A decade has gone by since 9/11/01

ShinRa

ShinRa

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What were you doing 10 years ago today? How old were you? Where were you when the disaster happened? How much has changed for you since then? Discuss.
 
I recall waking up and going outside my room to find my mother in the living room staring with hands cupped at the television screen. I came out to see the planes repeatedly going into the towers and switching channels to find the same thing everywhere. Two thoughts occurred to my ten year old self:

1) Did this mean I could get school off?
2) Where the **** was CheezTV? (a popular children's program that showed Pokemon, Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon)
 
I was in bed.and my sister came saying that we were attacked and at war.I had no idea that something so big and with so many people in it could be gone within a matter of seconds.
The last 2 days I've been arguing with Idiot truthers on FB....fracking idiots.
 
I was celebrating my 14th birthday and school was let out for me that day so I watched the news until after the second tower went down and nothing new happened.
Don't really remember much other than that about that day.
 
I was 8 and got woken up, watched the news, went whatever do I have to go to school? and then disappointed when they said yes.

I remember we had to listen to a lot of stuff at school. Don't remember what it was, really, though. About how a lot of people died and planes crashed into buildings or something. I was bored.

Ten years later I'm joining the military. I swore in to the Air Force yesterday.
 
I believe I was around 6 and was in my 2nd or 3rd grade class. I remember everyone's parents coming and picking them up from school once the news hit.

I sort of remember seeing it all over the news and such as well, when my parents were watching it.

Also, I think the real scare for us was that Cleveland was supposed to be hit, and I lived around that area. I can't remember it all too well, anything that long ago is just a blur really, and even then I didn't know what was going on.
 
Was in school, Grade 10 I think? Someone poked their head in and said the World Trade Center was attacked. Teacher was visibly freaked out, told us just to keep working. I didn't know what the WTC was, and just imagined it as like some kind of huge plaza marketplace with like shaded merchant stands and shit, with consumer products coming from all over the world. We kept working. School went on as normal, except in my American History class we watched TV. Nothing happened except me being bored listening to the news casters talk out their ass. In my last class they said one of the towers collapsed, we kept on as normal. Went home, played video games. Mom came home from work and turned on the news, and they were replaying the tower collapses, mom was freaking out, wouldn't let me play video games, so I just did homework and listened to music.

Then America reacted in a stupid ****ing way, now everyone shits themselves every time someone says "boo", patriotism runs rampant preventing any self-reflection or improvement, and now I'm a cynical asshole because I've been pissed off over this shit for so long.
 
I should address the "How much has changed for you since then?", though it will be a marked tonal shift. These days it's nigh on impossible for me to isolate the tragedy of the event 9/11 itself, but rather sum it up with the large shadow that it has cast over the past decade. What once felt black and white to me as an impressionable child is now scattered with impossible shades of grey. I once viewed it as the evil of Islam versus the sanctity of our Western world, in a view that was pretty much outright racism as a child, and now looking back I'm rather embarrassed.

As I now see from a less naive and more globally aware adult, how do I view it? I see not two planes crashing into buildings and the tragic loss of thousands of Americans but a symbol, a catalyst of two unnecessary wars that have killed thousands upon thousands more innocents than what was initially wrought. I see racial and religious prejudices that have been irreversibly amplified, a diversity that I believe at least in Australia has widened in time.

And basically what Krynn said, because I'm too hungover to continue with this.
 
I totally forgot.

I was in the 5th grade. Saw it on the news. Didn't affect me much. :v
 
Well on the 9th of November I was doing coursework for college.....


Okay, what I was really doing on 11th September I was eating lunch at college I think in the second week in, when a nutjob burst in through the cafeteria door shouting "A plane has hit the tower, a plane hit the tower", and proceeded to run down the hallway "We're going to die! We're going to die!"

That was when the first plane hit, after lunch several people had got personal radios that they were listening to as the whole thing evolved.

I have noticed there is a lot of security in New York and Washington and they have radiological detection in place just to be safe. Its makes those places safe, and would make them seriously stpid if they decided to hit there. Now what if the terrorists performed a ropadope like in the film Broken Arrow and instead of hitting East they went West, and hit a city like, Portland, Oregon
 
I was in my homec class in the 8th grade, I remember some girls worrying about their brothers being in the military and crying. I just tried to comprehend what exactly this meant.
 
I was in class, celebrated Emporius' birthday before the teacher announced that some planes had been hijacked and flown into buildings. I had heard that one of the planes was headed for Washington, which initially freaked me out because my dad was supposed to be flying to Washington that very day. Turned out I had mixed up the state and the city (was too young to properly know the difference at the time).
 
Wow.

Its been a whole 10 years since I've forgotten my sister's birthday. I tell thee, this makes one hell of a reminder.

Anyway, I was in year seven, didn't know about it till I got home from school. Then proceeded to be annoyed because the TV played the same thing over and over again rather than putting on cartoons. One's priorities are strange when one is younger.
 
I found it pretty spectacular as a kid! Although I didn't like how my parents thought it was more important than watching Pokemon.
 
I was behind my mate's TV. He had been given a surround sound system, but had the incorrect wires to hook it up, and I was just realising this.

Me: "Try the TV"
ED: "Shit"
ME: No good?
ED: "not working, and 2 planes have flown into some skyscrapers in America"
ME: "WTF, have they fallen over?"
ED: "No, just burning and there's body's falling from them
ME: "..."

Then we had peppered steak for dinner.

I can probably recall almost all of that day.
 
My mom was waking me up and dragging me out of my room before the sun had even come up to tell me what was happening and to show me on TV. I think I was in the 5th grade.

That day in school, we just watched the news, which was nothing but replays of the two towers going down.
 
Might be worth remembering the 100k+ civilians killed in Iraq too...
 
Stormy said:
Might be worth remembering the 100k+ civilians killed in Iraq too...
Click to expand...

85ca7539e4215bcb0330057f65812b1e.jpg


I seem to recall I had just got back from school when I tried to stick some monotonous game show on for background noise when I noticed every single channel was covering this rather tall building that was on fire. Not realising what had happened or why it was of such great importance I quizzed my parents for a bit and they filled me in. I then instantly ran outside to meet with my friends and there was absolutely no one around whatsoever; everyone was in doors glued to their televisions. It was like a small, country side edition of the start of 28 days later. Then I went back inside and played Playstation.
 
14 years old, walked into world geography class and my teacher had the tv on, live. I had no clue what was going on. Then gym class and we sat in the cafeteria and watched tv. We never really did anything in gym class anyways. I remember at lunch break going to find my sister to ask if we were going home for the day, and she laughed and said I was dumb.
 
I think I was 13 at junior high in my history class, my history teacher was late coming in... I think she was like 10 minutes late.
When she finally comes in, she's running into the class with tears rolling down her face and she turns on the TV and tells us what was going on.
I believe she caused a few of the girls to begin crying and for the rest of the day we were going through drills on what to do in case of an attack.

When I got home, my mom and dad were quietly staring at the TV, shaking their heads and my mom just had this horrified look on her face while my dad had a look of pure anger.
I was pretty much oblivious to everything that was going on that day and didn't fully grasp the weight of what actually happened... I ended up just going back on the computer and playing games.
 
I was like around 13 ,was living at grandma house at the time,remenber it was morning and it was showing it on tv,it was weird but didnt got my atention,and them the second crash happened,my brother was all "thats some planned stuff I tell ya!" and a uncle who travelled there like a year before also was there and kinda shocked since he was there once and allways wondered what will people do if there is like a earthquake or something,so yeah we where glued to the tv

also I rmenber when they started to invade afganistan I started playing the starcraft demo for the first time lol
 
I was 14, and I distinctly remember thinking after the second tower got hit "Oh well it doesn't look that bad, they could still repair them, and be back in business " *buildings collapse* "shit".

And I for one was aware of the fact that I was watching history unfold right before my eyes. So in that respect you guys be dumb.
 
I was playing GTA II with a friend when my mom called and said that planes had hit The World Trade Centre and Pentagon. Oddly enough, she also said something about a car bomb doing off outside of the Department of State in Washington, but I suppose it was just one of the many rumours flying around at the time. I turned on the TV just in time to see the first tower collapse. It was pretty emotional for me, since I had been in New York with my family just three years before, and had gone up in one of the towers.
 
Quixoticism said:
I was celebrating my 14th birthday and school was let out for me that day so I watched the news until after the second tower went down and nothing new happened.
Don't really remember much other than that about that day.
Click to expand...
Does this mean it's your 24th birthday today? Happy birthday :)

I was 12 and walking into my seventh grade social studies class when it happened. I was one of the first to class and the TV was on when I got there... it was only about five minutes after the second plane hit, so they were still calling it an accident and all of the anchors were really confused and pretty much freaking out, which was disturbing and a bit bewildering to me at that age because I had never seen adults lose their composure on such a widespread scale before (or since). My social studies teacher was losing his shit and kept talking about how HUGE this was and how it was going to define our lives (especially as the minutes passed and it became clear it was an intentional attack on our country) and change everything. Called it, I guess.

The principal came in at one point and told us to turn the TV off, about 20 minutes later. Apparently we were the only class in the school that knew about it and they didn't want us to know about it for fear of scaring us or pissing off parents or whatever. My teacher turned off the TV but turned it right back on after the principal walked out, telling us that it was too important to stop watching and that "This is social studies." We saw the towers fall live and a bunch of kids started crying so he eventually turned the TV off. In the next period we spread the news to the rest of the school, a lot of people didn't believe us until our teacher walked in with tears running down his face.

I remember just being worried about my uncle, who works in business/finance in Manhattan and used to go to the WTC all the time for work (although he didn't have an office there). I also found the whole thing very surreal since I had visited NYC a couple years earlier and went to the observation deck on top of one of the towers and it was strange to think that was an ambiguous point a few thousand feet up in the air now.

It's odd now that I think back on that day and how enormous and momentous and historical it felt while it was happening, and reflect on how drastically and negatively it has ultimately impacted the world... it's really too bad that we dealt with it so indelicately.

Truly the defining moment of our generation and era though. It's interesting to think that it will forever be a Pearl Harbor kind of "where were you?" moment that will be historically relevant for hundreds of years.
 
I was in Gym class in 9th grade when the principal made an announcement that the first plane struck at the tail end of the period. I remember at that point they seemed to think it was an accident. My next period was Social Studies, and I will forever be grateful that my teacher had a TV and turned it on for the entirety of the period. I think he mentioned how important this was. They then made another announcement that this was an attack and the Pentagon was also hit, but that we were safe, which I found hilarious because I was in rural upstate New York. I distinctly remember cracking a joke about how ridiculous it would be to attack our high school and making a cute popular girl giggle ;)

In fact, everyone was cracking jokes, and lame ones. A really interesting moment was when some younger kid made a joke in a hallway, and I distinctly remember a girl yelling at him, not upset but annoyed at his insensitivity. After that I stopped making any sort of joke.

I heard later that other school systems around New York intentionally kept it from the students. Some of them were much closer to the WTC, so it was possible relatives were killed. But it was impossible them to stop teachers from acting in hysterics, and from watching the news in their offices... so pretty much, what an awful twisted thing to do. I think my school handled it very well, even the bit about us being safe.


...ten years later I'm moving to NYC ;)
 
I remember my father called from work, around 3 or 4pm (there's a +6 hours difference to New York here AFAIK) and told my mother to turn on the TV because there was a terrorist attack in the US. I must've already finished classes, because I was at home at that time and we watched the news. I guess I developed empathy a bit earlier than some of you in this thread, because the whole event was pretty shocking for my 14-year-old self. I didn't burst into tears or spend the whole day stunned, but watching the news it did feel pretty surreal and I knew it was important and tragic.
 
some people at work are saying it was not really a big deal and people die in other Countries every day.I had to bite my tongue and walk away.Otherwise it would have turned in to HR issue :-\
 
I was homeschooled, so we got the news from my mom, who got a call from my aunt after the 2nd plane hit. Turned the tv on in time for the 1st tower to fall.. Pretty scary couple of days. I just remember crying when the second tower fell. I was an architecture nut growing up and I loved the trade towers. And there was that hope that it wouldn't fall. I was 12... I knew that everything had just changed but didn't know how.

Meh. We didn't watch tv in my house, so when the tv was on for a week straight it was kind of a big deal.
 
"I was into planes and buildings before planes were into buildings."

But, seriously, I was in one of my first classes of 6th grade when towers fell. Even though my school was located in northeast Illinois, no student was allowed outside that day. Crazy.
 
No, we can assume the graffiti artist took the photo with a UV light after doing his work :p
 
sixteenth said:
Even though my school was located in northeast Illinois, no student was allowed outside that day. Crazy.
Click to expand...

I remember people reacting the same way here. A lot of my friends were not allowed to go outside that say, because a lot of their parents were afraid this was the preamble to an invasion or some larger scale attack.

I also found out later that day that my uncle had been across the street from the first tower, but had left to get some breakfast or something. He saw both planes hit the towers and both of them come down. Thankfully he'd called my aunt immediately to let her know he was okay, and she was able to relay that information to the rest of our family.
 
I was home from school pretending to be sick that day. 12 years old. Snuggled up downstairs on the couch, i turned on my home theater system anticipating an awesome movie day. The channel that showed up was CNN and all over the news was about how the north tower was hit. Called my mother over, watched the second tower get hit and both towers falling. I've never viewed global conflict the same way again. Actually i didn't give a shit about politics or global events at that age. Since then i've never gone more than three days without checking on global events. Terrible wake up call.
 
Was woken up early (5-6am) by dad and caught it on the news. Doubt I would have seen it live, but it was pretty shocking. I remember struggling to comprehend it at first.

Actually, my memories about the rest of the day must be a little vague, as I was sure I remembered it happening in my first year of high school and going straight to my form class for that year, but if it was ten years ago I would've been fifteen, so... it would have been at least second year? Odd.

Anyway the reaction over here was one of initial shock and disbelief and then pretty much getting over it. I don't remember knowing anyone who thought invading Iraq was an appropriate reaction, even at that age.
 
The war in the wake of 9/11 was Afghanistan (2001), war in Iraq wouldn't be declared until 2003 - under the grounds (false pretense) that they harbored nuclear or chemical weapons. Granted, both were enabled by a terrified public cornered into any brand of supposed vengeance the government and media would allow for.
 
Shows what I know, I've just become so used to it being referred to as "the war in Iraq" I guess.
 
Both wars were part of the broader "war on terror" which was started because of 9/11, so its all the same shit.
 
Except for the fact that it's not. Not at all - and both wars are still waging.

...and none of these wars started because of 9/11, but it certainly helped garner public, special interest and political favor for them.
 
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