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Where Were You 11 Years Ago Today?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by gobadgers, Sep 11, 2012.

  1. gobadgers

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    Anyone over the age of 15 or 16 probably has some memories of that day. Share what you recall.

    ---

    I was in 7th grade in suburban Detroit. A weird age for this to happen -- you're old enough to understand how tragic something like that is, to recognize its importance, but you can't really comprehend the vast political implications of such an event.

    Some kid came up to me at my locker and said something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center after first hour (probably 9:30 a.m.). He was goofy, I kind of ignored him.

    Walked into second hour art class and the Twin Towers were on fire on TV, I think Matt Lauer and the Today show staff was still reporting on it.

    The first tower collapsed about halfway through that class, the second one collapsed literally as the bell rang, right around 10:30 a.m., with the teacher, who grew up in Brooklyn, crying, saying something along the lines of "You're going to remember this the rest of your life."

    Teachers were told not to show TV the rest of the day. After-school activities were canceled so I biked home early and watched TV for the first time since that morning. About 20 minutes later my Mom got home, hugged me and said "Our country's at war."

    And we have been since.
     
  2. musikk021

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    I was in the 4th grade.

    I had just woken up and gotten ready for school. I went downstairs to eat breakfast, and when I went to the kitchen, the TV was on with news of the plane crash. I don't recall exactly, but I think both of my parents (or at least my mom) was watching it and told me to look. I stood there for a moment watching the recap of the crash, and I don't know what else I did.

    Then when I arrived at school, the first thing our teacher did was turn on the TV in our classroom. She let us all watch the news together for a little bit.

    That's all I remember.
     
  3. Kerze

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    I was 7. I think I remember it but I'm sure if because it's possibly the single most important day in the century so far in terms of the way the world had changed, I'm turning things people have said into memories, or if I actually remember it. I don't remember much from when I was 7.
     
  4. Rakkaus

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    I was in the 6th grade, age 11 on 9/11/01. Was in class, it was a beautiful sunny day, but during that morning student after student started mysteriously being called down to the office to be dismissed as their parents showed up. Nobody knew what was going on, some people thought it might be a party or something. The teachers didn't tell us anything.

    I had heard two loud exploding noises coming from the back of the classroom by the lockers, which I later deduced must have been the collapses of each WTC tower.

    My mother was working that day, so I eventually went home early with a friend's mom. As I left school and walked down the hill I looked across the river and will never forget the sight of the entire Manhattan skyline engulfed in smoke.
     
  5. Fiddledeedee

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    I was sitting at home on the sofa after school, aged 4. It was the same day that I fell off my tricycle and scraped my chin. Mum called Dad at work because it hadn't been a good day for her, and he told her to put on the TV. I didn't fully understand what it was, but I knew it wasn't good.
     
  6. IrisM

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    I was 16, and in my History class. The teacher wheeled in the TV and we watched the whole thing. Since that day, I've never trusted the government.
     
  7. BradThePug

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    I was in my second grade classroom. I remember that there was an announcement for all of the teachers to go to the office. When my teacher came back, I could see that she had been crying. I asked her what was going on but she would not tell me. Inept bothering her about it, so at lunch she took me to a tv and turned on CNN. She showed me because I was one of the more mature members of the class.

    My uncle was supposed to be there that day. Thankfully, he was running late and was not there when the planes hit. He saw the whole attack happen from a ferry.
     
  8. gobadgers

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    Jeez. Where in New York were you going to school?
     
  9. RemyLeBeau

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    I can't even imagine what that was like...

    I was 6 and enjoying some coloring in 1st grade when the teachers yanked us all out of class and shoved us into a tiny room. It was a weird place with no posters or anything, just a table and a telly on a stand with wheels. And we all watched the buildings. No one knew what the hell was going on. All I remember clearly from watching was the smoke. And then I went back home, and my mom was watching the same thing, her eyes red and face stained with tears. She couldn't tell me what happened she was so emotional, and that scared me shitless.

    And then we were making cards for the firemen who helped out... and that's honestly all I remember about the event.
     
  10. fleetingwells

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    I was 8 years old, and I remember turning on the TV to watch cartoons, but then I saw these buildings were on fire. I kept flipping the channels, but every channel had the news on about the Towers and I remember getting frustrated because of that. I was too young and naive to understand what really happened. It wasn't until after seeing a replay of the plane crashing into the Towers that I knew something bad had happened.
     
  11. Defiant

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    I was 7, nearly 8, in Y3 (equivalent to 2nd Grade). I remember sitting down that evening when I got home and the TV was on with footage of the tragedy from different angles (people's phones/camcorders etc) on BBC news. Sad affair really, I remember next day I was talking to a girl about how we should create a newspaper and write a story about it.
     
  12. Kat kanu

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    I was in 5th grade I walked in and my teacher was crying we spent the whole day sing songs like God bless America
     
  13. Vesper

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    It happened in my sophomore year of high school. The first indication that something had happened was the speech that the principal gave over the telecom system during first period. My second period teacher turned on the television to one of the news channels, on which the attack was being broadcast live. She did this during the class time that we normally spend updating our journals, so she didn't penalize anyone for not focusing on writing. As expected, several students (including myself) were not really paying attention to writing, our eyes fixed to the TV.

    I don't remember exactly what I did the rest of the day, but knowing me, my eyes were probably glued to the TV.
     
    #13 Vesper, Sep 11, 2012
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2012
  14. Defiant

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    Aw, that's so sad. In my case, we got told about the tragedy from a distance, but it must have been terrible for it to happen on your own soil; particularly if you had family in NYC. I remember hearing about Enya's single 'Only Time' being played by CBS, because of the whole idea that 'time heals'. It's a lovely song, very fitting.
     
  15. jsmurf

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    I was preparing for another day of 7th grade and eating breakfast.. Mom turned on the TV set, and we saw the entire NYC skyline shrouded in a thick cloud of ash. Our first reaction was that it must have been a nuclear attack by a foreign power. :/

    ---------- Post added 11th Sep 2012 at 12:54 PM ----------

    My cousin was working several blocks from ground zero at the time, and witnessed the carnage, the streaming tide of ashen horror-stricken faces promulgating down the street as if in an unearthly stupor.


    She called my grandma later the same day (who lived through WW2 as a participant of the Red Army in the Soviet Union), and said, "Grandma, NOW I know what you lived through."
     
  16. Rakkaus

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    The north shore of Staten Island, across the river from lower Manhattan. My elementary school was up on a hill so we had a direct sight of the Manhattan skyline.

    Not only did we get out of school early that day, I recall things were pretty crazy for the rest of that week. We had one day off, then we were supposed to have a late start to the schoolday at 10 AM on 9/13. But then that morning there were reports of vans driving around with bombs or something and the whole week of school was canceled.

    My stepfather worked near the WTC and it was also my cousin's first day of high school up in the city.
     
  17. jsmurf

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    It's hard for many of us to put ourselves in the shoes of what many New Yorkers had experienced. As traumatic as the event is in my own memory, I was on the opposite side of the country, almost 3,000 miles away.. And thus at the time it was more surreal than anything.
     
  18. Markio

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    I was 11, in 6th grade. I remember I had got up early and was the only person downstairs around 6:45am. My mom cried from upstairs that a plane had struck the twin towers. She came downstairs and turned on the TV, and there it was. She seemed really panicked about it, and I figured it was because she was from New Jersey, which was somewhat nearby.

    When I got to school, this kid Patrick was laughing about it. I remember telling him not to laugh about it, because it was too serious to laugh at. There was an emergency assembly called and all the grades went to the Church adjacent to our school's campus. I think we must have prayed silently about it for awhile.
     
  19. jsmurf

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    Kids can be weird like that...


    I remember when I was in third grade and we heard about the Columbine shootings in class, some of the kids stammered aloud, saying something along the lines of "It was 10 down, 30 left standing." (as if a game) :/


    Boy, were they reprimanded by the teacher.
     
  20. FJ Cruiser

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    I was in the 3rd Grade, and it was a normal school day for us. I went to a small Christian school, and the entire school was devoid of TVs for the most part, so not even the teachers were aware. At the end of the day, we always took prayer requests and got out after the prayer. One of the girls said she heard on the radio that a plane ran into a skyscraper in New York, and the teacher commented how peculiar that was, and we prayed about that. She didn't realize she had heard about the first tower being attacked. My grandparents picked me up from school that day since my parents were out of town, and we talked about the significance of it all. I just remember being fascinated with how two of the largest buildings in the world could just collapse, and I was absolutely terrified by the street level videos of the debris cloud racing through the streets. I was glued to the TV the rest of the week, though I didn't realize all the political implications.