Where were you ????

[doc]

It was 8 years ago today that the planes flew into the towers, let us not forget.

We had just moved back to PB and the now ex was working the night shift at Tyson's (she was a USDA inspector) and I had a gig as a delivery driver for a electrical supply house. I was preparing a load for the PB Arsenal's demop project when it happened, told my super I wouldn't be able to get on base but the druged addled asswipe insisted I go :rolleyes:, anyway the Ex called all freaked out seems she woke up and turned on the news to the towers falling down, not a good day.

[Hatter]

I was working the end of my late night shift in the office on the phone with some clients who were down on Wall St.

[Dacke]

I was visiting friends in Lund (where I now live). We had planned to go see Shrek that day, and when I got to the apartment where we were assembling the friend who lives there said "Did you see? Someone flew a plane into WTC!" We started watching the news, and suddenly the second plane hit.

We talked things over a bit, and the unanimous conclusion was "No way we're going to let some coward terrorist change our plans, we're still going." So we went anyway.

[Brynja]

I posted this once before, and I will keep it very short this time as I have no desire to rehash it.

I was teaching a class down at Chelsea Vo Tech down on Broome and Watts. Saw and heard the first plane hit. Thought it was something else, a low flyer and construction clatter. Never that. The second one hit and I began to cry. I was a student teacher so I was not required to stay with the kids. Our windows blew out when the first tower fell and it was this surreal rain of crystalline razors. I swear I sometimes feel some in my hair even still. We got the kids out and I was dismissed.

After that it was a very very very very long day of things I want to forget I ever saw.

[doc]

HUUUUGGGGGGGGGG that's for you kiddo

[DarwinOfMind]

I was unemployed at the time, and got online onto to Enworld to read some posts, and someone posted immediately after the first plane hit, I twirdled and turned on ABC news, just in time to see the second plane hit live on tv.

I spent the next 3 hours on ENWorld and Nutkinland assisting everyone else in posting what CNN was saying to the people who were at work and had internet but no tv. Naturally cnn.com couldn't keep up, I remember slashdot posting "We don't normally post this kind of news but under the circumstances we're the only news site responding."

After the first tower fell my mother and grandmother were heading to our family cemetary to water the flowers, and I went with them to get away from it all. I remember we stopped into a gas station and the girl behind the counter told me the second tower fell, I remember just nodding

After going home I watched Peter Jennings till like 3 in the morning and when I woke up the next morning he was still on, that was amazing to me. Early in the morning he went to a break said he'd be back after getting some coffee, he never came back on I think someone stopped him.

Standing out in the prairie miles from the nearest town watering flowers was theraputic. But I did spend alot of time looking at jet contrails with sharp angles where they made spontanious landings.


A few days later I got my interview with walmart they sent me for a drug test, they didn't know how long the test would take becuase usually it takes 1 day but usually it went by air mail. That was strange to think about, at that time it was really in my head that planes might never be allowed again.. A stupid thought i know now but I thought it then.

[Black Angel]

I was watching late night TV in Australia at my share house. It was news that someone accidentally flew into the tower, so we stayed up watching for a while... then it got worse. :( I won't forget it.

[Cat of Ulthar]

Geez Brynja. That is unimaginable. So sorry to hear that you were there. :(

I got to work at the dictionary, and heard people say two planes had hit the WTC; we were listening to the radio as we had no tv and the news sites couldn't cope. Then the third plane hit the Pentagon and a fourth plane was missing...

[The Theocrat of Poon-Tang]

At work, just finishing up the filing of our extended tax returns. Got wind of the first one via the internet, then the investment folks turned on their Bloomberg terminals for everyone to watch. Lots of chaos and sadness followed. I still carry the hatred of Islamists because of it, and probably will to my grave.

It feels just a short time ago, too. I hate to say it when I here about things debuting on 9/11 or people treating it like another day my reflex reaction is to be slightly insulted. Not sure why I still feel that way, but there you are.

I remember getting almost all my information through ENWorld that day, because just about every major news site was swamped and down. So people were posting updates minute by minute.

[Lady_Acoma]

I had just had some blood work done and was driving to my college for class when they reported that a plane had hit the first tower and it was assumed to be an accident. While I was waiting for class to start after having walked about a mile from my parking place I was told about the second plane. After that class I went to my next one with people chirping on phones and what not all over campus, the next teacher got us all seated and started class (he did an amazing job of being even Able to do so considering) before a random student stuck his head in the auditorium and yelled that the campus was closed and we were all supposed to go home or to dorms. Spent the next few hours stuck in traffic because of the rush of everyone trying to leave. By the time I got home both buildings had fallen (I couldn't stand to listen to it on the radio after hearing about the Pentagon, my brother had just transferred out of that section because of the renovations being done). I was told to get immediately in the car with my parents though as my blood work had turned up crappy and the doctor wanted me admitted at once. I spent the next couple of days in the ER (they would have put me on a floor but so many people had freaked the fuck out that they had no room to move anywhere due to various injuries and other traumas) and missed almost all of it except for snipets that I could occasionally over hear as people walked by.

[shiningbrow]

I was asleep. When I woke up my husband told me what had happened. I looked at him and said, "you're mistaken. That's not possible." I had just written an article about the history of the construction of the Twin Towers for a popular book on 20th c. engineering marvels and it was in galleys, waiting for a few minor last minute corrections. I watched the footage on television in disbelief. My editors subsequently considered pulling the piece until the New York office got wind of it and demanded that it be left in, but with supplementary paragraphs discussing the catastrophe. I spent the next two weeks reading engineering journals and logging onto professional sites in an effort to do a quick analysis of how they had failed. I sat in front of the computer, describing their catastrophic failure in rational and clinical text, but often, I had to stop because I found myself sobbing. It was just too much. I had often spent time in those buildings, on routine errands or even going up to the observatory for its splendid views of the city. I had long taken them for granted, finding them banal and somewhat oppressive in scale, but in retrospect, I appreciate them for the abstract forms demanded by their engineering. They have assumed an odd beauty for me. They fell victim to their iconic status, because of their size, and because they came to represent a kind of American hubris to people less sympathetic to our aims to spread democracy and the American way of life.

Brynja, I'm sorry for your pain, and can't imagine what it was like to have had to deal with that. I had spent the summer in New York and had left at the end of August to resume teaching. When I returned, the faces of the dead were everywhere, in the form of color photos and xeroxes of the missing posted outside of hospitals, on boards in Penn Station and Grand Central. Relatives of the victims were clinging to the hope that their loved ones had somehow escaped and had amnesia or were simply injured somewhere. It was the saddest thing in the world.

[Redallia]

I was sleeping and my dad woke me up. Mentioned something about there being an attack and how we had to go pick my sister up from work. Her boyfriend at the time worked on one of the floors that was actually hit by one of the planes, though he wasn't up there at the time. He was, however, on his way over and up. My sister was almost hysterical until she finally got an IM from him at probably around 4 or 5 that afternoon (iirc).

I think I spent the rest of the day in an IRC channel, kinda in shock.

Since I live nearish to an airport, for the week afterwards, I was kinda weirded out by the fact that there weren't any airplanes flying about.

[Brynja]

When I returned, the faces of the dead were everywhere, in the form of color photos and xeroxes of the missing posted outside of hospitals, on boards in Penn Station and Grand Central. Relatives of the victims were clinging to the hope that their loved ones had somehow escaped and had amnesia or were simply injured somewhere. It was the saddest thing in the world.

The very worst part about that is that they would remain up for nearly a year. Some faded and and wet, a bitter reminder that their families had realized their fate. Others still were always replaced and some laminated or covered in plastic boarding. That broke my heart. Even a year later they were still hoping. Thinking about the little flowers or bits on them that somehow expressed the pictured persons personality still reduces me to tears.

I knew things would never be the same when I saw people leaping from windows. To leap that high up....to fall that far?! What must it have been like up there to make THAT a more preferable death? Walking up 6th avenue US fighter jets were screaming overhead. People (me included) were ducking and covering behind dumpsters in alley ways. Why? We were no longer sure it would be one of our own. That sense of saftey never returned to me, what I had when I woke that morning. I have stopped dissolving into tears and cowering when i hear a terrible storm. It took a few months to realize it was a storm and not the terrorists coming to finish us off. I know how crazy that sounds, but it was a reflextive thought.

[shiningbrow]

I don't think it sounds crazy in the least. But it saddens me to realize that there is such cruelty in other people.

[Harry]

Back then, in the old way of doing things, I never bothered turning on the TV or the PC in the morning. I just got up, read the paper, showered and lolligagged about until time for work. 9/11 changed that. Now I get up, turn on the TV and hit the net for news, then later get ready for work.

At any rate, I headed out to the store and turned on the radio to Rock 103 and was immediately sunk into the really realistic and rather frightening teleplay about an attack on the World Trade Center. It was so well done it actually raised goosebumps on my arms, and the actors were so faithful to the material that I started to almost buy into the story, much like Orson Welles' radio audience way back when. By the time I was getting close to my store, near the only two tall towers in East Memphis, I was kinda getting freaked out. I remember stopping at the railroad tracks and getting out of the car and looking up at the Clark Tower, and at the flag flying over it.

When I got to work, the store was dead quiet. Every employee and customer was up front at our video counter, watching the TV back there. That's when I realized that this wasn't a brilliant radio play. And that's also when the towers began to fall.

One of my best friends at the time, the same woman who I recently visited in Kansas, worked with me then and she had completely flipped out. Her husband was, at that time, a pilot for Northwest and like every pilot in the country that day was completely incognito. They'd taken them all from the ready room at the airport and driven them off to some undisclosed location, since they didn't know who or what was causing the airplanes to fall out of the sky. I spent a good part of that morning trying to calm her down. As the day wore on and it became more obvious what had happened, my customers started walking like zombies through the motions of shopping. About 25% of my customers at that store were Orthodox Jews, from the Northeast, and they all had friends and family and co-workers who died that day.

Oddly enough, later on that day was the very last time I ever saw my ex-wife. I'd received my little "bonus check" from George W. Bush and since we'd been married, part of it was hers. Memorable last time seeing her.

[tleilaxu]

i was in hong kong. it was evening. we had just finished eating some steamed fish, and i was playing civilization II while my girl and her ma watched tv. "hey, a plane hit a building in NY" they said (in cantonese). i turned to watch, thinking it was some sort of horrible accident. then the second plane hit, and in that moment, i had a vision of all the horrible things that would happen, and have happened, since.

the next morning, i went downstairs to buy a coke from a 7-11, with the same crestfallen look on my face i am sure a lot of other americans had. i was short 2 HK$ (25 cents), but the guy just gave it to me. "god bless the USA" he said. i'll always remember that.

this morning, I woke up in new york city to church bells ringing.

[Lady Fury]

Brynja I had no idea you were there. I'm sure the memory for you will never fade.

On Sept 11th I was in the living room watching the morning news while nursing my then 4 month old daughter. I woke Singularity up after the first plane crashed and we watched the rest unfold live on tv.

[Name Lips]

My parents had been building their new house. Custom designed, state of the art, wine celler, tiles, vaulted ceilings, stained glass Trees of Life above every interior door... it's an amaizng thing. We were renting their old house, the one I grew up in. It was all arranged - they'd build their new house, then we'd move into the old house and be tenents.

But when our apartment lease ran out, and we moved into the old house... their new house wasn't finished. It was one problem after another. One delay after another. It was insane. Emerald was pregant and more than a little emotional - she wanted it to be OUR HOUSE before the baby came.

Finally, after all that buildup, the day came that my parents moved out. The moving van came and they were hauling all their stuff away and we were SO happy it was finally happening.

...and then my dad comes out of one of the upstairs bedroom and says "A plane just hit the World Trade Center. Thousands of people are dying." and it didn't compute. I was still so overwhelmed with the happiness of getting the house all to ourself... I was grinning like a moron and just said "what?"

It slowly sank in. We didn't have a TV on for some reason... maybe we wanted to make sure we kept hauling stuff down to the garage for the movers to take. But the movers turned on the radio in their truck and we heard all the updates as were were helping load... I remember calling up my work to ask if they were listening to the radio and knew what was going on. They were. I remember me and my dad agreeing that this was finally a real emergency, and that the politicans in Washington would all realize playtime was over, and finally unite to really do something as a nation.

It was a surreal day that mixed a joy long coming with a horror beyond imagining.

[cyphersmith]

I had taken off the week prior for a visit to St. Louis, and was driving back. I was in Idaho somewhere, and had gotten a hotel room. I woke up and turned on the tv. This isn't something that I normally do, but I did that morning. They were talking about the first plane having hit the Twin Towers, and on seeing them I realized that it would likely never be usable again. Then as I am watching, a plane hit the other tower. It was obvious to me that it couldn't be an accident. I continued watching the coverage for several hours, but I eventually had to leave. I called some friends on my cell phone to let them know what had happened, then continued on the last leg of my journey home. That was probably the hardest journey of my life, as I couldn't turn the radio off.

Edit: I should note that I lived in NYC for 4 years when I was a kid, and could see the towers clearly from where I lived, which was Governors Island.

[Scarbonac]

I was home, relaxing with my favorite message-board mega-thread at Crankyland, reading down through the posts made after I'd gone to bed the previous night.

Then I got to a very fresh post from one of the New York Crankylanders, stating that they'd seen a plane fly into one of the Towers. I immediately turned on MSNBC; one, then the other, of the Towers went down, over and over and over and fucking over.

I spent the rest of the morning in shock, especially after they mentioned that the Pentagon had been hit by yet another plane. All I could think at the time was "They're dropping planes on us!" (whoever "they" were).

The phone rang; it was my wife, who was at the Metro station near our place. She sounded pretty shaky -- which wasn't too hard to believe considering she'd had to travel all the way fron Seven Corners to the MD side of DC on Metro, not knowing if more planes were going to, well... you know. She didn't contact me til she was almost home cos she didn't want me to worry.


After that it was watching the Towers falling, people jumping, Pentagon burning, over and over and over and...phone calls, emails & IMs to parents, friends, siblings, etc, either to reassure that we were not caught up in it or to be sure some of them weren't involved.

It was crazytime.

My gut's twisting right now just thinking about it.

[Dawnstar]

I was at work in a outbound phone center at the time. Someone came running out of the break room talking about a plane hitting the world trade center. We all sort of were like "WHAT?" Then all the TVs that were on the walls but NEVER allowed to be turned on were turned on to the news channel. And things just sort of stopped. I remember calling my boyfriend at the time as well as my parents. We were not allowed to leave work but we sure the heck did not get anything done. And once it was time to go home, i got home and just sat watching the news the rest of the night. it was a day I will never forget and I was in Ohio.

Brynja I did not realize you were there. I am so sorry that you had to see everything that you saw.

[Ancalagon]

I had gone to New-Brunswick for the funeral of my Grandfather, who had died rather suddenly. So I was still a bit wrung out from that. That morning, I was supposed to fly back to Ottawa. As we were leaving, we heard news of the first plane hitting. We all thought it was an accident.

On the way to the small local airport (3 flights a day kind of airport), we were listening to the local radio, and of course, they got it wrong saying the Empire state building had been hit. This got me a bit frustrated, and I said how the locals here were well... a bit out of it.

We get to the airport, and this person walks by gesticulating that the Pentagon had been bomed. I joked with another passenger, saying that *nobody* bombs the Pentagon, and that the locals were getting the news all mangled up.

So we go through security, and we wait a bit, and then one of the attendant comes to see us and tells us that two planes have been crashed into the WTC, and another in the Pentagon, and that the airspace in the USA is closed. Since our flight goes over the USA a bit, they are waiting for authorization to re-route the flight. Needless to say, the flight never left.

So there I am, stuck in a minuscule airport with no radio, TV or internet. I was very worried about the Nutkinlanders that I knew were in the NYC or Washington area. I was happy I was in NB and not in Ottawa. With no information, all sorts of crazy rumors were going around the airport - a large cloud of poisonous powder had been released in Washington. An aircraft carrier had been sunk in the Mediterranean. People were very fearful that this meant that a great war was about to erupt. And once that threshold had been crossed - people DID bomb the Pentagon - everything seemed possible. I would have given a 100$ to get an internet connection.

Finally my relatives came back to pick me up at the airport. On the way back to their place, we listened to Radio Canada on the radio. It was *extremely* interesting, because unlike TV, where they just kept showing images, they would call various expert on middle-east politics and such and let them speak (and they were eager to do so). In that one hour drive, I heard the kind of analysis that would take months to happen in the mainstream media, and that quite frankly some people haven't caught up to yet.

So I get to their place, I sit in front of the TV, I open it. Withing 2 minutes, I see footage of the second plane hitting the tower. And even thought I knew about it, when I saw, I jumped 6 inches in the air (from sitting). It was shocking.

We didn't tell our Grandmother (who was senile) what was going on. But she kept asking for Grandpa, and kept forgetting he passed away... so every time we told her it was like the first time. It was grueling (she died 3 months later). To me, 9/11 and the death of my Grandfather will always be linked.

The following day, I took the train back to Ottawa, and ended up sitting besides the Webmaster for La Presse, a major paper in Montreal. My cousin, who insisted on flying, had to stay in NB 6 more days before she could fly out.

sheesh, what a day....

Ancalagon

[The Theocrat of Poon-Tang]

Of course, right when I think the sting of those memories is starting to fade, I'll read something like this and it fuels the whole machine once again...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/usa/2635827/For-Evans-sake-Dando.html

EVAN DANDO is more of an egghead than a LEMONHEAD.
He described the World Trade Center terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001, as a "beautiful" thing.

The singer, who witnessed the attacks unfold from his nearby New York apartment roof, said: "I had a good experience that day. I'd always wanted to see a plane crash. I don't know if that's morbid - it was kind of beautiful in a weird way.

"I could almost reach out and touch the plane as it came in. I started to get really sad about 9/11 about a year later, once I'd realised people had died in there."

That's LEE RYAN from BLUE standards on the showbiz stupidity scale.

Dando added: "It was nothing to do with the planes hitting the buildings, them falling down. I know that for sure. It was a bomb planted in the building.

"Maybe it was al-Qaeda that planted it, but I very much doubt it."

[Brynja]

Of course, right when I think the sting of those memories is starting to fade, I'll read something like this and it fuels the whole machine once again...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/usa/2635827/For-Evans-sake-Dando.html

What a fucking moron....once he fucking realized?!

Pull your head out of your ass, take the smack needle out of your arm and go kill yourself Evan Dando.

[Kyle Voltti]

I got up and took my dogs for a walk. It was sunny and warm. the air was crisp and I could hear the kids in the nearby schoolyard playing. I don't know why the sound of thos children sticks with me so clearly. I remember thinking what a surpriseingly nice day it was. I didn't have school till the afternoon. I got home and went to my room and turned on the TV it was after the first plane hit and before the second and I watched as the world changed.

[Janos]

Minutes in the day are crystal clear, but that whole week is one big gray fog. That sounds weird but I don't know how else to word it.

My roommate woke me up minutes after the first plane hit, something like 6:30 AM PST, two hours before my first class of the day. I was bitching him out for it till what he said really sank in.

After that, I panicked. I was watching the news and frantically trying to call my fiancee Edith. She worked for Bloomberg and spent a couple of days a week at the Bloomberg tower office, and the rest at the main office. The phone lines were totally jammed as the second plane hit. She'd been on a business trip the whole weekend and I hadn't talked to her since Saturday afternoon.

After that, I spent a chunk of the morning in the chatroom on Nutkinland trying to keep my mind from worrying and still trying to get through to her via text, email, phone, anything. There was a big handful of people in the room, mostly wondering about Nemmerle and Qualidar(?), the one Black Lodger who was in NY at the time and his buddy.

I skipped most of my classes for the day. One class I had a test in and the teacher wasn't returning calls, so I went to campus to verify if the class/test was happening. The class was cancelled.

I ended up in a fist fight with an obnoxious dickhead student who was shouting that we deserved it. Campus police let me free without charging me and even drove me back to my car. I never found out what happened to him. I had a nice shiner for close to a week afterward.

That night I drove for NYC/NJ (where she lived). I still hadn't heard back from Edith. I made it as far as Arizona the next day when I heard from her. She had gotten food poisoning saturday night and had been at home sick monday and tuesday and wasn't anywhere near the towers at the time.

I made it to New Jersey Friday and spent the weekend there, then drove back Monday. She lost two friends who were based out of that office.