4 years ago...where were you?

[KEmperor]

I was in Deviant Sociology interestingly enough.  The professor said that there had been an attack in New York, and that news was sketchy and we'd continue class as normal.  About 20 minutes later someone came around and said classes were cancelled for the day, and to go home.  I went back to the dorms, and watched everything happen on TV.

[J. J.]

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If any Babylon Five fans remember the scene where Londo Molari is on Centauri Prime in the Sand Garden outside of the Royal Palace and looks up and sees the Shadow ships flying over, this was basically the same thing.  That scene actually crossed my mind when I saw the smoke and the F-16.

J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of B5 and writer of the scene, said that it was based on recurring nightmares he had as a child.  I have never had such dreams, but my reality was frightening enough.

[Bugs]

I was working at a place where we had no TV or internet, but other employees came in to get things, as was the Tuesday routine.  Everyone who came in had some new news. 

[falling apart like the ashes of American flags]

My senior year. First period: Physics. Went through like a normal class.

Second period: English. I came in and all I could hear kids talking about was that the World Trade Center had been hit by planes, apparentely not by accident. The teacher comes in and we all bug her to turn on the news. All we did that period was watch it. That basically continued for the remainder of the day in every class.

[The Dowager Mod]

I was watching CNN when it happened.

[Speed of Sound]

I was on vacation in The Adorondacks and I just woke up when my Dad was told by a guy he was talking to on the phone to turn on the TV, so i saw the second plane hit live on TV. later that day we went Hiking on a mountain, where we met a guy that believed it would be a devasting blow to the economy. He, obviously, turned out to be correct (duh)

[Wakie]

I had taken a personal day for a dental appointment.  I slept in.  When I woke up and turned on the tv I was stunned.  I called a friend who I knew worked nights.  We went to lunch and then to donate blood (anticipating that there would be a big need for it).  I spent the majority of that day waiting in line with about 200 other folks who went to donate blood.  Even when told there would be a several hour wait, no one left.

[Gabu]

When it actually happened, I was asleep, given that it was very early in the morning on the west coast.

I initially got the sense that something was up when there were numerous people around my school talking about something that sounded bad, but it wasn't until I checked the news at lunch that I finally got the full picture of what was going on.

My Social Studies teacher essentially cancelled the class for the day to show us footage from CNN and to explain what was going on.

[Platypus]

In bed, asleep

Good answer.  But wasn't it a little late to be asleep in Iowa, where you lived at the time?

It happenned around 11pm here.

My dad woke me at about 6 in the morning, shortly after he woke up, and said "Come downstairs, you have to see something". I did, and they were covering the attacks. It had already occured, obviously, so much of the coerage was of people fleeing the city, and thats what I first saw. I asked my mum "Why are they leaving?" and then there was a replay of the second plane hitting.

I went to school, obviously shaken; but I was trying to supress laughs. When I get really, really nervous, I laugh; there are few times more inappropriate to laugh then after a terrorist attack

The first class was English, and we had a substitue. (MY English teacher, Ms. Nicholls, had a cousin who lived in NYC). We were asked to write down what we were feeling about the attacks. One of the girls in the class asked "What attack?"; and the teacher explained it in detail. I'd seen some coverage, but that was hen I found out about the Pentagon and the plane in Pennsylvania.

I wrote something or other, and I still have it somewhere.

We then had Geography, and everyone was really quiet. Mr. Cross, the Geog teacher and also the Dean of Students, said that we would have a normal class and then there would be a whole-school Eucharist at All Saints. I think it we studied topography that day.

We went across for the whole school Eucharist, at All Saints. My school at the time was an Anglican private school, and was across the street from All Saints, whcih is the largest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere (but not all that spectacular). The church hall, which can easily seat 2,000, was already mostly full with just general people within the community. The little kids got to sit in the rest of the seats; the rest of us lined around the walls, and sat in the corridors. Farther Treloar came in and delivered the eucharist as always, and then said something very simple. I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like "This day may still bring joy and wonder; whilst tragic events have occured today in the United States, we must move on with our lives with Christ's blessing, and reflect with compassion towards the lives lost."

It seemed so, distant for us down here. Despite seeing it on TV, and it being as big a news story here as over there, it just seemed not to be real, you know? It's sort of like, wow, thank god it's not here. I know some of you Americans will get angry at that, but I'm very grateful it didn't happen down here, and at the time America was just too distant for me to care about all that much.

[AkSaber]

When it all happened I was asleep.

But when I got up in the morning, someone left a message on the answering machine saying something about a big news day. So my brother turned on the tv and saw that the U.S.-Mexican border was closed. He thought we were attacked.

When I came downstairs the first thing I saw on the news was a crowd of people running. Then I looked at the bottom of the screen and saw the words saying the World Trade Center had been destroyed. I first thought that only one tower had colapsed.

[Storebought]

I was heading off to my Mathematical Methods class, and decided to stop by the computer lab that was nearby. As usual, I clicked on news sites, this time, only to find every news site jammed with the same smoky image of the Manhattan skyline.

At first, I thought, "What the f* kind of movie preview is this??" (If I heard of Michael Moore back then, I would have sworn it was his filth).  It was only after I found reputable sources, like Drudge, that I learned that it was a real terrorist attack against the United States.

As disgusting as that was to learn, classes still went on: I learned about d-orbitals in the math methods class, and while loops in the basic C class as well.

But, really, since that day, I have had a ... disdain ... for the rest of the world that I've never been able to shake off.

[muon2]

At 8:20 I was getting ready to go to my office, when I got a call from  an elected official friend. She asked if I had the TV on, and if not, I better turn it on. I did and sat mesmerized for an hour, going in somewhat late to the office.

The administrator asked me if I thought this meant war. Without hesitation, I said yes. Within an hour I determined to send staff home for the day, rather than wait for word from the Governor. I resisted declaring an emergency, though a number of my colleagues did. More than anything, my order to lower the flags was the part of the morning that especially gripped me and brought the tragedy home.

[phk]

Watching CNN with my mom and dad.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

In college, 50 miles from Manhattan. They were a bit slow at cancelling classes. When my friend said "both World Trade centers fell down", I was sure he was kidding.

[12th Doctor]

I was in my Gym class getting dressed to go outside when my gym teacher, Mr. Posteraro came in and said that a truck bombs had gone off at the World Trade Center and the Pentegon.  He told me that one of the towers had fallen over.  Mr. P had a strange sense of humor, so, I told him what I tought to be the case "You're so full of sh**t Poz".  It's probably the most wrong I have ever been in my life.  Certainly wish I was right.  Anyway, we went out for a few minutes, but were called back in.  They turned on the radio and played it over the loud speaker.  After I got dressed from the shortened gym class, I went into Mrs. Kunkle, the English teacher's room, while it was still on the radio.  There were a lot of kids in their I knew, including the special someone I have brought up before on the forum.  But, no one was talking, and I felt I needed to discuss the situation with someone, so I went up to find my friend Matt, who was in Mr. Deemer's class on the second floor (things were always very informal at my school).  I sat down in there and talked to Matt and Mr. Deemer.  A couple of people were crying, as I recall.  By the time I made it up there, I recall that the second tower had collapsed.  I remember that I was talking to Matt, and while I was doing so, I was trying to vizualize in my head what had happened, since there were no TV's on.  My vizualization, as I later learned, was very wrong.  Matt seemed kind of excited, not in a gitty type of way, but in the way some people get when they seem compeled to act, but can't do anything.
After that, I went to Mrs. Haggard's Chemistry class and met up with my friend Mike.  The radio was on, Mrs. Haggard didn't even try to teach.  When I first saw Mike, we said the same thing to each other "We predicted this".  Let me explain, about six months before the terrorist attacks occured, I got a reputation in my school for being "paranoid" because I made a comment during the whole China "crisis" that our country was extremely vulnerable to attacks from other countries.  Other people said that we did nto have to worry about China, because we have so much military power.  I stated that, if anyone wanted to attack us, they wouldn't use conventional means, but instead they would use terrorism.  Not only was a "paranoid" enough to say that, but I also said that a major terrorist attack against our country coming from Chinese sponsered groups, or Muslim extremeist was almost sure to happen in the next couple of years.  When I was discussing this with Mike, he made the off-the-cuff comment saying "All a country would have to do to hold us hostage is hyjack a bunch of jets and crach them into stuff.  It was a bittersweet moment of me getting my dues.  This time, I never wished I was more wrong.

Mike and I, being military enthusists, spent the rest of that period listening to radio reports of jets that were still out there and trying to determine if the terrorists were going to use these jets to hit us, and if so, where.  I falsely determined that there was a jet headed for the Sears Tower and, of course, at this point, Flight 93 was still unaccounted for.  Mike and I thought of several possible perpitrators.  Bin Laden was one of them, though we didn;t remember his name, we simply said "the guy who did the Cole bombing.

Well, the rest of the day went on and most of it was discussion of what had happened.  I went home and turned on the news.  Fell asleep watching it that night.

The next morning, I woke up and went to school.  We found out, thankfully, that one of my teachers and a close family friends daughter-in-law had not been working in either of the Towers that had been hit that day.

[J. J.]

There were two rather humorous incidents for me that day.  As I indicated in a previous post, my first call was to Ms. Lakhdari, but the reason I called her first was that she had an answering machine; I just left a message.

My next call was to her niece, my closest friend for nearly 20 years at the time, Vivian (who's not Arab or Muslim, but half Black, half Irish, and raised in in a Puerto Rican household).  Since I met her, I have been making smart ass remarks to her, and as I called I realized that I better sound re-assuring and completely in character or she'd become even more worried.  So the first words out of my mouth were, "Hi Viv, what's new?"

She just exploded with emotion, "J________, are you okay?  Your aunt has been calling!  I thought it was a movie!" I, of course, cracked up at the last one.

At the meeting I was attending, a fellow attendee was Dr. Margaret Bank, a retired law professor and law librarian from the University of Western Ontario.  We had never met, but because both of us were frequently published, we knew each other by reputation.   Dr. Banks is considered to be a brilliant scholar, Canadian constitutional and legal historian, but she is also noted for her quick wit and acerbic comments.

During a break, we were talking and I said to, "You must glad you're a Canadian and not a target?"

She said, "Yes, but I'm down here today."

[TeePee4Prez]

Was driving down Broad Street going to class at Temple University when I heard it on the radio.  I heard classes were cancelled while I was sitting in a student lounge and my cell phone had no signal.  The drive back north on Broad then subsequently up Roosevelt Blvd. was quite scary and had unprecedented traffic. 

[nclib]

I was a college student. I had an appointment around 9:00 (and didn't hear the news). When I got back to my dorm to check my e-mail, I saw the news on Yahoo. I couldn't believe it.

[Keystone Phil]

Was driving down Broad Street going to class at Temple University when I heard it on the radio.  I heard classes were cancelled while I was sitting in a student lounge and my cell phone had no signal.  The drive back north on Broad then subsequently up Roosevelt Blvd. was quite scary and had unprecedented traffic. 

I notice you do this all the time. Aside from a few people, no one knows where Broad Street and the Blvd are and they don't know our neighborhoods.

[All aboard the Carney-val]

I woke up around 7:20 am that morning and my dad turned on CNBC, like he did every morning. Up there was the picture of the North Tower billowing with smoke and I looked there, wondering whether it was a movie of some sort. He looked at me incredulously and asked, "Is that the WTC in Manhattan?" It took almost a minute for me to realize it was, and then I thought it was just a fire, then I realized a plane hit the tower, and then finally dawning to the fact that it was part of a massive terrorist attack. It was just then that the North Tower crumbled in a cloud of debris and I felt disbelief. At school that day we watched CNN for English class and discussed what happened.

[freedomburns]

I found out when I got to work.  I was kind of in a rush that day and even showed up a few minutes late.  Then I just felt the air in the office.  I could tell something was seriously wrong, something weird.  Nobody came up and told me riight away.  I found out on the net when I logged on to my computer.  Then quickly turned on my Walkman to listen to the news on the radio. 

My mom is a professor at Columbia University in Manhattan.  I know Manhattan very well from frequent visits, and I know her office is about twenty-five blocks from the Financial District and Wall St. and the WTC.  I tried calling, but of course all the lines were full.  I cried when I heard her voice when I got her on the phone the next day. 

At work, our fearless leader called us together and told us to take the day off.  He mentioned something about danger in highrises, although our new building is only five stories high.  Anyway, it was a good excuse to use to send us all home.  I have worked at one of the best law-firms in the Bay Area as a Medical Paralegal for the past five years. 

Like everyone else, I went home and tripped out completely on the images I was seeing on TV.  I kept telling people how "movie-like" they seemed.  I still can't believe that I saw something like that, something that was so horribly far from any images I ever expected to see that were real and not created with special effects.  The whole thing was mind-blowing.

[Sam Spade]

I was in Houston going to college at the time.  I had to get up at 8:00 AM that morning (CST) and do some work before my first class of the day (which was at 11:00 AM that semester). 

Whenever I do work in the morning, I like to watch a movie, not news or sports or whatever, so I sat there watching some sh**tty movie and hadn't changed the channel (which I can't even remember now) until I looked at my phone at about 10:30 AM EST and saw about 10 calls there (I kept my phone on silent). 

I listened to the calls and found out about it then from messages left by friends and family, then switched to the news channel right when the first Trade Center fell.

I then drove down to the school to see what was going on make sure that classes were cancelled.  On the way to the building, I saw one of my good friends (R-PA) leaving the building.  Conversation went as follows.

Friend:  "I assume you've heard what's happened."

Me:  "Yep."

F:  "I also assume you know what this means."

M:  "Yep."

F:  "We're going to have to go and kill these effin' Arabs."

M:  "Yep."

[J. J.]

I listened to the calls and found out about it then from messages left by friends and family, then switched to the news channel right when the first Trade Center fell.

I then drove down to the school to see what was going on make sure that classes were cancelled.  On the way to the building, I saw one of my good friends (R-PA) leaving the building.  Conversation went as follows.

Friend:  "I assume you've heard what's happened."

Me:  "Yep."

F:  "I also assume you know what this means."

M:  "Yep."

F:  "We're going to have to go and kill these effin' Arabs."

M:  "Yep."

I had read The Turner Dairies online, a few weeks before (I wasn't going to let the author get any royalties from me).  I wasn't jumping to any conclusions.  I remember saying to my aunt, "The last time somebody did something like this, he was several shades lighter than me."

[Sam Spade]

I listened to the calls and found out about it then from messages left by friends and family, then switched to the news channel right when the first Trade Center fell.

I then drove down to the school to see what was going on make sure that classes were cancelled.  On the way to the building, I saw one of my good friends (R-PA) leaving the building.  Conversation went as follows.

Friend:  "I assume you've heard what's happened."

Me:  "Yep."

F:  "I also assume you know what this means."

M:  "Yep."

F:  "We're going to have to go and kill these effin' Arabs."

M:  "Yep."

I had read The Turner Dairies online, a few weeks before (I wasn't going to let the author get any royalties from me).  I wasn't jumping to any conclusions.  I remember saying to my aunt, "The last time somebody did something like this, he was several shades lighter than me."

Understood.

As I remember, just before I left the apartment, I had heard the talk that they believed a Muslim terrorist organization was behind the bombings.

Still, it's more of a response that I just won't forget, since the prediction of who was behind it was correct and there's no way my friend could have known what I heard.

[12th Doctor]

Was driving down Broad Street going to class at Temple University when I heard it on the radio.  I heard classes were cancelled while I was sitting in a student lounge and my cell phone had no signal.  The drive back north on Broad then subsequently up Roosevelt Blvd. was quite scary and had unprecedented traffic. 

I notice you do this all the time. Aside from a few people, no one knows where Broad Street and the Blvd are and they don't know our neighborhoods.

That's because, like most people from Philadelphia, Philadelphia is all that he thinks there is in life.