Where were you on 9/11?

[JorisBonson]

I was 16 and at college, having a rip roaring time in the student union bar with my fake ID.

Noticed a few people gathered round a small TV after the first plane hit. The union ended up pulling down the projector screen usually reserved for football, just as the second plane hit. We sat there for hours and hours just watching and not believing what we were seeing.

Can't believe it's been 20 years.

I heard from Simon Mayo on the radio hilatbheading out in the car to pick up the DC. It was compelling listening. DC3 was 10 weeks old and had a habit of screeching in the car so that was my backdrop. When. I got home I put the tv on and was glued to it until he morning ( with a few breaks for organising the DC.?

@Pinotpleasure your re-collection has just took my breath away

Watching the lunchtime edition of Crossroads while DD was having her afternoon nap.
I had nipped to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, and when I came back into the living room they were showing footage of the twin towers.

I was in my classroom, after the class had left and I was doing my prep whilst listening to Steve Wright. The music stopped suddenly and he went to a news special. I wheeled the TV in from the corridor and sat for ages with other staff watching events unfold.

I was 16, must have just started 6th form. I remember coming out of school and meeting my friends to walk home with, and they’d seen the 2nd plane hit the towers on the news in their history class.

A guy I worked with (who later became my boyfriend) was on holiday with his family in the USA when it happened - they couldn’t fly home for ages.

I remember getting home from school and my mum watching in horror and disbelief. It all seemed unreal to me and I didn't quite catch on how bad it was - part of this I think was due to growing up in NI and being exposed to regular news of bombs and bomb scares etc and terrorist activity in general, I was a bit desensitised.

16, working in Tesco. Caught a bit of it on TV in my lunch break, I didn't know what the Twin Towers were until then.
One of my patients mentioned the other day that it was 20 years ago and I went to correct them, thinking it must be 15... then remembered how old I am! Can't believe it was 2 decades ago.
Also remember protesting the war that followed.

[quote BeaFlowers]@Pinotpleasure your re-collection has just took my breath away [/quote]
Me too.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

@randomlyLostInWales

Second job in open-plan office - eating lunch at desks we all started watching BBC and other news sites though first reports weren't clear but saw second plane hit - very quickly started to find webpages pages freezing or dropping out- TV was turned on in conference room.

As afternoon went on turned out the managers knew people on one the planes - people from our parent company.

I watched a TV program last night with the kids about it and it was shocking for them though they know it happened.

The program was more about the US government was doing. Bush fighting to get back to washington and being put off - how little they knew and how they were watching the news channels to find out what was going on in early stages as they were seeing more how several key people were literally picked up and grabbed by secret service - how they were using up all the oxygen in the bunker under white house and starting to feel the effects it was interesting in a worrying kind of way.

I watched that and thought it strange that we knew more than the eyewitnesses in New York and we’re thousands of miles away.

I was in a job interview that was all day long and held in a hotel. I called my husband from a pay phone in the lobby to let him know that I had got through the preliminary interview and He sounded really choked up. He told me to ask someone to put on a telly.
And explained that a plane had hit the tower.
We had both been up them 5 months before.

The receptionist opened a small telly that they had in a cupboard behind reception in the Marriott. Pretty soon a crowd of the interviewees and people checking in we're watching when the second tower was hit. I stood there sobbing. Everyone did. We all processed that it wasn't an accident but a terror attack. I was then called in for the next stage of the interview and I must have looked white as a sheet because the interviewer asked if I was ok. I explained what we had just witnessed and she burst into tears and told me that her brother was a trader in lower Manhattan and she had to go to try and call him.
I went back to the lobby where we were all told the interviews would be rescheduled.
We then all watched in absolute horror as the towers fell. They also covered the other hijackings.
I ended up sitting in another hotel bar drinking tea with a few of the other interviewees and we were all equally shocked.
The day is still so clear. I can't believe 20 years has passed.

I was nearly 12 and in my first few days of year 7. My mum told me what had happened when I returned home, I had never heard of the twin towers before. I remember it being reported in the news that there was a spiderman film due out around that time and it needed to be edited to remove the images of the twin towers in the opening scenes. I'm not sure why I recall that...probably indicative of my 11 year old brain! I remember my mum panicking too about her friend in NYC at the time.

Boston UK buying a Dalmatian spotted dressing gown. I was just modelling it in the office when we heard the news.

I was at work in open plan office too, think I’d just got back from lunch when the news page on our intranet said a plane had hit WTC1. It was just so bizarre and difficult to comprehend. I remember going for a cig break later that afternoon, I think the towers were still standing, and there were a lot conversations that it could be the start of WW3. It definitely felt as though the world had changed forever.

I was 16, in 2nd week of 5th form at school. Walking back from going to the toilet mid-lesson bumped into a mate from U6th who got news update text messages sent to his phone who told me about it.

He was known for being an easy wind-up victim (not in a malicious way) and I bet him a fiver that someone was having him on it just seemed inconceivable to me that something like that could happen. And up until that point I’d never even heard of the twin towers.

Got the bus home, walked through the door to find my mum watching the tv in floods of tears- it was her 53rd birthday.

I was 18, sitting on the sofa filling in some paperwork to choose accommodation for my university halls! Annoyed that Neighbours on BBC 1 was interrupted or delayed for a special news bulletin! It went to the live coverage not long after the first plane hit, then I watched the second plane hit live, awful.
My dad was working from home, I called him and he came in and watched for a few seconds and then just said “That’s it then.” As in, the world has changed forever now.
Very sad and can remember it so clearly.

Living in Asia at the time, pregnant with DS2. When I dropped DS1 at pre-school that morning someone said something about how awful that thing that had happened in America was. Got home, switched on the TV and stayed in my chair watching it all day long.

I was 24 and in a department meeting in the same school I work in now. A colleague broke the news, then the meeting continued. I didn't realise the real extent or significance until I got home.

On a person level, although there has been progression and change, the fact I'm in the same role 20 years on makes it all seem a bit pointless.

I was a sahm with my one year old. I’d just got her up from a nap and was getting ready to go to my sister’s house. I remember thinking WW3 would happen and feeling fearful for my child’s future. I can’t watch anything about it now, it’s too real and too recent.

I was a little girl completely unaware

I was at home in Greater Manchester.
I had just put my eight-month-old baby down for a nap, put the tv on and walked out of the living room to make lunch and a cup of tea.
When I came back I saw the WTC on fire.

At first, I think it was a movie. I walked back out of the room but came back and realized it was a news report.

I froze. My aunt worked at the WTC and I was desperately trying to remember which building she worked in. A minute later, the second plane hit the south tower and I was then having a massive freak out. I was trying to call my sister in the US but I couldn't get through and I just kept dialing every number of any relatives in the US but the lines were down.

I collected my other two children from school but I can't remember how I got there. It was an otherworldly experience because many of the school mum's hadn't heard or really understood what was happening. I was twitching and so desperate and no one could understand. My country was being attacked, my family member could be trapped or dead and I was so far away from home.

On the radio in the car, I heard about the Pentagon and the panic was really rising but I was trying very hard to keep my cool for my children. When we got home, I just sort of threw food and drink at them but then I saw the south tower fall. My then, nine-year-old, tells people that I fell to the floor sobbing. I apparently stayed like that after the second tower fell. I don't remember. I just know that I felt the bottom of my stomach fall and I felt faint.

It took me two or three days to learn that my aunt had survived. I met with her a few years ago and she only told me a very little bit of what she experienced on the day. I can completely understand why she hadn't returned to the site in 15 years, despite living in Manhattan. She carries a great trauma.

That day reminds me of feeling helpless, scared, and deeply sorrowful. A few days later, the guilt of feeling elated to learn the news from my aunt. Later, I had to feel the fear of my nephews going to war.

I was at work in the early stages of pregnancy. I was sent home because the morning sickness was debilitating. I knew nothing about it until I got home and turned the tv on: the first tower had already collapsed and I watched as the second tower went. Not before I saw the falling bodies of the people throwing themselves out of windows. I genuinely considered an abortion as I was horrified at the world I was bringing my child into (I didn’t; she is now 19).

I read a study earlier that suggested that our memories of that day may not actually be our own but I’m confident mine were specific enough to myself to have been my own

Was walking out of my old school having done some teaching there while I was in summer break from university. I had no idea where the world trade centre was.

I was 11, it was my first day in year 7. I got home from school, not knowing about what had happened. My mum was glued to the news and I couldn't understand why she didn't fuss me and ask me how my first day in high school went

I was making a start on dinner while my toddler and baby had their lunchtime nap. I had the radio on and when I heard the news I turned on the tv. I had to switch it off when ds woke up as I didn't want the scare him. We went to the park, it was a beautiful sunny afternoon, the playground would usually have been very busy, but there was hardly anyone there.

Our neighbours were American, the husband worked for Citibank and had worked in the towers but he was seconded over here. Obviously they knew lots of people who were involved, and they lived on Staten Island where lots of police and firefighters lived. They were devastated, I remember having their little boy over to play a lot in the weeks after, to give the parents a break.

We lived near the US embassy at the time. That day, people began to leave flowers and candles outside, by the end of the week they were all over the pavement. There were lots of prayer services and people gathering together.

It was such a sad time.

I was talking to some young colleagues who were either not born on 9/11 or too young to remember. They found it really difficult to understand how our world changed on that day. I was only in year 8 but I can remember so much of that day. Life truly was the never the same again.