9/11 was personal; you can only blame the gods for a natural disaster...but 9/11 was personal, like someone breaking into your home, violating you.

I was at work and on active duty. We watched it on TV right after the first plane hit and then we watched live as the second plane hit. It changed our views and changed our country.

Falling...

(warning: graphic) not for conspiracy theorists who think the government blew up the towers with explosives.

http://www.werismyki.com/artcls/falling.html

I was in the 8th grade at the time.

I was in a video production class...our movie was running late because the boy who was chosen (by the teacher) to be on camera that day was too stupid to read the cue cards so by the time we got back into the classroom it was almost time to switch classes. I remember seeing everyone crowded around the GIANT WALL SIZED TV that was in that room...and there was the first tower, on fire. I figured it was a movie at first, and was confused about why my teacher was watching it...then I noticed the tension in the air around the adults, and kids being rushed to class in the hallways, gym classes being ushered inside. My next class was with my second cousin who teaches social studies, he had us come in and sit down in our seats, and told us what was going on. He gave us the option of having our class with the TV off or on. We decided to have it on with the sound down. (The second tower had been hit in the change between classes, so we were doubly confused at that sight.) I have no idea what he taught that day, but about halfway through class the realization that this was something very big and very scary hit me, and I started to cry.

I remember that for gym class we were walking the track around the football field that day, and we all walked very slowly, talking quietly amongst ourselves. You don't realize how quiet it is without planes in the air if you live next to an airport.

There were rumours going all through the lunch room about us being a target because we had an old airplane factory here during WW2 or something, everyone was confused and it was building into more lies and scares.


When I got home that day I took a long walk by myself, and I guess I must've been pretty unusually quiet around dinner, because my mom pulled me aside to ask if I was ok. I told her I was, I was just scared about what it all meant, who had done it, and why. She said she felt the same way.

It's interesting to see how everyone's accounts are similar, and different, and how it's something that we all remember, relate to, and share. I'm suprised at how much I can remember, the clear blue sky, the silence that hung in the air with grounded planes, how it felt wrong to enjoy the nice breeze and warm sunshine, how some of the adults tried to hide it from us, and others were very up front (no talking about it in some classes, TVs on all day in others.)

Hope that gives a little insight on how the kids felt that day.

I had just arrived at work, and heard the uncertain news reports trickling in on the radio. No one was quite sure what to make of it. They talked a bit about the B25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in the 40's during bad weather. It was only when the second plane struck that it became apparent that it was a terrorist act.

We didn't have a TV where I worked, so one of the guys ran up to WalMart and bought one. He got the last one...people had been snapping them up right and left that day. We watched the coverage, horrified, stunned, transfixed, for the rest of the day. No phone call from clients passed without the attack being the first thing discussed. Family members called many times out of a sense of discomfort and fear.

For me, the greatest horror sank in, not when I thought of those who were vaporized by the impact, or burned alive by the blazing fuel that exploded through the building. It was the images of the living who chose to jump to their deaths rather than suffocate or burn that stuck with me, and still do to this day. The sight of those people plummeting, clawing at the air, legs churning as they reached terminal velocity is an unparalleled horror in my mind.

It is an event that hasn't ended yet, as our government has chosen 9-11 as an excuse to strip us of our rights, record our comings and goings, tap our phones at will and generally move forward with the trappings of a totalitarian state...all supposedly in the name of our safety. But by making us safe from outside threats, we become more vulnerable to threats within our own government. Years after the beginning of a war which has caught and killed everyone except the one person who stood before a camera and said, "I did this to you", our country is hemorrhaging money at a rate not seen in modern times, and we are told that to question *any* of it means we are not patriotic, that if we do not willingly surrender our rights, we are helping the terrorists, that we should trust our government to only spy on the bad guys.

The terrorists succeeded beyond their wildest dreams on 9-11-01.

I wish eternal rest to those who died on 9-11, and to those who have died since while pursuing their sworn duties to protect us, the American public, whether the battles they fight are justified or not. I wish comfort, peace and strength to the survivors of that day, both those who lost loved ones...and to us all.

Personally, "Never Forget" has nothing to do with politics, it has everything to do with remembering those who lost their lives and their families.

The Wife woke me up, saying "A plane just hit the World Trade Center!"
I thought "Ahh, it's bullshit. Probably a movie she tuned into halfway."

If only...

I was in algebra class. When I got out all of a sudden there were all these rumors about a bomb, planes, country-wide attacks. It was insane, confusing, and I thought it had to be some crazy bullshit. I didn't get the whole story until I got home and could watch the news. Its still surreal.

When I was 10 I believed that nuclear war was inevitable. It had been talked about so much and we had been given instructions on what to do - I just lived with it as something that was coming at some point.

What I had childhood nightmares about was being blown up on the Tube. In the end it wasn't the IRA that hit the Tube, it was the Islamic terrorists, but the IRA were targeting stations (as well as pubs, tourist attractions, hotels etc etc) and it was my own private, personal fear. Before every trip we took to London (and we spent a lot of our holiday time there) I lay away for hours, crying and offering frantic prayers to my Guardian Angel and to Mary as they were known to be softer hearted than God. I was terrified of being trapped in that rushing dark with smoke and death and splinters.
I would say - both. The IRA were a very real threat, and hit targets in England enough times that they weren't just bogeymen - they were killers. I was never actually afraid in London. Once I was on the journey, with my parents, grandparents, siblings, I felt protected, normal, unworried. It was the night before that was the issue. Alone and frightened and knowing that I wasn't just being silly because people had died.

The actual events were worse of course. Although I was never involved, some of them make me cry even today. I find it hard to talk about Enniskillen and Omagh for example - I wrote about Enniskillen on here somewhere and it still made me so angry.

Terrorism is worse than the fear of nuclear attack imo. Because it's the gift that keeps on giving. You get disruption, fear, suspicion, insecurity, and the acceptance that what has happened before will happen again except this time it might take your family with it. And someone, somewhere will be celebrating when they do.

I don't remember much, but I do remember that I was in my 10th grade art class when our teacher turned the t.v. on and we finally found out what was really happening after hearing all sorts of rumors in the halls.

There were a fair number of transplanted New Yorkers at my school, and I remember some of my classmates being either in mute shock or wailing hysterics. Hearing one New Yorker friend's thoughts in a creative writing class I had that semester is what I remember most of that time period -- the broken-hearted shock, the sadness, the rising determination, and always the question of Why, why, why.

People's parents started to come pick them up to take them home, and as we moved from class to class, the population dwindled. The administrators tried to make an announcement to turn off all t.vs, but the teachers let us choose. We usually asked to keep them on, because the uncertainty was worse than anything.

Some people became convinced that "they" were going to come bomb Disney World, because it was a cultural icon, or Miami, because it was a port town, or our high school, because it was a... well, I'm not sure why anybody thought our high school would be a target. But the fear was in us just the same.

My 9/11 story is a little odd. At the time, I was married, and my and my then wife were attending Pittsburgh Technical Institute.

She had morning classes, I had evening. She didn't have a license, I did. So we drove in together, she went to class, I got my night's sleep (a longer story) in the car. Yeah, that's right. For three years, the only sleep I got was in my '93 Ford Tempo......anyways, as I was sleeping on 9/11, my ex woke me up, said "Andrew, wake up...the WTC and Pentagon have been bombed"....I was in sleepyland, so I thought I was still dreaming, literally. So I said, "yeah, yeah, alright..." and rolled over in the driver's seat to nod off a bit more. She kept on, and I finally woke up, and put the radio on. So the radio started up with just what she said, the WTC and Pentagon all blown up and shit. Well, I was still rubbing the cobwebs away, and I still did not believe what I was hearing. All my life there'd been nothing but peace in my country's boundaries.

It actually took me to physically out of the car, walking into the campus, and hobbling on into the cafeteria and watching the bigscreen in the corner with CNN on for me to believe what was going on.
After that, I went to my first class of the day. The professor walked in, a tad pale-faced, and said, "Classes are cancelled for today, go home and be with your loved ones. Pray for survivors." It was horrible, that day. We actualy had a few guys in our class stand up and say "Fuck it I'm enlisting right the fuck now" and they left right then and there, headed for the barracks.