that crap was meaningless. That was my day. It was a strange day.
im feeling tired. ill finish this tommorow.

 

I was living with an ex-girlfriend at the time. I'd been looking forward to September 11 for a long time. As some of you know, I'm a huge Dylan freak and that was the release date for his new album, Love and Theft. I found out on the tenth that Cactus Records was getting copies in and staying open late, to start selling the CD at midnight. I was there at midnight, bought the CD and drove home to listen to it. My girlfriend was asleep, so I put it on very low and listened to it three times in a row. Around three or four in the morning I went to sleep. My phone woke me up. It was one of my friends and co-workers telling me to turn on the television. The first plane had hit. I turned on the TV minutes before the second plane hit. I saw both buildings collapse. I lived for four years in NY. The last two, I actually lived in Jersey City. We used to hang out on the dock and look across to the WTC. And I stilll have dozens of close friends there, though none who'd have been in that district.

Months later, my theater company was to begin a workshop with a New York director on a new play, to be developed with the company. He showed up in November to discuss the project, which was to be about love and loss. He'd just received a copy of the air traffic control transcripts, and asked if we'd be comfortable doing an experimental, potentially irreverent piece around the events of 9/11. I told him that I trusted him to treat it seriously, and I trusted him to treat it unsentimentally. We premiered the play, entitled We Have Some Planes, in April. Our lighting designer lives a block from the WTC. Her windows were blown out and everything she owned was coated in thick ash and dust. Ninety percent of the text in the production was the exacct air traffic control transcripts, in their entirety, spoken in real time as a clock counted down the minutes to impact. We also used the transcripts of cell phone conversations between passengers and loved ones. Our production is the cover story of this month's American Theatre magazine. If anyone's interested, you can read the review by going to tcg.org and clicking on American Theatre.

I still remember the first time I listened to that Dylan record and I still the remember the first time I heard the lyric "sky full of fire, pain pouring down." And I remember the first time it resonated for me, as unlikely as it seemed, only hours after hearing it for the first time.