where were you at on 9-11 ?

I was in my bed asleep...as I had gotten off from graveyard shift (11pm-7am). My phone was ringing off the hook. I just kept hitting ignore. Finally I checked my voicemail. I could barely understand the messages bc everyone sounded frantic. When I realized what was going on, I was sooo scared. Those images! I felt helpless watching all of it. I saw the second plane and just lost it..

I was on the graveyard shift too. But when I'm on that shift I turn the phone on silence so it does not wake me up. I found out later what happened about 10PM.

I know there are specials here on Sunday. I'm going to avoid watching the TV. I'm too upset about the people dieing even though it's been 10 years. In another 10 years I might be able to watch them.

I was at work. I worked tech support at a phone cable and internet company. A caller told me to turn on the tv just as they went love with the first plane. At first I didnt get what was happening at all. I just thought it was an accident. Then, the second plane hit. Internet was down or slow and people couldnt reach loved ones so our phones started ringing off the hook. People were so angry and scared....

I had worked 2nd shift the night before and was up until 4am. My then soon-to-be-husband (and now soon-to-be-ex) and I were still sleeping when our phone rang at o'dark thirty for us.. (which was like 8:30ish). It was my mother, all in a frantic, telling me to turn on the tv. She wouldn't tell me why, so I stumbled around until I flipped on the channel she told me to and I saw the plane hit the 2nd tower. I didn't know what the buildings were, where they were or ANYTHING.. but I knew it was big and I hollered for my husband, and sat down on the floor and cried. He came running in, sat down next to me, and we were glued for days..

headslap

Frosh week, first year of University. Rogers was backed up installing cable in the dorms and I quoted on Sept 10th that the president is going to get shot and we're going to miss it! (not a joking matter but I needed my TV!) And then 911 happened, I heard it on the radio and was wondering why "they" took down the towers, they're weren’t old enough to be scheduled for demolition were they? - that was my first thought/understanding.

- Canadian.

I was starting my second year of college. I remember I was wearing a long jean skirt and sage green tshirt and sandals...walking down the hall towards the caf and student lounge and there was a huge crowd in front of the large screen. At the moment I got in view of the TV is when the second plane hit. We all just stood there in complete disbelief.

I went to my economics class and the teacher said I word I had never recalled hearing before: Terrorist. It was all so surreal.

I remember driving to my bf's house in between classes and every radio station was just silent while the DJ's said any updates as they came along and everyone just repeated how horrible and sad this all was.

I watched the news all day and went to church that night and prayed with family and friends. I didn't have anyone immediately related to me lost but many friends who went to war and themselves lost friends and family in attacks.

For months I collected every magazine and newspaper that came out concerning 9/11 and keep it in a bin under my bed...I plan on looking through it Sunday.

I would love to see some sort of memorial special that lists the names of all the fallen civilians, NYFD, NYPD, etc instead of the video of the planes crashing and the towers falling over and over. It's so friggan depressing and sad to see AGAIN.

I hadn't had the t.v. or radio on as I was getting ready that morning. As I was pulling out of my driveway on my way to work, they were talking about the fact that a plane had crashed into the WTC. Tragic, but nobody knew there was a plot, or motive, or any other ugly reality behind it, just a terrible accident. Then, by the time I got to the end of the block, they interrupted with a message that a second plane had just hit. Uh, oh. That really got my attention. Then I was really concerned and wondering what was going on. At school, we just watched the news and tried to sort it all out. When the Pentagon got hit, I was stunned. The gravity of the situation was incredible. The idea that the world (as we in the U.S. see it) has just changed. No more comfy little cocoon that was too far away to mess with.

The entire time I was watching, I kept thinking about the rescue workers. It was like a horror movie where you yell at the person to run, or not to open that door. I don't even know how many times I said, "They've got to get out of there!" It was just so suspenseful waiting for those towers to come down, knowing that they were all in the buildings.

That evening, I went and bought Roger Waters' "Radio Chaos," a CD that I was familiar with from several years before. It's about a radio DJ who finds out that "The Big Red Button" had been pushed, and him carrying on the show while waiting for it all to end. But that's kind of what it felt like on 9/11. It was obviously a well planned and executed attack, and for a long time that day, we had no idea when it would end, or what our world would look like in the coming days.

I was working in Thornaby, England and we put the TV on after we had heard something about the first tower being hit. Then all of us just sat watching the events unfold for the rest of the day. There was a huge sense of fear and shock going around at the time. I'll always remember the bus ride home from work with everyone talking en masse about what had happened.

I was in high school. We were in the middle of our state's standardized test. We had just finished up a unit when the principal came over the intercom and told us what had happened. At the time, I didn't know what the Twin Towers were. In my mind, I thought they were monuments, not an office building. It wasn't until I saw a picture that I said "Oh! Those!" and realized that yes in fact, there were thousands of people in the buildings, and that's when I felt my heart drop. We spent the rest of the day watching news coverage if the teachers would allow. Before the Flight 93 crashed, rumors swirled that the plane was still out there missing and we were going to be kept at the school on lock-down. You can imagine how well that thought went over. All I wanted to do was get home to my family and ask questions.

I was active-duty Marine Corps, stationed at Camp Lejeune doing M16A2 rifle qualifications. They didn't stop the range operations or anything, we got it all word-of-mouth piece-meal from people running back and forth from the ops hut who only had a damn radio. Then we had a bunch of half-informed ARMED pissed off Marines who were mentally preparing to deploy at a moments notice. It took 3hrs just to get off the base where the range was and it continued that way until we qualified because we had full on ID checks to simply get OFF the base, not to mention getting on the base. The only "nice thing" about it was that by the time I got to a TV, all the footage was pretty much compressed. Because I was a 5831 (Correctional guard) that fell under the 5800 (Military Police - who manned the gates) heading, and always ran the brig on 3 platoons (24hr shifts only took one platoon the run the brig and we usually had 48hrs off as we rotated), we went into "running guard" (24hrs on, 24hrs off) for the extra platoon to augment the MPs by manning usually unmanned access points to the base, fire towers, etc.

I was in 10th grade English class. It was second period and I had just come from Spanish class. As soon as I got in the room, our teacher drew the Twin Towers on the chalkboard and explained that one of the towers had been hit by a plane. He had been watching the live TV coverage in the teachers break room before our class. At that point, it wasn't known that it was a terrorist attack. He explained it as if the plane had accidentally hit the tower, which is what the news was saying at that time. Then just a bit later in that class, a student from another classroom that had a TV ran in our room and said that the second tower had been hit! At this point, everyone just started to freak out because I live only 45 minutes from NYC and it is a commuter city where more than 1/2 of our population commutes to NYC every day for work. It was mass chaos as students and teachers immediately started crying and getting out cell phones and frantically trying to reach family and friends who worked in the city. Not many students had cell phones at this time, so those who did shared and so did the teachers while everybody tried calling family and friends. A few periods later, we were all released early from school after the towers fell. It was madness because it was really hard to get through to anybody on the phone with all of the phone lines overwhelmed. I wasn't able to get in touch with my parents from school, so I took the school bus home and was basically having a panic attack the entire way home. When I got home, no one was there and I watched the TV coverage over and over again and just sat there bawling my eyes out, wondering if there was anyone I knew who was gone, and feeling such a feeling of hopelessness that that kind of thing could happen so close to my home.

I personally was lucky to not lose any family or friends in the attacks on 9/11, but had many friends who did. Very, very sad. Such a surreal day. I can remember so many small details from it. It was like time slowed down.

True story.

So I had gotten in my car and flipped on the radio not knowing anything that happened. It had just happened and the radio wasn't very clear on what was going on. I got onto the toll road for work and this '87 Chrysler LeBaron passed me. In the car were 4 middle aged men dressed in middle easter attire, the turbin (sorry don't know the actual name), robes, and longish beards. They pulled along side me laughed, pointed, and then hit the gas and took off past me. The toll road was the way into Chicago from NW Indiana. I was sitting there like WTF are these idiots doing and it didn't dawn on me until late that day that perhaps they were a couple terrorists on their way to Chicago to do something.

I got to work and it was on my bosses TV in his office and we watched it live. Just awful...

I was a freshman in college and woke up and walked to my English class...when I got there my teacher was crying and we had no clue what was going on...she told us just to go home...I went back to my dorm room and turned on the news and saw it...just couldn't believe my eyes...but I have a glimpse of happiness on that day too, my nephew was born on 9/11 two years later:)

(Join me in running the tunnel to towers 5k next sunday to honor a life lost on 9/11, and retrace the final steps of a hero - from the battery tunnel to ground zero.)

We have nothing like this down here in Atlanta...I will however be walking/running on my own tomorrow for 10 miles...one for every year since the attack. I will be listening to my playlist that I made specifically for tomorrow. I have friends that are still fighting for our freedoms and I will not let them down on this run. It's for them and for those who have lost their lives during the attack and those that have lost theirs after while fighting terror.

Senior in High School.
Art II class.
I still have the art project I was working on.

Our teacher always let us listen to the radio, so we were the among the first to know at school.
We all thought it was a joke, like a radio prank.
The teacher let us go to the library to watch it on tv.
My husband (boyfriend at the time) was in the architect class, and once his teacher heard, they went there too.
After 2nd period, all the teachers had tvs on in their rooms and we spent the whole day watching the coverage in each class.

My "estranged" mother called me for the first time in years.