3rd grade. district-wide policy decision was that the teachers couldn't acknowledge what happened, even at the high school, so obv i had no idea until i got home. about 2/3 of my class got picked up early though, lol

Senior year of college. I was having breakfast with two of my friends/roommates and one of them was flipping through the channels. Someone says "Go back to that one!" and we see all kinds of craziness with the first tower. Then we see the second plane fly into the second tower and we're all like WTF is going on here. Called my parents and my Dad said he heard the plane crash into the Pentagon (he worked a couple miles away). I called my older sister b/c she was living in Manhattan at the time and luckily she was alright. She saw the whole thing unfold through some huge bay windows at the school she was attending. That must have been a really crazy sight.

School was not cancelled. I remember going to my Human Sexuality class and we all couldn't believe that we had to attend since our minds were elsewhere.

Later I went back to the apartment and ran into my friend/neighbor and she was bawling her eyes out. I mean really terrified.

Just watched youtube videos of the tragedy. What a crazy day that was.

Sophmore year of highschool, got to school at 6:45 for marching band and went out to the field to set up pit percussion stuff. We started normal practice, but there were a bunch of people missing. Get done around 8 and walk into the band room, and the TV is on and the absent kids were all in there staring at it.

I looked at the screen for a second and all I saw was a bunch of smoke coming off a building. Had no idea that it was the World Trade Center or what had just happened. I asked my friend, an alto sax dude, what was going on. He turns and says "They got us man. They got us."

They didn't cancel school but pretty much every class we just sat there and watched the TV.

The next year some jackhole Pakistani kid was walking around saying "Happy 9/11" to people and the Azn wannabe-gangster crew beat the crap out of him and threw him down a flight of stairs.

102 minutes that changed america, is a really good documentary imo.

I was celebrating my birthday on 9/11 all i remember is watching it on the news with my grandmother before going to sleep (7hr time difference for us eurotards).

i work in the restaurant industry so i had worked late and was sleeping...

my roommate grabbed me and said "hey you gotta get up and see this."

i obv furiously tried to call my brother who lived in nyc and my parents but cell phone towers were jammed.

freaked out for a while til finally i got through to my father and realized my brother was ok...

deciding how long it would be until photos of Hulk Hogan knocking down the towers wouldn't get people mad

was in high school in France, in an international high school, it was around 3pm with the time difference. We heard about what was going on and just went home. Mindlessly stared at the news until 2am, incapable of moving. I remember my mum saying "the world is gonna change a lot after that", which she also had said when the Berlin wall fell.

the day after the school orchestra played the american anthem in the morning. we all stood there, in the playground, those who could actually sung the anthem, lot of people were crying. It was beautiful, and every time I think about it I get the creeps.

asleep. my mom came in and said we were being bomed in NYC. i came out and saw the second plane hit the second tower live, my jaw dropped and was in shocked. i just turned 16 and i will never forget that day. my mom lost two friends/co-workers in the north tower. :/

2nd period geography in 7th grade. mr. shorb's class. he told us that a plane had hit the wtc, but it wasn't like the 93 bombing. we watched on the tv in every class after that. i remember during lunch several kids were crying because their parents were in the pentagon (my school was about 1/2 air force kids), but i don't think any of them were hurt/killed. so weird how vivid that day stands out in my memory..

phew, good thing you didn't ask about 2001 cuz that would just bring terrible memories

Wow I feel a little old seeing as everyone was in HS or Middle School when this happened...lol. I am a New Yorker hence my screen name and I just happened to have been working at the World Financial Center on September 11, 2001. That particular night I had worked from 12AM to 8AM and then took off in the morning as was my ritual with my work buddies and we all got breakfast in the cafeteria. We finished eventually and we took a detour as I needed to get my pass remagnetized because it wasn't working on the turnstile anymore. It took about a minute and we left and were walking over the overpass accross the West Side Highway which connects the World Financial Center to the World Trade Center.

About halfway through the overpass (this overpass got destroyed when the towers fell) I hear a loud pop. I looked around and thought the speakers had blown out and nobody paid any mind and we all kept walking. Suddenly debris and scraps of metal began to fall outside the overpass and ahead of us. Everybody turned tail and ran back the opposite direction. I kept running thinking the whole building was falling and I ran straight out the winter garden by a little Marina in back and looked up. There was the WTC ablaze and pummeling smoke. I have never seen anything like it. It was an awesome and terrible sight. That extra trip getting my pass might of just saved my ass.

My friends and I walked around the WFC up church street half a block to the New York Sports Center where our friend Sherene worked. We made some calls to people from there to tell our loved ones that we were alright. A whole crowd had gathered and was watching. I asked what had happened not knowing what caused the explosion and blaze. A guy said a 747 hit the WTC. I thought no way, maybe a smaller plane but not something as big as a 747. As we were watching another 737 whizzed in and hit the South Tower and a huge explosion followed. I would not have believed it if not seen with my own eyes.

My friends and I all walked a few blocks up town and parted our various ways. You could see the bodies falling from the towers like leaves falling from a tree. The were rocking back and forth as they were falling to the ground. A girl I passed by noticed the same thing and started crying. It was pretty disturbing.

I said goodbye to my friend Manoj and then I got on the subway and headed to Brooklyn Heights. The trains stopped at the WTC area and people were just very calmly getting off to go to work. I felt like saying, "Wait, don't get off! It's dangerous out there!" But honestly I didn't know what to say. I didn't really know how to tell people or what to say really. I got home before the subways closed. That's how fast this experience was for me. I wasn't one of the people trapped in the city with no way to get home. But it definitely was a day that was hard to forget. And I very nearly became a statistic.

was actually my high schools picture day. i was a sophomore and was walking to get my picture taken and walked by the cafeteria and casually looked at one of the TV's there and saw a smashed up pentagon. obv said wtf cause it was CNN and i just stayed in the cafeteria for the next hour. i was like one of the first three in there, within an hour it was like full of people who happened to see a crowd in there while on their way to bathroom etc. and the cafe was full by like 1.5 hours after i stopped in. it took about another 2 hours or so (like 1pm EST) before any announcement came over the intercom.

iirc we werent let out early and possibly i even still had football practice that day. back to school the next day like nothing happened.

i particularly remember the incident cause one of the original 3 in the cafe was an indian kid who i was pretty friendly with who kept saying "i know this is some ***** arabs" etc. and i was pretty confident it was psycho random people from USA a la timothy mcveigh.

boy was i wrong.

Boarding school, was at the school store before class, tv was showing first tower on fire people were saying a small plane crashed into it. Go down the hall to the infirmary to pick up my meds. Get back to the school store 5 min later and everyone is freaking out because they just watched the second plane crash.

Everyone is on edge and there are a bunch of kids who have parents working there. Classes got cancelled, CNN broadcast in the auditorium, watched the second tower fall and couldn't bare to watch anymore. Took maybe a day or two but eventually everyone found out that their parents were ok and nobody perished. I'm from NY and knew several people who died.

At 18 I went off to Europe until I was old enough to drink legally in the States. I secured a job bar tending at a dive bar in Edinburgh, Scotland and that's where I was during 9/11. A fellow American bartender, from a bar down the road, called me to say that it was very important that I turn on the news and hung up. It was about 3pm local time. I pulled down the big screen and turned on Sky news to a picture of the first tower smoking. I worked till my shift ended at 6pm, speculating with drunk Scots regarding the nature of the crash. When I got off work, pretty much everyone bought me drinks and I got absolutely smashed. There was a lot of sympathy for the victims, the United States, and for me, even though I repeated explained that I didn't know anyone in the New York area and was affected on an emotional level only marginally different from theirs.

Because of the growing Pakistani population in Edinburgh, local grocers, fish and chip shops, and other businesses are increasingly Pakistani run (they are, in all appearances, great businessmen). Historically an ethnocentric country, this increase in immigration has been correlated to an increase in racism amongst ethnic Scots, especially against Muslims. I'm providing this backdrop so that you might imagine the sway of conversations over the coming days.

About a week after 9/11, a regular at the bar asked if I'd like to accompany him on a pub crawl. He also proceeded to pay for all my beers that night. While Scots are very generous when it comes to paying for the pints of their company, this particular Scot was not known for such acts of generosity. Rather, he was the sort that normally bummed drinks off others at the bar, but hey, I figured the tragedy in New York led to him being more generous than usual.

From pub to pub he took the time to point out various buildings and share some relevant Scottish history when he could, alluding to the fact that the States don't have buildings near the age of Edinburgh's oldest. At long last, we walked by the new starch white mosque in the middle of aging Edinburgh. It was illuminated by various lights, quite in contrast to the old dusky stone buildings surrounding us. I was asked if I felt the mosque was appropriate or offensive in any way concerning its placement this neighborhood.

Sitting down for our last pint of the night, my tour guide made the purpose of our venture clear. He stated that he had a van ready-to-go and wanted to know if I would join him and some others in a firebombing of the aforementioned mosque. He thought it proper to ask me if I'd like to participate, due to being a little closer to the 9/11 tragedy than the rest.

I responded something like, "Whoa there buddy! I'm just here to enjoy my extended vacation and that doesn't include ending up in jail over a mosque fire"! He said he was only joking and merely wanted to measure my sentiments over the issue in general. We finished up our pints and I went back to my flat to sleep.

Six months or so later, the mosque did get fire-bombed. I'll never know if these guys had anything to do with it or if that whole night really was just a mind game of which I was the unwitting participant. I don't believe my buddy ever bought me a pint again.

Wow, that's a riveting experience. I take it you must have known some of the people that were not so fortunate? I do, of course, understand if that is not something you wish to discuss. Thanks for sharing and I'm glad you weren't in the building during the crash.

Well I was across the way in the World Financial Center so I didn't know too many people in the World Trade Center. But I used to work at the Port Commerce offices of the port authority which was located on the 36th floor of the North Tower in the WTC. I did look at the lists of people who died that day and the director's secretary of the department was on it. Other than that I didn't really know too many people. There was a lady whose husband died that I knew from grammar school but I have not seen her in years and I only heard of her loss. So honestly not that many people. But I remember watching the news and there was some business on the 96th floor of the South Tower I think it was and the whole office died on 9/11. There was an interview with a guy who worked there who was 20 minutes late to work that day and it apparently saved his neck.

sleeping

woke up went to school and there was a special assembly which got me out of some class. skipped the assembly and got yelled at anyway.

It was afternoon and i was working at the office of our web agency in Stuttgart, Germany. Back that time i was invested a little in stock markets and therefore checked financial websites from time to time. Suddenly all stock markets worldwide crushed within a second. I knew immediately that something pretty bad must have happened. We had a tv in the office and i turned it on. In first place, as everywhere in the world it was said that a small plane must have hit the WTC tower. We know the rest. Pretty shocked watching the rest of the day TV in the office with colleagues and later at home with a buddy.

I was at home doing nothing special. Plan was to spend the day drinking so I was starting to slowly get ready. A friend was staying with me and he was kind of sketchy. He had to go out and he was intentionally vague so I assumed he went off to do something sketchy. He called me to come pick him up and that was when I noticed something was up. Police presence was considerably higher than expected. For a second I thought what the **** did he do but he was too much of a **** up to try anything that would demand that kind of response. When I picked him up he told me about the attacks but I didn't really grasp the magnitude of it.

By the time we got back to my place the building had been completely locked down. RCMP and normal city police where everywhere. Got back upstairs and that was when I first saw it on TV and fully grasp how big this was. That was it for the rest of the day. We just sat there and drank switching between channels. After a few hours we got dressed and went out to drink but again just mostly sat and watched coverage.

They locked down your building in Canada, wtf for?

I was driving to work. I never drive to work but had a late afterwork meeting scheduled downtown that day so I drove since the train schedule was sketchy since I didn't know how long the meeting would last.

It was a beautiful clear day with perfect weather (Chicago). I'm about half way to downtown listening to sports radio when a report comes across a small plane hit the World Trade Tower. Seemed like like something insignificant at the time likely a piper cub type of plane. Then reports of it maybe being more serious. Then the second tower gets hit and I think OH ****! I can't take my eyes off of the Sears Tower as I get closer and closer to downtown. I park and head for my office at the CBOT (ie potential target!). Guys are kinda running around in a frenzy. I hear some guy say they just hit the Pentagon as I head to the elevator. I reach the office and everyone is just huddled around TV sets in awe. I turn and look to my buddy and we say lets get the hell outta here. We say screw the elevator and climb to 21 flights down. The stairway was packed with several others with the same idea and it was a very slow climb down.

When I got in my car the radio was on full bore news now. I hear towers collapse on my way home. I'm pretty much in shock by now. I get home and watch the coverage for about 48 hours straight.

in europe school was out and I was playing counterstrike at home (CT obv.). ICQ went nuts and a buddy told to me to go and watch TV. I asked what chanel and he just said: any.

after sitting in front of the TV for like 5 hours I msged my friend: "the US are going to bomb some country for this one"
he said "no way, dude"


in the end the US bombed not one but two countries

It is Canada nothing ever happens so they overreact to everything. They lock down the building frequently. During economic summits as well as when Bush visited it -- even if there is just a fire alarm the RCMP shows up. My guess for 9/11 is because the Minister of Defence was living here at the time but it also could have been because there was also a lot of embassy staff living here including US embassy staff.

I was in Latin class in high school in Boston. I remember hearing that some of the planes took off from Boston and this was when there was rumors that there might be something crazy like 10 other planes unaccounted for.

I just kept looking out window and thinking about the liquid natural gas tank down the street and wondering if it could sustain a hit from a plane.



Then I started thinking of the nuclear power plant that was by my house and wondered if it could sustain any sort of a hit from a big plane.

Didn't bother going to school for the next week or so.

Yes, I meant 2001 not 2000 but you guys got that, obviously.

I was in Vegas.

After reading everyone else's experiences on this thread, my experience of 9/11 is pretty anti-dramatic. I learned about it on the car radio, a heavy metal station. I thought the DJs were joking because they always joke around in their early morning show. I even thought their George Bush speech was an impersonation. Switched to a Frank Sinatra oldies type station that was very serious and never joked, and they confirmed. Went home, went straight to the TV and woke up my Mom and brother. We all watched it on TV. I missed the fall of the first tower because I was in the restroom. I only saw the second tower fall with Aaron Brown of CNN announcing. He kept turning his head to watch it while trying to report about it at the same time.

The CNN and MSNBC websites were impossible enter. Too much traffic.

As I said my memory of 9/11/2001 was pretty un-eventful compared to most of yours but my memories of it are just as vivid and the emotions heavy, despite being a totally detached observer whose daily routine never got affected by the event.