What were you doing in 2001?

[NW3Lady]

Time for another one of these?

I spent the first nine months abroad on a gap year having a pretty good time. I happened to be in New York on 9/11 although predictably as a 19 year-old I was still fast asleep in bed at just after 9am when disaster struck.

I returned home to start university to find that suddenly everyone now had a mobile phone and was texting each other like crazy. Oh how exciting it was when that little envelope symbol appeared on the screen with a number next to it. The news was all about Anthrax fears. Drum and bass seemed to have taken over as the dominant music genre which I wasn’t thrilled about.

How about you?

I had my first proper job in my current profession and loved it so much I realised it was what I should have been doing all along and have continued to do ever since. I was also pregnant with DS after a very sad miscarriage and a long bout of infertility. 2001 was a good year for DH and me.

I was thin and beautiful.

No idea the world had changed around me, really.

I was a child under 10, living in NYC, and life changed forever. Then moved to England for a while, then back to the states in the Adirondacks (mountains around NY) where we felt safer.

I was about to go into my second year of Uni when 9/11 happened. I remember the day vividly I’d gone into the city with my DM to go to the cinema and get stuff for going back. All around us we heard people speaking about hostages and we knew SOMETHING had happened. On the train home some silly girl said very loudly “it’s the AMERICANS, it’s probably not even THAT bad” She must have felt such a fool when she finally caught up to the news. It was well before smartphones or WiFi after all. I remember getting in and immediately turning the TV on and being horrified.

I had finished school and was incredibly excited that I only had two more years of college left before I could leave the education system entirely! I knew from very early on that I would be far more suited to work than education and it turned out to be entirely true. These days I’m a 39 year old mother of two under twos (plus a dog as my username suggests) and still very happy to not have to wake up and go to school every morning 😂

Working in a BT call centre after finishing university. Got married that summer. Vividly remember the switchboard screens LIGHTING UP as the news started to spread on September the 11th... 😢

I was living in London, sharing a flat with a friend, working hard and playing hard.

Living in a squat I specifically wanted to move into because it was handy for the club I spent most of my time getting wasted in. I'm now a perfectly respectable mother of two.

I had just qualified as a solicitor and already knew I hated it.

I was a year married and wondering if I liked being married. I had started a new job making a lot more than DH and it felt wrong, although the money was nice. I was navigating the inlaw thing (as was Dh with my family) and then 9/11 happened. I was in the US, knew people in the towers (cousins who survived, cousin who was a NYC firefighter who survived, friends of friends who were killed). Suddenly DH and I were more bonded and we started trying to start a family. Which ended up being three yeas of agonizing infertility.

I was in junior school, I had my first mobile and was obsessed with Pokémon both the cards and Gameboy version.

I was an 11yo growing up in rural Ireland. My parents were self building a house and we were at the foundation stage at that time.

My summer was spent walking the country roads, mountains and rivers. Good times.

I was a student at Oxford. We thought the oddball who came into the common room at lunchtime and said ‘Turn on the tv, something’s happened in New York’ was pretending, as he had form for spinning tales about being in the Stasi Youth.

Looking after my DS-born in the February. I think we were camping at this exact time.

On 25 July 2001, DH and I had been married for 4 days. We were getting ready to set off on our honeymoon to York.

Happy days.

For our 24th anniversary on Monday, we moved house. Equally fun!!

Working, got married, had baby by end of year

In the May had my third child, the others were 4 and 2. On 9/11 I was in the greengrocer when a man ran in (strangely was a retired pilot) with his arms in the air shouting hysterically. When we managed to calm him and understood what was happening, the greengrocer said “great, that’ll ruin telly tonight”. To be fair, I don’t think we could comprehend exactly what was happening.

A-levels, still living at home and applying to Uni. Passed my driving test on 9/11, went home and watched the world change on TV.

Being born 🤣🤣🤣