Where were you when it happened

[Future Raptor Ace]

This is how I personally remember September 11th
I can never forget how that day unfolded for me! I was 10 years old almost 11 and in 6th grade. It was an ordinary beautiful New York City morning and I woke up at 6am to be in school by 7:15am. I got to school and the start of day proceeded normally. Then our teachers started acting strange! My 6th grade science teacher asked "who here has parents who work at the world trade center!" A few kids raised their hands! She followed by asking, "how many of your parents are firefighters or police officers?" A few more kids raised their hands. Little did we know, one kid who raised his hand would go home never to see his father again .... his father was a firefighter! I am friends with him on facebook and like his father he plans to join the FDNY. After these two questions she proceeded with the science lesson as usual ... we did not suspect a thing! Then when class was over we went to lunch and one kid said "the Twin Towers toppled over" ( I cant remember his exact words) but we all laughed at him! The Twin Towers were such a big part of our city, especially as a kid, one thinks they will be there for all of time. I remember always being taken in awe by their huge un-human scale and size every time I saw them. I remember going to the mall underneath them a lot .... and to hear thats all gone was something incomprehensible at the time! So needless to say, no one was able to accept what this kid had to say ... we all blocked him out due to complete disbelief. I blocked him out so much I cant even remember who he was, it is the only part of my memory for this day that seems to be fading.

After lunch we proceeded to our next class; English. My English teacher proceeded with the lesson as normal but she had a morbid persona ... something that cant be described but just felt. It was in the middle of this class that an announcement came on that everyone must return to their homerooms immediately! That is all it said, the announcement was made by the principle himself! This was at about 6th period so the time must have been about 12pm. Upon returning to homeroom I saw my homeroom teacher literately in tears while talking on her cell phone! She would not engage us students, instead it seemed she was trying to hide from us .... going to the window and trying to face the other way at times. You would think by now we the students figured something was wrong right? That was not the case, it was later revealed to prevent panic that the teachers were not allowed to tell us anything and they did a good job at that. During our stay in homeroom we all just talked enjoying our little day off from school work. We all assumed our homeroom teacher was having a personal problem and did not question anything else ... we were just kids being kids. Then things started to get progressively worse from this point! Announcements were going off literally every 5 min, it was parents pulling kids out of school. Every few min another kid would be called to get his or her stuff and come to the office. Please note that this was a big school, we had about 2,000 students overall so there was a lot of announcements to be made; of course not all 2,000 left but a big portion of that did! I asked my homeroom teacher, now more or less composed, if I could use the bathroom. I proceeded to the bathroom when I can never forget the site I saw. I saw a line of parents, at least 200 maybe more in my schools lobby. I actually heard some of what they were saying, some were saying "The white house is next" "No they are going to blow up the Verrazno and the Empire State Building" "I dont care I want my kid out now ... who knows if they will target schools!" I still had no idea what they were talking about but I finally was able to piece together that something was definitely up. I went back to my classroom sat down and waited for the day to end.

My mom picks me up and the first thing out of her mouth was "Mikey, The World Trade Center is gone!" I had no idea what she meant, so I asked what do you mean? She replied "they are gone ... no more!" I said "like they changed the name?" "No Mikey, they fell down!" I followed "what do you mean by fell down?" ... I knew what she meant I just could not believe it ... again like before it is just something incomprehensible at the time. What she said to me after I can not remember but i think she explained the attack to me in detail. I remember going home and hanging out with my friends on my block. We all talked about what happened, still not really knowing the full scope of what happened. I remember hearing the roar of fighter jets flying over, we scream "YEAH AMERICA ...LETS FUCKING GET THEM!" I think that is the only happiness I felt that day after knowing what happened .... just to see those jets flying over ... it had such a great feeling! Maybe this is why I always wanted to be a fighter pilot I cant really say for sure.

Then when my father came home we decided to go out to eat .... I really dont remember why my parents made that decision; we rarely eat out on week days ... we mostly ate out on weekends. We went to a restaurant in front of the Staten Island mall and I can never forget the site that awaited me. In the distance there was this HUGE column of smoke .... at least 2-3000 feet up (about twice the hight of the towers) and at that 2-3,000 foot mark it made a right angle (and I mean right angle) and continued in a long narrow path that proceeded over Brooklyn. This image is a image I will never forget! We were not the only ones looking at the smoke ... many others were too with tears in their eyes. Also what ill never forget is strangers came up to us giving us hugs "saying we love you stay safe!" Everyone just felt like family ... we were all comforting each other though we were merely strangers. In the restaurant I got my first image on how the towers feel from watching the TV. It was just so hard to believe, the images were there in front of me but I could still not swallow them! It honestly felt like a dream no a nightmare that any second now I would soon wake up only that moment never came. I know it sounds corny, but I swear it was such an easy feeling to have!

The next thing I saw on TV was the first time I ever experienced true hate. It was the first time I truly hated someone but at the same time realized they truly hated me. What I saw was footage from Palestine, it was the Palestinian reaction. They were celebrating, yes actually celebrating, dancing one cars and streets honking horns it was something my 10 year old self should have never saw. Little did I know the events after would get worse, New York City became a war zone, something you would never expect to see outside of a Hollywood script. I remember constantly thinking everything just seemed like it was a movie.

The whole year was just morbid and gray and changed me! If it were not for that day I think for sure I would be a different man today. I saw extreme love and good as well was hate and evil all blending together making it hard to distinguish which was which! It was such a disgustingly delicious mix; it was too easy to drink and become a part of! Lots of people wanted retaliation, blood to spilled in revenge! One either had to witness that, or the extreme agony and sorrow of people around you morning for people lost.

The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that it felt like everyone in the city was experiencing the same thing which united us all. Everyone felt like a family member who looked out for you; for the few months following no one was a stranger. Still even with this small positive note, it is drastically and almost completely dampened by everything else. Living in NYC became a constant fear, attacks were warned to possibly happened at anytime. It is still to this day like this in NYC though it is just recently starting to get better. As September 11th 2011 approaches I look back on my experience 10 years ago and start to realize the scope of what happened. A scope that only now my nearly 21 year old mind can even begin to digest! I always think to myself "I wish I could go back in time to pre-9/11 becuase this post 9/11 world has changed for the worse!" Being 10 years old I did not know the repercussions as to what would happen to years to come and yet the world continues to spin and today I am still not sure what will happen as a result of this one day, one point, a singularity, a deceitfully insignificant instant in our history! The world keeps on turning and only time will tell but for the time being it is this world we live in. I will probably never forget the events of that day, nor do I think anyone else can either!
Mike - FRA~

excuse my typing, there is sure to be many typos in here, I am a horrible typist!

[user472884]

I have absolutely no memory of the event itself. It was just one of those things that just kinda seep into your conscious just by being alive. I knew every major American war without having a clue that the hell that meant.

So I was what, barely seven? 9/11 occurred after my mom started to homeschool me (tl;dr, school wanted me committed, psychologists and magicians said I was too smart for the class, mom taught me from fourth grade books the rest of the year).

The only 'big' disaster I remember hearing about in my youth was Columbia, and even then I thought for the longest time that Columbia/September 11 was the same thing (due to my staunch stance of not caring much about anything that wasn't right in front of me)

[Azhiri]

It must have been so harrowing to actually be so close to it. What a terrible thing to see, even after the fact.

9/11 has actually drastically affected my life.

My father had a very important job with a huge yearly income ten years ago. We lived in Destin, FL back then and we were one of the wealthiest families in town. We had such an indulgent lifestyle; my mother didn't work and before I was in school (I was in kindergarten that particular year) we would lounge on the beach, go shopping all day. We lived within half an hour of my mom's family and my cousins, and we saw them enough that they seemed part of everyday life, not just an extended family.

Anyway, I remember sitting in class, it had just started, when the assistant principal came into the classroom looking pretty upset. She said she had to talk to our teacher in the hall for a minute. They came back in afterward and turned on the news, where we saw footage of the incident. I thought it was just a movie, I didn't pay attention for more than a few minutes. Then about half an hour later my mother checked me out of school, she was pretty upset. She explained that New York City was under attack (at this point nobody really knew what was going on, whether it was an accident, whether there was more to come or who might have done it). We lived very close to a big military base and there were concerns that if we were indeed being attacked, they'd hit military bases as well, so my mom wanted to get out of town, but we stayed.

Anyway, many people lost their jobs after that day; my dad was one of them. We had to sell our house and move away from our friends, my mother's family, our wonderful neighbors, some of whom we still have contact with to this day. We had to move to Alabama, where we are now, near my dad's mother, so that my dad could work at NASA. I think something changed in my mom. She was just different. She became depressed, started drinking, among other things. My parents got divorced. I haven't seen most of my aunts or my cousins in years; the whole family has since kind of scattered and broken up.

I can't help but think sometimes how different a person I would be today if 9/11 had never happened because, even though it was bound to happen somewhere down the line, I still think of 9/11 as being a driving force behind my parents' divorce. The divorce itself affected me more than I can say.

My heart goes out to everyone who lost a family member, a friend, or an entire lifestyle and home that day.

[Jenny_HRO87]

the most weird thing it that I realised what happened at 9/11 when September 11th was already over...

I remember I was in our kitchen, doing some maths homework (well in Germany it was already afternoon when it happened). I was really bad in maths so I was kind of upset and then my dad called me to come in the living room. When I arrived the 2nd aeroplane smashed into the WTC. Well I thought that was a kind of accident or what ever. I was like "so what?" and a bit angry that my dad distracted me. So I went back to go on with my homework. I missed all the news and reports about the attacks... one day later when people talked about it in school (or maybe at the evening of 9/11 too, I don't remember properly) I finally noticed what happened...

Well I was 13 and a bit stupid. Hope you can forgive me...

[Alizée@Rügen]

After the school I came at home, turned on the TV and I saw it the whole day.Time for homework was no more.

[lefty12357]

I was home that morning. My sister called and asked me if I knew what was going on and told me to quick turn on my TV. Needless to say, I was glued to the TV the rest of the day. It was so surreal. It was hard to believe such things were actually happening. Even 10 years later, it is hard to express all the thoughts and feelings that went through me that day. I can't imagine what it was like for people living in NYC.

[Bud10]

I was in my 7th grade history class, walked into the classroom and the teacher was watching the news. We spent the entire class period watching the news, actually most classes that they spent the day watching the news.

[WhiteFeather]

I was nine at the time, so I really didn't think much of it. I recall my teacher being on edge and they forced us inside for recess. They told us what happened, but I never really grasped the severity of the attack until about freshman year in high school, which kind of pisses me off now seeing as it took so long for me to get it. I guess I'm just mad that while people were dying, the biggest thing on my mind at the time was why we weren't allowed outside for recess.