I'll never forget where I was. Mrs Fs fifth grade science class. I remember all the teachers left suddenly and came back crying. Ended up sending us home.
Didn't really sink in what happened for a while cause I was just a kid. But I also had no idea how it would shape my future.
And now every year on this day I climb 110 flights of stairs to remember those that were lost.
Better than mine I was in 6th grade they pulled us all into the gym and wheeled in 3 tvs with the news playing, We were in middle school 4th to 6th grade.
I imagine it was the most traumatic thing that happened until the pandemic. I wonder how that played out for kids in school at the time.
I was in kindergarten in Colorado. Mom turned on the little white TV in the kitchen because she wanted to know if a football player was hurt. And thats when we watched the second plane hit.
I was eating toast. We walked the block to drop me off at school. We made flags with glitter and stars and ripped paper while our teacher cried and kids got taken home one by one.
Mom picked up white carnations and handed them out to people who came into the store, then she had lunch with me in the mostly empty cafeteria. It was the good grilled cheese and tomato soup that day.
Even in Colorado, it was this weird numb feeling. We went up to the mountains for like a week after that day. It was very quite with out any planes.
I was in kindergarten as well at the time, and I just remember being pulled out of school much earlier than normal. And while I didn't understand or really remember much, the way my parents acted that day makes me think of something gray. They're strong people, willing to shield me from such truths, but despite getting out early, I've never thought of it as a good day.
Mom couldn't really hide it from me seeing as we just watched it together. But i remember it didn't make sense. I suggested it was not on the local news station, maybe it was on a different one? Could dad have changed it to a movie befor work?
It does feel gray. I think thats why I remember the food. Everything was quiet and soft but the food was still food and it was comforting
My family has never been one to share experiences, we're all introverted to some degree, so they wouldn't have me watch things with them.
I remember coming down to the kitchen for food or something, with them both in the living room, but I couldn't grasp what was happening.
Now that I think back on it, we just moved into a new house, my littlest sister was just born at about 7 months old, middle child just turned 3, and my father's birthday was only two days away. I've never asked my parents about that day, part of me doesn't feel like it's right after they protected me like that.
In Colorado, as well, but I was 16. My dad turned on my bedroom light and said “get up, the world’s on fire.”
I sat in the living room watching the first tower smoke and felt like dad was overselling it. Then, the second hit and the news came in about the Pentagon and the fourth plane that crashed in the field taking every one of those motherfucking heroes with it.
They read the names of famous people who had died. I think one was a producer on Frasier or something. I knew I had to do something, so I pulled out the camcorder/VHS system I had hacked together to make my own movie trailers and set a bunch of news footage to Enya’s ‘Only Time’. That made me feel better.
Then, I went to work at the local library and I was having conversations with adults about it all day. People were coming down from camping trips to get the news. A woman my mom’s age stood at the front desk with me and cried and talked through how stupid she felt reading romance novels and I was 16 so I had no idea what to say to that.
It was a whole day of being professional while all these grownups responded to the crisis at or near my desk.
I was in the same place a bit older. I was in fifth grade. I remember getting ready for school, and Mom having the tv on in the kitchen while we all ate and got our stuff together. The news was on and she was paying incredibly close attention to it. So was my dad.
I remember seeing the second tower get hit. Dad was an officer in the army, think he was a Colonel or something at the time. He saw that plane hit, stood up, said "I have to go". Don't think I heard from him for a week. Then the deployments started. It was brutal.
It seems like every twenty years in the United States, there's a defining event that everybody knows where they were at the time. The pandemic, 9/11, the Challenger, JFK, etc.
I was at the grocery store in upper middle class republican hateville. There was significant violence. BUT, even when the world was ending, not a single soul purchased Campbell's Cream of Shrimp soup. The only item that never even got kind of low in stock. Because that sounds NASTY
They pretty much did that at our middle school as well. We all had a class schedule of 6 classes per day, but that day we stayed in our home room and they just had the TV on the entire time with mostly silence. Coincidentally it was my American History class and our teacher did occasionally stop to tell the class how important and tragic this event was and that it would be remembered in history books forever. Which sounds obvious, but to a bunch of 10-12 year olds, I'm actually appreciative it was that class I saw everything in.
I was 18, working in an office building in NC. Only five stories tall, but I remember being afraid something would hit this building, too. A bunch of us crowded into a coworker’s cubicle where she had a live video on her monitor. The second plane hit, and she burst into tears; she had a friend on the top floors of that tower. All of the older people just stood around in shock, and this woman was about forty. So I just gave her a hug and she sobbed against me.
I don’t remember much else from the day. But it was terrifying and heartbreaking and nobody knew what was going on.
I was a senior in high school, driving my sister (two years younger) when the first tower was hit. Suddenly none of the radio channels were playing music, but we were too distracted to listen and turned off the radio. We got to school just in time to watch the second tower fall. I remember feeling horror and a sense of unreality. I honestly don’t remember anything else about that day, if we were sent home or not. But I’ll never forget the quiet, abject horror the entire country felt and I hope we never feel that again.
I was 6 years old and on the west coast of Canada. Mom woke me up for school and I slowly made my way downstairs just in time to see the second plane hit the tower on the TV. My mom was crying. I had no idea what was going on, or why it made her cry, but school ended up being canceled, even up here.
My dad wasn't due to start work until 2pm GMT that day, so had the TV on. Initially thought "this is a bit much for a film being broadcast on daytime TV, then changed the channel and suddenly realised this wasn't a film. it was being broadcast on this channel too.
I was even younger. 1st grade. Everyone was crying we all were sent home early n had to be picked up (usually many of us walked home). Being a lil kid you figure "ok cool guess i can watch cartoons" but every station is playing the news. You dont understand outside "something bad happened" even when they tried to explain it....it was hard to grasp
I was in 2nd grade. We didn't watch the news on the TV though, there was an announcement right after it happened and that was it. From what I remember, my teacher carried on like normal. My parents didn't pick me up early from school either even though we were very close to NYC because they were working and they felt like school was the safest place to be at the time.
I don’t remember much. I recall my dad taking out his frustration on me. He never hit me or anything but yelled at me because I wanted to play. I was in kindergarten.
Everyone else was sent home for the day and my fucking school tried to resume classes after lunch. I still think back on that and think, wtf? Did they really expect us to focus on trigonometry?
Related. I had a teacher who insisted that whatever we were going to learn in her class that day was much more important than whatever was going on in the rest of the world and gave us a pop quiz as punishment for asking about it.
She honestly believed it. It wasn’t her trying to protect us or in her own disbelief. She’s quoted in the yearbook for that year about it. The rest of the school was like WTF when they heard about it.
First grade, right in NJ. Our room had one of those little TV vhs combos on the wall. All our little selves crowded around it. Until the alarms went off. We were right next to train tracks, so we did these chemical spill drills. Where we crammed the whole school into the library, most interior room. They wheeled in like 4 of the cart tvs and had them all on news.
Little babies packed in like sardines, all not understanding, but scared. I remember the teachers being told to shut it off by admin and refusing. Glad they did.
My mom woke me up similar to how this artists mom woke her up. When I got to junior high, every class had the news on, we didn't go home early. But it was all we talked about, it was not a good day to study.
My experience was where you'd look back retrospectively and ask, "what the hell was wrong with you people?!"
I was home alone (high school, I had neighbors and friends nearby), my folks were on a trip in Italy. Woke up that morning and the first thing I heard about it was when my buddy's dad picked me up (carpool) to take us to zero hour band practice. It was super early. All we'd heard was that a plane crashed into one of the towers. But that's all. No details. My buddy's dad heard just that bit of info on his way out the door. So...we were all just joking about it. Surely it was some dumbass pilot in a Cessna or whatever that bumbled into a building. How could you miss it?! WTC towers were huge!
Got to practice and, well, turns out everyone else had the same information. So, imagine 120 some odd high school kids just fucking around on the practice field, cracking jokes and talking shit about this supposed pilot. Making light of everything.
10 minutes go by, 15 minutes, 20? Can't remember. But the director still hadn't shown up yet, which was unusual and we were just milling about in the cold shooting the shit, still joking around. We were having a blast! Normally we'd be running laps in formation doing breathing exercises, and pushups and crap. Director finally showed up (former director of the US Army band at West Point btw for context, dude was a retired Colonel). We were ready to give him a hard time for showing up late, never happened before! Yeah well, no. He immediately called us to attention, put us in formation and marched us back into the band room. After we all were seated and squared away, that's when he told us what was going on. I don't remember what he said but something to the effect of this being an important defining moment in our generation's history that would change things forever. Or maybe this being one of those moments where you'll remember where you were that day. Anyway, after all the joking and shit talking, I know I was absolutely mortified.
What a weird day. Teachers didn't know what to do with us, we just went to our classes, didn't do anything except maybe talk a little and watched the TV. Lunch was DEAD QUIET aside from a couple of people sobbing. I may not accurately recollect all of my experiences that day, shit sometimes I've even looked up timing because I couldn't recall where I was when the second plane hit (on the field, in the school, being driven). I don't even remember how I got home! But I will always remember that cafeteria. Just how quiet it was. Normally the loudest place in the entire school.
It took me about a decade to figure out that my 9/11 memory was the story I had told countless times of a lockdown in 1st grade where my classmates and I were left trying to figure out if we should climb under the desks like we'd been taught while our teacher talked to the teacher in the adjoining classroom.
I clearly remember talking about 9/11 in class 1 year later, but I don't know when I found out about it.
Mrs. Morgan, 2nd grade. My dad was volunteering as a teacher’s assistant that day. They spent the first hour that morning talking about what was happening. Watched the news with my parents before going to school, so I knew that something big was happening but definitely didn’t “get it” or why the adults couldn’t give two shits about school that morning.
I was in first year of high school in Canada, and at first it didn't really mean anything to me when the TVs in the school started showing the news from New York. Then one of my friends started crying and freaking out and I remembered she was from NYC originally and had family there. It was the first time something "far away" on TV suddenly became a real thing right in front of me.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 15h ago
I'll never forget where I was. Mrs Fs fifth grade science class. I remember all the teachers left suddenly and came back crying. Ended up sending us home.
Didn't really sink in what happened for a while cause I was just a kid. But I also had no idea how it would shape my future.
And now every year on this day I climb 110 flights of stairs to remember those that were lost.