What were you doing 17 years ago today?

[PepperSteaks]

I think September 11th is definitely one of those moments when you remember exactly where you were. As MN is such a cross section of society I thought it would be interesting to know where people were when it happened.

I was at work, watching it all unfold and texting DH. I was just about to give birth to my first DC and wondering what kind of a world they were going to be born into.

I got engaged to my DH that day. We were in Florence - we climbed to the the top of the Duomo where he asked me to marry him, then we had the most wonderful celebratory lunch.

We saw the footage on the television in a shop afterwards. I remember watching it while DH was buying something and trying to figure out what I was seeing. I thought at first it might be a film, but realised that it had to be news footage. This was after the planes hit but before the towers collapsed. I remember thinking afterwards that if I had just seen what I thought I ‘d seen, it would be the most significant thing to have happened in our lifetimes.

I was in the city shopping with my DM for Back To Uni. We'd also been to the cinema. In the shops we heard people say "hijack" and "planes" and thought it was a Middle East thing to do with Israel and Palestine which had historically been a thing.

On the train home we saw a headline "Jets attack Skyscrapers" and we heard a loud ignorant sounding girl saying

"It's the Americans isn't it? You know what they're are like! Probably exaggerated"

Then we got home and turned on the TV

I do hope that girl felt heartily ashamed when she realised

At school. I remember coming home and asking my mum what film she was watching. She told me it was actually happening in real life and I was so scared. I was glued to the TV for the rest of the day.

It was my first year living in America, and my parents had the news on as I was getting ready for high school. I had never heard of the twin towers and didn't really understand how significant the event was until I got to school that morning and no one was teaching in their classes.

I was a student nurse on placement and a patient showed me footage of the plane hitting the tower on his hospital bed telly. I thought it was a film and couldn't comprehend what I was seeing.

I still find it as shocking to watch now as I did then, I was in New York the year before and it was completely unfathomable that it could happen.

Packing my stuff to start uni the next week. Chris Moyles was still doing the afternoon show and came in the radio to say 'if you're not watching a tv right now, I suggest you put one on, we're just playing music for the rest of the afternoon' and I turned the TV on thinking it was a tragic accident until the second plane hit.

Sat and watched it all afternoon until my mum got in from work. My dad was in the military and we got a very short call from him saying we wouldn't hear from him for a while and that was our last contact with him for 6 weeks.

I was at work with the radio on. Pretty sure it was Steve Wright that announced what had happened. Think he said it was a light aircraft at first. Couldn't really believe what was happening when I came home and saw on tv. We had no internet access at work so couldn't find anything out other than what the radio presenters were saying.

I was in Taunton for work (I work in Leeds), pumping water out of boreholes as part of the development of a new bus station. I git in the car to move fields and heard what I thought was a film review on the radio. About and hour later I did the same, and they were still talking about the same “film”, which is when I realised it was actually news.

Further to my earlier post, some years previously I had a holiday in NY and I have a picture that I took from the viewing gallery at the top of the WTC, you can see the street and yellow cabs, anything lit up, but not people as it was so far up. Looking at it after 9/11, I realised the enormity of what it would have been like to have been stuck in that building, how far it was to the ground. How utterly terrifying it must have been. One day, I shall return and visit Ground Zero. I find it hard to imagine what it would be like there now.

I was living in Central Asia, with no internet connection and a dodgy fuzzy Russian speaking TV.

We saw it just as we were going to bed, but quite late, then the TV channel just switched and showed CNN all night, so we could see and understand it. I remember thinking do I phone my American colleagues and wake them up?

Many expats were evacuated from Central Asia afterwards, it was all so unsettled.

My dad was in the military and we got a very short call from him saying we wouldn't hear from him for a while and that was our last contact with him for 6 weeks.

wow that must have been scary

I was in Year 8 at school. We didn't get told about it during the day but I remember my mum telling me when she picked me up. She said some planes had crashed and I remember thinking it was strange she was announcing it in such a way as planes sadly did crash from time to time. Obviously later that day I understood the magnitude.

I still have a copy of The Times that I bought the next day on the way into school. It has the picture of the two people holding hands as they jumped, I still find that very difficult to look at.

I remember my nan picking my sister & I up from school, making us macaroni & cheese, and us watching the tv. My mum was working for BA & was due to fly home from Washington that day. My dad crying as he wasn't able to contact her. She didn't get home for almost a week.

I was working as a Student Nurse & was in my break in the dayroom when the twin towers came on the television.

One of my cousins worked for JP Morgan & some of her colleagues were on the phone to US colleagues & clients in the twin towers which was upsetting.

So many posters with small babies! I did wonder though at that time what sort of world I had bought my beautiful 4 week old DS and two beautiful daughters into. It really did change everything.

My oldest son had just started school the week before and was only there on afternoons so I'd taken him before returning home for some lunch, my 1 year old was napping so I took 10 minutes to chat online to a friend in Australia. Mid-conversation she asked if I had the TV on, I didn't so she told me to put it on as a small plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. I thought I'd have to put on a news channel but as soon as I switched on the TV the coverage was being shown on BBC1 and the second plane had just hit.
I remember walking back from collecting my son from school, which was in the town centre, and seeing it on a TV in an electrical shop window as we passed. It looked like the Towers were surrounding by thick smoke, now I know that it was dust as the first tower fell and we got home just before the second one fell, I remember watching in disbelief and crying and my toddler brought his teddy bear over to comfort me.

We'd been up one of the towers a few years before and I couldn't get my head around how something so large could be felled so easily. We visited the Memorial and 9/11 Museum earlier this year and it was an incredibly moving experience. I'll never forget the silence in the museum despite it being busy.

At work. Someone's husband had heard he news on his car radio and phoned her. We didin't have a tv in the office but listened online. I was moving house a day or two later. I was so relieved to have so much to do I could't really watch the footage. It's constant repetition became sickening.

A bit outing, but I was there on my honeymoon.

My new DH and I watched the second plane hit. I try to avoid watching the coverage now, it was just too horrible. We saw both towers fall.

The days following were some of the worse of my life. The people's grief, there, in the flesh, was awful to witness.

Sad times.

I was staying in a youth hostel in the hills outside of Florence. There was a TV up on the wall and we watched it live.
I’ll never forget the sound of a young American woman screaming in pain who had a relative that worked in one of the towers.

I was at work, coming to the end of lunchtime, I was 19. One of our older colleagues had a little radio in his office, he'd been to the betting shop and heard what was happening so we listened to the events unfolding on that.

That was the days of dial up internet so didn't see any actual footage until I saw the news at 6pm, and then photos in the newspaper the next morning.

Truly shocking even now, and also makes you think about how accessible information is now compared to back then.

I was 14 and at school.

I was at a friends house with my new DD - the enormity of being a parent hit me like a train. I mean I obviously knew but watching the footage, something changed. It's odd because when you become a parent for the first time you go through all these feelings, I didn't think the emotion could be any stronger; but it upped its game that day.

The world changed forever that day.

I was moving into my new flat at uni. Had my tv on as i unpacked. I stopped unpacking and just watched. I was on my own and horrified.

We were on holiday in Menorca, having a meal in a beach side restaurant when we saw a group standing round a TV at a bar a little further along the street. Walking along to see what was going on, we arrived just in time to see the second plane hit the WTC. A day I'll certainly never forget.