Exo

I was in 7th grade. My mother picked me up from school. I had no idea what was happening til I got home. My aunt worked in the west tower but I didn't realize she had quit a year before and I was freaking out until my mother calmed me down.

I went outside. I could see the smoke from my house. I live about 20 miles from the city but I also live on the mountain and can see the skyline just on the horizon. The black smoke was pretty clear.

I had a few classmates lose family members. It wasn't fun. This is why I don't find 9/11 jokes funny.

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ribbons

I was at work when the attacks happened. A number of people having a meeting in a south side conference room, which had a distant but very clear view of the Twin Towers, emerged to tell everyone that it looked like a plane struck one of the towers. People were going in and out of the conference room, watching the tower burn. I stepped out of the room and within minutes heard a big uproar. I went back in and immediately saw one of my work friends screaming and crying, and as I looked out the huge window saw that the second tower had been hit. We all stood there semi-frozen, it was completely surreal. The first thing I did was call my aunt, who worked only a few blocks from the World Trade Center. No answer. I was very, very worried about her – an older woman who continued working past retirement age. My husband was in the subway on the way to work in Brooklyn – I called and left him a voicemail and called my daughter’s school, but the line was busy. I called my mother who offered to go and get my daughter out of school. We lived on Roosevelt Island at the time, an island in the middle of the East River. I left work straightaway and walked north to the Roosevelt Island Tram to get home, but it wasn’t running. So, along with thousands of other New Yorkers, I walked over the Queensboro Bridge. I was on the bridge when the South tower collapsed. I’ll never forget that image – it looked like a house of cards with burning black smoke that quickly fell. It seemed like everyone on the bridge was screaming “Oh my God” when that happened. Everyone just stopping in their tracks and standing there, stunned to think of all the innocent people in that building. It was horrible, I felt really sick and angry thinking of the absolute terror and pain those defenseless human beings had gone through in that building. And then, of course, of what the people in the North tower were going through – and wondering if the North tower would collapse as well. Made it over the bridge into Queens, then walked through Queens over another small bridge onto Roosevelt Island. Finally made it to our apartment, with my daughter and mother there. My mother had been calling my aunt as well, but still no answer. My daughter was shaken but handling it well. I talked with her and tried to assuage her fears of more attacks happening. We kept the livingroom t.v. off and my mother and I took turns watching news reports on the bedroom t.v. By this time my husband had called and was walking back home over the Brooklyn Bridge, then through lower Manhattan northward, then the Queensboro Bridge route. To our relief, within a couple of hours my aunt called. She had taken refuge in a deli and the owner let her use his phone. She had been running through the huge clouds of ash and debris along with the throngs of people downtown. She was very calm and brave, and physically OK. She had seen the people jumping to the ground from the towers – and she was haunted and traumatized by that for a long time afterward. But, as she says this day, nowhere nearly as traumatized as the victims themselves or their families. Several families in our island community lost loved ones on 9/11. They are memorialized in a special ceremony every year, but that will never bring them back. It was a terrible, horrible, disgusting, dreadful day.

Cuthbert

Not sure, was November the 9th a school day in the UK?

ThePhanastasio

I was a freshman in high school, and was "talking to" the principal's son. His dad pulled us out of class, and we sat in the library in silence and watched it happen. We saw the second plane hit, people jumping from the buildings, on live television.

I remember just wishing it would stop.

Later on, my drama teacher was desperately calling his friend and who worked in tower one. Fortunately, he was running late for work and got caught in the subway.

My town was also on some sort of lockdown because we had an oil refinery, steel mill, and coke plant within a dozen miles of each other, and the federal government ruled us a top 5 target.

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Taxman

9/11 was my birthday...

djchameleon

was your birthday? did you die? are you a ghost typing?

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ladyislingering

I was in my grade 7 social studies class. It was raining that morning, and it was still dark. The teacher had the TV on, because he felt we needed to see history in action. I don't think any of us really understood what was going on. I spent most of the morning just writing in my notebook. He took it upon himself to just not teach class that morning.

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Kanga

I was 14 years old and was walking to school when a friend told me about it. Couldn't really comprehend what had happened until I got home after school that evening.

Matt Cameron

I was in the RAF at the up in Scotland (UK), working in an armoury.

We heard the news of the first plane hitting the towers, and eventually somebody 'tweaked' our 'coat-hanger antenna' so we could listen to the news. About an hour afterwards, that was when it REALLY kicked-off. The armoury was placed into 'lock down', and we had to produce a full audit of all serviceable weapons. The station guard-force came and collected all the temporary-issue ammunition. We could hear a couple of Tornado GR1's sitting at the arming-point with their engines spooling.

We were locked in. Nobody could come in, nobody could leave. Our contact with the world was through a small hatch and the internal phone. We were given empty bottles to piss in.

For the first time in my military career, it was our first 'stand to' that was not a drill. We remained at that state for nearly 12 hours.

On reflection, it WAS the start of a 'war'.
Iraq and Afghanistan followed, and we spent much our lives living out of kit-bag afterwards, until I demobbed in 2005.

Still seems surreal, as did the tours....

Taxman

yes I am died. I died five year ago in a car crash. But God sent me back to help other peoples so here I am.