Where were you when you found out about the 9/11 attacks? (I realize that, for many readers of this site, the answer will be "school," but please elaborate on how you found out, your reactions, etc.)
My own entry will be in the comments too, to keep the main post brief and accessible.
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I was lying in bed at about 11pm on the night of September 11, listening to the radio. Inbetween songs, the radio announcers had mentioned something about it, but they came back from one song, and they sounded a lot different, a lot more distressed as they tried to describe the second plane that had just flown into the second tower.
I got up, went out to the lounge room where Mum & Dad were still up watching the news and it was all going live... I think I stayed up til 3am or something just horrified, glued to the TV.
I was about to go into DC that morning with my brother to meet my mom at her office. Luckily, we were waylaid my father's phone call, telling us to turn on the TV. I witnessed the towers falling live on television. It was utterly surreal.
Here's my story: I was on a break from teaching, like every Tuesday, and actually spent the time of the attacks in blissful ignorance at the Rockwall Starbucks. I had CD's on in my car instead of the radio, so I totally missed the news on both the way over and the way back. I did hear someone listening to a radio on the patio and they were talking about "the second plane," but it didn't register with me at all. (It amazed me later that nobody walked inside and told us about it.)
When I got back to the school, the flute teacher stopped me in the hallway and asked me if all my students were being pulled out of school (evidently hers were). I said, "No, why?" and she told me what had happened. I spent the rest of the day like everyone else, in shocked, depressed amazement, catching the news when I could. There I was, not even two weeks into being a homeowner, and the world suddenly felt so different. It added to the pall cast over everything when I found out that the sister of a girl I graduated from high school with was on Flight 93, the one that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
The whole thing felt so surreal; how could anyone hate us that much? The concept of the suicide hijacking was unprecedented as well (before that, hijackers just usually wanted to go to Cuba, and that's why airline personnel were taught to cooperate with them rather than try to subdue them).
I know there are still terrorist plots being hatched, and people capable of carrying them out...but I hope nothing like this ever happens on U.S. soil again. Or anywhere, for that matter.
That's why I'm glad I work in a school district but not for a school district, since no such verbal shackles were placed on me. I didn't bring it up myself with anyone, but several students did, and one particularly insightful eighth-grader made the great point that it was ridiculous for parents out here to be taking their kids out of school, because the chances of terrorists striking Rowlett were very, very slim (besides, what would they strike...the water tower?).
When the September 11 attacks happened, I didn't really have any friends at all in America. I didn't know anyone at all over there. So to hear all this is pretty mind blowing.
I mean, don't get me wrong, Australia's heart went out to you guys so much. But I don't think we could ever sympathise enough with you. It's kinda like a family member dying, and we're the friends. You guys were distraught that so many family members died, and we just had to stand back, put our arm around you and support you when we could. But I don't think we could ever know exactly how you, as a nation, felt on that day.
James, I hope you guys never have to feel what we felt on that day. Seeing as how it was the first attack by foreigners on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941 (which, obviously, was before the bulk of the people in this country were born), it was like nothing we had ever seen before...nor hope to ever again.
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