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Your 9/11

Sredni Vashtar

Sredni Vashtar

the beautiful
Don't know if there was ever a thread about this (this place was started in 2002, right?) but the ongoing conspiracy debate has me wondering about what people here went through on 9/11. I know there are some New Yorkers here, but regardless of where you were or what you think the real story behind it was, What did you go through that day and what did it mean to you?

I got woken up from late-sleeping in suburbia (Tuesday was my day off) by a phone call from my mom, frantically telling me to turn on the tv. She had forgotten that I hadn't owned one in over a year and I had to go to a neighbor's to see for myself. I arrived just in time to see the second plane hit. His wife began freaking out and he managed to calm her down, and we all spent the next 12 hours like millions of others, alternately glued to the set and trying to get through to our loved ones over jammed phone lines. My only memory of that same, specific kind of searing realization was when the shuttle Challenger shuttle blew up. Of course this was much, much worse, but I was younger then and that feeling was new.

The next day I bought a 30" Sony Trinitron.
 
I woke up after the attacks had occurred, around 10 or 11. Waiting for my tea or coffee or whatever I drank in those days to start bubbling, I sat down and played a bit of Diablo II.

Before all this, I turned on the TV and saw a news report about the WTC being attacked and destroyed. I shrugged it off, thinking something like "Damn, they actually did it." It didn't quite register in my mind, having already experienced one terrorist attack, that the entire buildings had come crumbling down.

After turning the TV on and seeing all the channels knocked out due to the transceivers or whatever being located at the now destroyed towers, I found one channel which was up and running and finally understood what had happened. A family member works in Manhattan and I was quite worried.

I remember being very worried about the crazies doing more crazy stuff. I remember a hastily reported death toll of 10,000. I remember 2 guys with a van being caught with explosives suspected to be inside.

The Internet later told me these were 2 Israelis who were less than sensitive to the events ("Now you know what we go through," or something to that effect). The media completely buried this story, along with the report of a massive selling of airline stock (Which the media also buried).

At this point, I'm the worst nightmare of the *SG: An American with a decent memory.

A week or so later I was on a train with some woman, who was sobbing. Maybe she lost someone.

I pretty much stayed home and watched the news. And played GAMEZ, but not with the same PASSION.
 
I remember I had just left my friend who had an appointment with his probation officer. I had decided to waste a few hours browsing some shops and buying a few tapes before swinging back round and meeting up with him again and then going back to smoke some shit and to play Resident Evil.


I had bought my tapes and I had decided to have a look in Cash Converters to see if they had any good deals on. Being an electronics store they had literally 40 odd televisions on in the store. So my first introduction to the nightmare was by walking into CC and seeing it being reported on every wall. It was before the second plane had hit and everyone in the store, shoppers and staff alike, had just stopped and were watching the television trying to take it in.

I knew it was serious but it didn't register with me at all straight away. I guess the thoughts that went through my head then were something along the lines of 'what a terrible accident this is.' I decided to go back home early and watch the rest of what was happening on the news. The gravitas of what was happening wasn't lost on me from the start though it would just continue to escalate.

I grabbed my friend on the way back and we went back to my house just in time to see th second plane hit. From that point on me, my friend and my mother just sat watching the coverage for most of the day like everyone else. I remember how crazy it was when we saw the towers fall and especially when the Pentagon was hit. At that point the scope of the attacks was into completley new territory. Nobody knew how far it would continue to go. I mean, anything was possible at that point.

Even on the other side of the pond there was a real sense of fear as well. In Brighton (where I was) The Labour Party conference was taking place less than a mile away from my house, so Tony Blair and the rest of the cabinet were only a stones throw away; so the idea of possible attacks over here were more than just a "what if" at that point. Not soon after we heard the roar of F-16's patrolling the airspace over head. I also remember clearly watching the Finance News the day before and the analyst trying to explain a major dip in trading that he couldn't explain. Of course the correlation of that didn't come to mind until a long time after.


Yeah, it was a pretty fucked up day. I remember being aware that I was watching history in the making. Though the post 9/11 world we live in today is so different from Seprtember 10th 2001, it's hard to fathom really.
 
I woke up at around 6:30AM PST, I turned my TV on but went straight to the shower. After my shower as I was putting my lotion on and watched the fall of Tower One but I didn't really know what I was watching and then the newscast replayed the planes flying into the WTC. I thought it was just a terrible accident and then they started talking about it being a terrorist attack. I was in total disbelief.

The first thing I did was call my parents, they don't watch television in the morning and had no idea what was going on. I remember telling my mom to tell my brother, who was leaving on a vacation to Florida that morning, that I really didn't want him to fly anywhere, this was before I knew all planes had been grounded.

I got to work and the day just felt so strange, some people knew what was going on some didn't. Our customers were asking if we were going to be making our regular deliveries and that seemed ridiculous to me. Nothing happened here, why wouldn't we?

I didn't feel like my world changed. At the time I'd never been to New York, I'd never seen the WTC, I didn't know anyone who lived or worked in NYC. I was so far removed from it, it might as well have happened in another country. I was sympathetic and mourning for my country in a general sense but psychologically 9/11 didn't affect me in any way what-so-ever. I felt as safe as I ever did, I felt as sure as I ever did, I felt as whole as I ever did.

It was just a weird day and a weird week and I remember going to Blockbuster to rent videos because I was tired of the 24/7 news coverage.
 
I was sitting in the ICU family room, the late mister had just gone into a coma and I was waiting for the quack to come around. Other people were in that room too, also waiting for people to die or recover, but mostly die I think. Someone had the TV on to some dumb morning show and of course they broke in with news. No one really said much, we just sat there staring at the TV. I always wondered what was going through the other people's minds.
I remember they cancelled baseball
I remember hospital personnel took away the recliners in the family room that we slept on, and took them down to the lobby for people coming in to donate blood.
I remember trying to keep up with the news on that TV screen and every few seconds looking out in the hallway for that quack.
Life changed for me in all kinds of ways I guess. September 9-16th was the worst week of my life and 9/11 was just a tiny part of that.

;)
mm
 
I slept through the 9/11, the Challenger & Columbia disasters. I have an excellent track record for having to be told about it later. Probably the last person on earth who has never seen Bambi, Titanic & ET, as well.
 
I was at work, and heard it on the radio. I remember I had just started collecting the state coins (I gave up somewhere around California some time later.), and the shitty country music station broke with the bulletin of an airplane hitting one of the world trade buildings. I realize it wasn't a lot of time anyways, but it felt like immediately the news of the second one hit...Or at least they thought it did.. Which of course turned out to be true. (It was very hectic, and confusing hearing it on the radio.) Then all I can remember while being at work was hearing about the pentagon, the news wondering where flight 93 was, or where it was heading, where it did end up, and being worried. Thinking about how we were about to engage in a huge something, with somebody. (which it wasn't hard to figure out who)

I also remember thinking that the President could have been responsible for it, so he could do a lot of the shit he has ended up doing. Son of Mr. New World Order, pfft how could you not think it? I was told I was crazy, and stupid lol. Anyways when I got off that afternoon I just remember sitting at home on the couch glued to the TV it was so surreal.. It looked like a movie with all the people running from the collapse, and seeing the video of the people running into a store right as the cloud of debris, and dust rolled by. Unbelivable. Still very unbelivable...

Man, afterwards everybody was doin the kumbaya, and trying to be positive. I wish that shit was still goin on. For once people giving HALF a fuck. That was something too.... It may sound cliched, but you saw all of humanity's shit on that day. Good, and bad. A very weird, awful, yet (due to the response off some folks) encouraging period of time.
 
My ex called me up. She was crying, so I figured she was about to try to hit me up for money. Then she told me to turn on the tv, which kinda threw that theory for a loop. Oh, and her sister was dating a raghead at the time who that night told her America deserved it. That relationship terminated right quick.
 
My life was extremely fucked up at the time, and I don't think 9/11 really sunk in until a couple weeks went by. I don't know if 9/11 had anything to do with it but about a month later I got my shit together.
 
I swear to God, when that second plane hit I was like "FUCK! Bush thinks he's going to get away with this?" It was awesome though, that live explosion, until you realized it was live snuff TV, horribly, and then the planned demolitions...that fucking sucked and things have just gotten creepier ever since.

Looks like they might get away with it, though.
 
A man I worked with was driving in to work and heard the news on the car radio. He called me on his cellphone. I sent an email message to the people in our office that something was going on then went to the training room and turned on the TV. People were coming in behind me as I found the news station. Small blurry objects were falling from the top of the buildings followed by the sickening thuds when the objects hit picked up by the microphones the newspeople had set up below. That was the first tower and everyone thought it a horrible accident. Then the plane crashed into the second building followed by reports of the crash into the Pentagon and the plane downed by passengers before it could reach the White House. Then all planes were banned from flying. Living fairly near two airports, I was used to seeing them in the sky. It was weird when they were gone. Not as bizzare, though, as watching the bastards in another country celebrating by shooting off guns, passing out candy and dancing in the streets over this horrific murder of people they didn't even know. It was gut wrenching knowing people in the towers jumped to their deaths rather than burn to death. It was soul crushing to hear the remarks made by people in other countries - that the people in those buildings somehow deserved to be murdered in that fashion. Then there was England. She may not adore us, but she promised to stand beside us. I decided I loved England then. I also decided that the rest of them that thought to kick us at that sad time, those chickenshit cowards who thought they'd be left alone if they sided with those cold blooded fiendish murdering scum, well, they could go down in flames in the same crater as the filthy middle east.

I didn't know those people in the towers. Some young people, newlyweds, friends of my daughters, had moved to New York City earlier that year - full of hope for a big life in that big city. My brother is in and out of NYC often for work but he wasn't there at that time. I spent a great deal of time on a message board frequented by people who lived in NYC. I don't know of anybody with a heart and soul in this country that wasn't deeply affected by the murder of those people on September 11, 2001.

Unfortunately, it didn't end there. The country went insane and began to eat itself from the inside out, which is why we are where we are now. I'm not certain we will recover.
 
I was angry and scared at the same time. What I was doing and where I was at the time? I can't remember. I've a mental block about the events of that day. I guess it's my coping mechanism.
 
I watched the replay over and over. I was suspicious right away. All those immediate unanswered questions, especially when coupled with the video from the fire truck that showed the first impact.
 
Taken w/ my Droid last Friday night, @ the corner of Greenwich & Liberty Streets:

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