My girlfriend and I were watching Portlandia today and they asked this question to one of the characters and it got me curious as to where people where when you first heard about the plane crashes? It's interesting that most people can't recall what they did on their 18th birthday, but everyone seems to remember where they were when they first heard about the crashes.
I was in 4th grade at the time and I was meeting up with my neighbors to walk to elementary school. My neighbor came out of her house and asked if I had heard about the planes crashing into the Twin Towers (being a 4th grader, I had no idea what they were to begin with). It was cloudy that morning and my neighbor thought that all the clouds may have been caused by the smoke of the crash.
I was asleep. I was born in 1994, so when 9/11 occurred I was in the first grade. I woke up because my older brother woke me up, and I remember going down stairs and seeing our family watching the news on the TV in the living room. I then remember being in school and talking to lots of other people about it, mainly asking if they'd heard. I have to say that I really didn't realize what was going on. I was 7 years old, so I hardly could understand what was happening. It's odd looking back on that.
I was 7 as well, and all I can remember from school is the teacher closing the blinds and us not being able to go out for recess. When went home and wanted to watch Ed Edd and Eddie all I saw was the footage on repeat on literally every channel.
Wow, that's a unique story if I've ever heard one.
That is odd how even details seem vivid in these odd but profound circumstances. I distinctly remember Carl Kasell announcing the news on my way to class. Was unimportant, because there weren't really any details. But the the instructor arrived 15 minute late for class, wheeling in an AV cart, and turned the news on just in time to watch one of the buildings collapse through a super grainy signal. Everyone was stoic, until this one lady who worked for American Airlines realized that it was AA planes involved and she had a meltdown; I guess they must have had a kind of family type environment at AA. I don't know, but we never saw her again the rest of the semester. The instructor, after several minutes more, got rid of the TV and we continued with the lesson, to everyone's astonishment. My afternoon class was then cancelled.
I was at home waiting to go in to work. I was waiting tables at a restaurant where we would normally have hundreds of people come in throughout the night. We had 3 tables come in. It was erie. Like everyone else, it's a day that I'll never forget.
That's interesting. I wouldn't have imagined restaurants having a lack of customers because of that. I can imagine though that people were at home cherishing what they had.
People were glued to their television sets. Also, only 3 tables may be an exaggeration but it was extremely slow and very somber.
I was in 3rd grade at a run down school in the old capital of Indiana. I remember them telling us the news over the PA while we were in class, with a moment of silence that felt like forever. My journal (for school, which was odd) entry for that day was "Today was a good day." It really didn't hit me until either the next day or the day after that what had really happened. I was bowling with my family and they were showing the whole thing on NBC. Even then, I was a 3rd grader, so I didn't know what to do. It just scared the piss out of me for a little bit.
"Today was a good day."
I hate to say it, but this made me laugh a little bit.
I was in Grand Forks, North Dakota, at UND, and 19 years old. Got out of the shower and roommate was telling me that a plane had hit the WTC tower and had the news on TV. Sat down and started watching with him, then right on live TV, the second plane hit. It went from "accident speculation", to "holy shit this is some kind of attack" really quick. UND is an aviation school, and most of the people there are pilots. So immediately all classes were cancelled, all flights were grounded, the flight-line was shutdown, and we had students stranded all over the US and Canada as the FAA forced everyone out of the sky. The local air force base scrambled bombers and reserve F-16 units. My other room mate was stuck in Canada for 5 days before he was cleared for flight to come back to Grand Forks. I still remember that whole day quite vividly. Spent the rest of the day just sitting in my room smoking cigarettes and watching the news with my roommate.