9/11 Remembrance

[Bub]

It has been quite a few years now, but I think that 9/11 has had such an impact on everyone that the wounds still haven't healed. I had family members of friends die on that day. I have heard of towns losing a majority of their fathers and mothers on that day.

I remember being in 10th grade. Second period English. A friend of mine running into class, jokingly saying a plane ran into the World Trade Center. Most of us thought it was just a small one-man plane (as that had already happened before). The period went by without another mention.

The next period I was in a Computer class. I remember opening up MSN to see the first Tower fall. Everyone was silent, watching in horror. Then the second Tower. Something that was so symbolic of the United States...two of the tallest man-made buildings in the world completely destroyed.

I remember the sadness and the anger. What I remember most was the stalwart patriotism that came from it. There was not one house in my town that didn't wave the United States flag for months after.

What do you guys and gals remember on this day? Please, in spirit of the thread, let's not go off on any political tangents. Be respectful.
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[HarmonianHiccup]

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. THere were alot of people on that day who said that it felt like they were watching a movie and will echo that statement. I mean, it's really hard to believe that something that horrible was happening right before your very eyes.
The plane hit the first tower right before I left to go to school that day--I was a sophmore in college--and my uncle called to tell us what had happened. We turned on the news and things didn't look that bad. I lost track of what was happening until I got to the library and one of the classrooms downstairs had turned the news on the projector screen. I was standing there in total shock as I saw the results of the second impact.

I did not see the towers fall. Knowing my temperment, it's prbably a good thing that I didn't, as I was already so horrified by what was happening that I wouldn't have been able to take it. The thought of all those people--
OK, I can't even write about it. It's making me sick.

I was a thousand miles away when it happened--I had never seen the Twin Towers and never stepped foot in NYC outside of the airport, and yet I felt like someone had struck me to my very heart. It was horrible, and it is something that must NEVER be forgotten if human beings the world over are going to live in freedom without fear.

It was, as Pearl Harbor and hundreds of other atrocities perpetrated by mankind on its own were, a day that shall live in infamy.
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[Goldy]

I remember exactly where i was on that not so faithful day. I was at my mothers house and i was up in my old room with my girlfriend, we were just lying there tired after a night out with friends. All of a sudden i could hear my mother running out into the hallway and shouting up to me...."David....New York is gone! New York is gone!"

God love her, she was in a bit of shock at what she was seeing on the news. I said to myself...."New York cant be gone" and with that myself and my girlfriend went down stairs to see what was going on....we pretty much stayed there for most of the day watching the events unfold in total disbelief....

[Scarlet Assassin]

Unlike most of the members of this board, I happen to live in New York. I can't really say much about the attack, but I remember being on one of the observation decks of the twin towers a few weeks before it happened, so when I saw the building come down I just felt cold inside. I knew a lot of people who went to volunteer and clean up the wreckage. My girlfriend's father was a hazmat (Hazardous Material clean up) at the time so he spent a good few weeks there. Most of my family are retired NYFD (New York Fire Department) and I was thankful that they were too old to get the call to help out, but a few of them went anyway to do whatever they could. I wanted to go, but I was a bit too young. It didn't seem all that huge at the time, but now every time I see a picture of the towers I feel strange. I've seen the clip of them smoking and hitting the ground more times than I can count, and every time I just keep staring, knowing that I looked out of some of those windows, I touched that glass and those floors less than a month before it happened.

Coincidentally, my house already had an American flag out for years prior to the attack, and we still have it out. So I was disgusted by the sudden flock of it, and the fact that the price for them skyrocketed in certain shops owned and operated by people who weren't born in the united states. I remember a neighbor of mine getting arrested for going berserk in a 711 because they were charging nearly ten dollars for a tiny American flag.
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[SolemnSound]

I remember that day quite well. I was a freshmen in highschool and I was told of what was happening in my spanish I class. It was a rather big class and I could just remember all of us watching the news in silence. School closed early but we still had to wait until our buses were called so we could go home. I could remember that this one girl was freaking out as the pentagon was attacked this same day as well and her father worked there and she had not heard any news about what happened and wanted to go home. I dont know how to describe I felt. I was shocked that such a thing could happen and that such a thing did happen but I kind of just went on with my day. I kind of agree with how ridiculous things became with the increased patriotism came around at the time of these events and its only at these times that our country really comes together.

There have been chain letters going around asking for people to drive around with their headlights on during daytime hours as a sign of respect in unity in America.
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[Dew Dust]

I live on Long Island and was going to John Jay College in Manhattan during the time of the attacks. That morning I was suppose to leave the house at 5 am to take the 6:20 express Ronkonoma Train out to Penn Station to do chemistry laboratory work. But I slept in a bit and then started getting ready to go. It was then I got a frantic phone call from my mom checking to see if I was home. When she heard my voice she was so happy I didn't catch the early train into Manhattan. I didn't know what was happening, but told her I had to go and head into the City. She told me to turn the television and that I was probably not going to college any time soon. When I turn on the television I was in shock with seeing the footage.

My brother works for Grucci fireworks and he was actually on a barge in the waters near southern Manhattan on that day. He said they heard some kind of noise and the people he was on the barge with started to panic as they turned and looked over in the distance and saw the plane had hit the building and what-not. He said everyone there was in disbelief and started crying with panic episodes. They headed back to the dock and he was among the others, including my uncle who works in Manhattan, who had to walk over the bridge to head home since all public transportation out of Manhattan had ceased.

We didn't lose anybody. I am grateful for my uncle and my brother who were there in Manhattan. And I am also grateful I didn't go into the City early that morning. However, of course, being here in New York, my friends and their families and neighbors have been affected one way or another or have lost someone that day.
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[Username]

I honestly did not care... I don't know why I didn't care either. I know were something like that to happen now I'd be more moved and I am now sorrowful for those that died and were hurt... it's just I don't know maybe it was the distance plus my age plus my being stupid.

I barely remember that day and can only recall the mental image of me watching the news in a classroom but I didn't even seem to care and was thinking about my own things... I like to think I was just to naive to want to comprehend it.

Regardless of how I thought about it then today and for the last four or so years I seemed to understand the gravity of what had happen.
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[Gil-galad]

I was pretty young when it occurred, only being in fifth grade at the time, and they did not even tell my class what was happening. I remember seeing more and more kids get pulled out of the class, until it was just myself, and five or six others left in the classroom until the end of the day, while our teacher was just sitting on his stool looking at us nervously, having us read books because he did want to teach anything with most of the class gone, or so he said.

Looking back, I was just really confused for most of the day, that when my father finally told me the news it was so much as emotionally shocking, as it was that things actually made a bit of sense.

In the long run it was more emotionally shocking, as I live only about 25 minutes from the Pentagon. However, the gravity of the situation never really hit me that hard because of how you I was. I just didn't really understand the situation all that well on a global scale.
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[retrospect.]

[Demon Eyes Kyo]

I was somewhat young when the incident occurred. I was in the fourth grade, only about nine years old. I remember being on vacation at the time, and when I woke up my mom had told me HELICOPTERS(xD) had crashed into some "tall buildings." My mom doesn't know much about stuff like that, so when I think about it now I found it kind of amusing that she mistook airliners for helicopters...

Anyway, today at school there wasn't really any kind of event for something like today. Although, I spent an entire period in my Honors English class discussing it and watching clips.
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Return that soul to God.

[Ikano]

I remember that day it happened I was actually in the art room eating lunch during High School
(I usually ate lunch in the art room the later half of high school cuz my class after lunch was mostly art/painting class in the same room anyway)

The teacher usually left the tv on to MTV or something so other students who came in for lunch to work on things would have music to listen to at least. She suddenly came running in the middle of lunch and was basically having an "OMG" reaction to something and flipped the tv to new channel.

Everyone was staring at awe at the tv...thought it was all done and over until they switched to talking about the Pentagon one...
but yeah...it was quite unbelievable and surreal. And though I didn't personally know anyone that was directly involved in either one...there were plenty or people around the school that did... (I live near the DC/Metro area by the way...so it's not like it didn't feel closeby to me...)

People started wanting to call home and excused themselves from class.
The rest of the day was quite uneasy.


But to think 6 years have gone by already...it's still a little sad to think about
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[Darko]

I was only in the eight grade when it happened. I remember that my two best friends and I walked to school together every morning. That morning, when I walked outside, my friend Felipe told me that he saw in the news that some planes crashed into a building. It's kind of sad to admit, but when he told me, I was like "Where? New York? Oh." And that was it. I was only 13 at the time and NY seemed so far away from me. In truth it held very little importance compared to everything else that was going on in my life. When we got to school, all our teachers were talking about it. In first period we spent most of the class time watching the news. I had no idea what was happening. I don't even remember knowing whether it was a terrorist attack or not. Our teacher for the following class was a very patriotic woman. I remember her just staring at the television in shock and horror and crying.

In Physical Ed. Class, one of my friends was badly frightened because his mother worked a few buildings down from the two towers. She probably was in no real danger, but to a 13 year old kid, just thinking how close she was to all that destruction must have been terrifying. Still, after seeing how this had affected people in my school, I still found myself feeling disconnected from it all.

It wasn't until months after, and especially in high school, that the events that transpired on that day really hit me. In Freshman year we watched a short documentary on 9/11 in our English class. There were actually clips of people jumping off the towers, some of them trying using plastic bags as parachutes.

At the time I didn't understand why our professor was showing that to us. I was so angry at him for it. But now I am glad. Because of what I saw on that video, I finally understood just how terrible the attacks on the Twin Towers were. I cannot fathom just how hard it must have been for family members of those that were killed on that day, but I feel like I understand their pain, even if just a little. It still saddens me every time I think about it.

When I went on Youtube today, there was a video on the main page that caught my eye. It’s of an upcoming documentary about how people from the city took it upon themselves to go help out at ground zero. Unlike controversial documentaries, like Loose Change, this one seems to focus on the effects of the attack on the community--- the humane side of it more so than the political one.
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[Flare]

I was in 7th grade and in PE at the time. I remember that because we were outside playing soccer or something and my school went into lockdown. That was pretty stupid considering we're a school of about 400 students, actually 800 since the high school and junior high buildings are attached, and in the middle of a freaking cornfield. Anyways, we're locked out and we don't know why. So we did what most people would do. We pounded on the door until someone came and let us in. We went and changed and everything, and then we were told about what happened. They were doing construction on the school at that time, so we were getting out at 11:30 or so. I got home and turned on the TV and I'm pretty sure it was on every channel. So yeah...that's what happened to me.
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[Sniper_Zegai]

Wow, cant beleive how many years its been.

I was in year 9 I think when this happened, it was strange. Im not really sure what else to say what has'nt been said.
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[Scott]

I believe that it occurred while I was a sophomore in High school.

I had already begun watching the news every single day before school. Usually CNN. That day as I was putting on my shoes to leave, I saw the news hit CNN. I was just starting become politically aware at the time, so this was big in a BAD way right off the bat. Then I saw the Second one hit before getting rushed off to School. I knew then this was no accident. All day at school...well, most had little to no idea of what was going on, which made it all the worse. All that was known widely was the towers and pentagon were hot and kids were pulled out of class like no tomarrow. I rushed home after school. Me and my Family just sat, watching everything unfold in shock.

It was honestly a pretty scary day, seeing all that happen..and getting home to find out it was even worse than most knew. It really is a day I'll never be able to forget no matter how long passes.
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