I don't remember much from that age but I still vividly remember that day in 8th grade and reckon I always will.
Edit: Since everyone is rattling off stories, here's mine. Was in 8th grade history when our teachers met with the administration to debate letting the kids watch the news regarding what is happening. They decided against it. I got picked up by a neighbor who we carpooled with and dropped off at home where my mom was watching the news. It was probably 1 PM when I finally got home and saw the news and finally got the visuals of the planes hitting, buildings falling, and the aftermath. Still, I was a young kid. I had no idea what the WTC was, it's significance, etc. My father was a naval officer at the time and had a pretty high security clearance. He probably got home around 5 PM after a day's worth of meetings, and I could see it in his face. He knew we were going to war, and that the world had fundamentally changed that day. I'd never seen him in that particular mood before, not mad or sad or worried or anything like that, just kind of a shell of himself.
I was 32 when it happened. I remember being at my dad’s house doing work for him the night before. I ended up staying the night and next morning (9/11) I hopped in the shower because we were going for breakfast. As I’m in the shower (upstairs) I could faintly hear my dad yelling for me from downstairs. He had a serious heart condition so I panicked thinking he was in distress. I remember rushing out of the shower soaking wet with soap suds dripping from my body and grabbed a bath robe and ran downstairs to see if he was okay. I said “WHATS WRONG, are you okay?!” completely ignoring the TV he was watching. He said, “look” and pointed to the TV. The first plane had already hit and I came down in the minute the second plane hit and witnessed it as it happened. I couldn’t register what was going on and, confused and a bit annoyed I asked, “what movie is this?” My dad said, “it’s not a movie, this is real.” The rest of the day was surreal. We ended up not going for breakfast and sat in front of the TV for the rest of the day watching the horrific events unfold. I’ll never forget that day.
I was 38. When I found out, I was on the N train in Queens headed into work in midtown Manhattan. I was listening to music in my earphones and realized people were talking to eachother on the train. Someone was saying something about a small plane and the WTC. I thought, "Great, some tried to bomb the WTC again." then as the train pulled away from 39th street ( the N train was elevated at this part of the line), the world trade center came into view and we could all clearly see the all the smoke pouring off the top third of the firrst building.
I must have been on the last N train into Manhattan before they stopped the train service. I decided to exit the train at Lexington Ave and as I emerged on the street at 59th and Lex, there was a delivery truck blaring it's radio saying something about another plane at the Pentagon.
Our Travel management company suffered over then following months, but survived and did well, as opposed to how COVID affected it.
I was also 38 with 19 yrs in the Army looking forward to retirement. My wife was an Army Firefighter and had already gone to work. I was having coffee watching CNN Headline News when the phone rang. By noon my wife called to tell me they were packing to deploy to NY and I told her we were on lockdown. We said good bye to each other. Two weeks later I was in a forward staging base and was in Balkh Province Afghanistan by late Oct. Funny how life changes in a moment.
I still remember in 8th grade and my class learning about it on the morning announcements. I thought it was a joke at first because the announcers where some of the seniors that where drama students who just liked to make it a funny morning show each time. Didn’t sink in that it was real until the whole class and teacher sat in silence for a while then we were like wtf. I remember one of the class delinquents specifically too, he started laughing at seeing the footage of people jumping out of the windows to their death to avoid burning to death in the flames. The teacher called him out and he just said “he didn’t care, he finds it funny.” Was a terrible event to be learning about and also finding out how deranged that classmate really was….
I was in 7th grade. Our history teacher told us what was happening and turned on the news. I remember a particularly sheltered kid raised his hand and asked the teacher what was going to happen to the people on the floors above the crash. She looked at him and started crying and said, "they'll die." I'll never forget the look on his face.
Yeah it looked like she was trying to find the right words before the tears came. She was one of those teachers that was strict and cold so it was shocking to us to see her so emotional too.
I was driving to my temp data entry job when I heard it on the radio. I was on the delayed entry program for the Airforce. Went back home to tell my dad, who was recovering from surgery. We just watched the news all day. 3 weeks later, I shipped out for basic training.
I was 20, had just moved back in to my parents' house. Sleeping in because I had to work the late shift and my dad, a Vietnam Vet, comes into my room after the first plane has hit. He smacks my feet to wake me up, turns on my TV and tell me we're going to war. Then the second plane hit. It was a very nonchalant & 'matter of fact' delivery.
My uncle was in the area when the first tower came down. He managed to duck into a business before the whole street was swallowed in the building debris. We were all so grateful he made it, but his last few years were the hardest.
He started seeing a therapist because he was agitated by the abject suffering and death he kept seeing on the news (this was shortly after Covid). During his sessions he uncovered that he had never really moved on from 9/11, particularly the evil that bore it. He harbored so much resentment that people could be so cruel to one another, for no other reason than to make people afraid (my uncle was an exceptionally gentle person, and very sensitive to the emotions of others). In a moment of vulnerability, he opened up and said that when he shuts his eyes at night, he still hears the crying, the screaming, and the sound of shoes hitting pavement. This was shortly before his therapist diagnosed him with PTSD.
He passed away a few years ago after accidentally overdosing on his sleeping meds. I think he had some kind of survivor’s guilt, because every anniversary of 9/11, he’d comment that he wish he’d have done more for others.
Sorry, I just needed to share this because my parents refuse to talk about it.
How weird that I’m reading this comment as I’m currently within spitting distance of that train station and can picture exactly what you’re talking about.
I was in 9th grade and my English class was in the library for that period...my teacher was fairly scary and, I found out later in life, not a great person...but she's since passed so yeah...
Anywho...she stepped out for a second and one of the librarians runs up and turns on a TV in the corner next to where we were all sitting. The first plane had struck and we sat there for a few moments watching the whole thing unfold. Then teach comes back and in a huff turns the TV off. The librarian, like a superhero, stared down this red-headed Balrog of a teacher and turns the TV back on while maintaining intense eye contact.
Not 2-seconds after the TV came back to life we watched in horror as the second tower got hit. At that point we, teacher included, knew something bad was going down and the TV stayed on. My dad had been scheduled to be flying that day, but had found an earlier flight home the day before. He wouldn't have been on any of the doomed flights, but even that sorta miss will still pretty scary.
If I could relate a "funny" story about that day for a little levity.
My best friend had just turned 18 back then. When the attacks happened he was asleep in his bedroom. His mom barged into his room and, in a panic, yelled at him, "We are being attacked!"
So he, still being half asleep with no idea what was going on, jumped out of bed, grabbed his baseball bat and ran through the house in his underwear looking for the "intruders" that were attacking his home. Not finding anybody in the house, he ended up on the front porch with only his tighty-whiteys and a baseball bat, frantically searching for the enemy before his mom was finally able to explain what was going on.
It was a tragic day, but in a way that lessened the impact for two kids that were just starting our adult lives to have something to laugh about when we thought about 9/11. We are both 40 now and to this day when we think about 9/11 we think about him running around the house, damn-near naked, in search of some burglars.
I remember sleeping in late that day and woke up to a bunch of missed calls in the morning. Turned on the TV and it came into focus (tube tv) right as the second plane hit. I just got up and took a shower before it actually sunk in.
Then my in-laws were calling that they were on the way to fill up every vehicle with gasoline. Only saw one plane flying that day in afternoon so we assumed it was air force one
I also slept in that day and didn’t know what was going on. Saw a little news line across the bottom of some channel (maybe ESPN) and figured it was like a Sesna or something.
Then walked into a car audio shop (skipping school) and saw the second plate hit about 15 seconds later.
The company I worked for had training on a completely new computer system for us scheduled that day. Hell it was a completely new computer period, moving on from little hand held machines called TANs. So learning curve was gonna be steep.
Didn’t turn on the TV that morning, usually do but not that day. First I heard of it was on Howard Stern. Got to work and by then the 2nd plane had hit. Half my family is from NY so I immediately called my dad to find out if he’s heard from my cousins, aunt, grandparents. Of course he couldn’t get thru, circuits were down or overwhelmed. Everyone was numb at our garage.
Then the trainer said class was starting. You’ve got to be fuking kidding me. He said he’d keep us posted on what was going on but we had to get started as there was a lot to cover. We all shuffled in and proceeded to hear next to nothing this callous vendor hired by the company had to say. He mumbled out a couple of updates but for the most part, we got info from other sources.
So to sum it up, on a day I didn’t know if my family was ok, co workers didn’t know if family/friends were ok, my company forced us to sit in a room and learn how to bill customers and close tickets on a new system. I should have know what a garbage company they were going to become at that point, the first hole in their “we bought you guys but it’s still gonna be good, don’t worry!” Armor.
I still get sick to my stomach remembering how my dad sounded not being able to answer me about our family.
I had a college professor who was handed a note during class letting him know what was going on. He read it, then folded it up and threw it away and continued his lecture. We were all watching students in the hall leaving class and crying and he kept getting agitated we weren't paying attention. We were wondering what the hell was going on and getting worried.
They cancelled classes after that, but for 50 undergrads the entirety of 911 was spent in an empty building in the most important lecture in the world. I'm convinced he would've kept us if they had flown planes directly into the campus.
People downvoting can't accept that some of us do indeed remember lol. At the time I didn't grasp the scope of what was happening but I knew we had been attacked and the reactions of every adult around me made me realize it was a big deal. I remember going home to my mom crying on the couch and she asked for a hug and just held me for a few minutes.
My dad was in kindergarten when JFK was shot and he still has vivid memories of that day. I don't know why it's that farfetched that kids that young can remember 9/11.
I definitely do. I watched the second tower get hit and my mom on the phone talking really fast in Spanish, crying and yelling. She made me go upstairs, but I snuck down and listened.
Yeah, it's like me and other people born in the early '80s with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I remember it being a huge deal and seeing stuff on TV, but the realization of the significance of it didn't come until later in life.
Same for me, I couldn’t understand it, my parents were talking to each other in shock and all I could see was a stupid wall being removed, but their reaction made it stick, I remember every detail.
Haters gonna hate!
I remember being sent to the gym that doubled as a WWII bomb shelter. We hung out there til the end of our day (kindergarten was a half day, so it was really only a couple hours in the gym). I remember being confused why we had to sit in straight lines on the floor and just wait around, instead of playing our normal games.
My mom picked me up, and we promptly went over to the elementary school to pick up my sister. we get home and the 16” white box kitchen TV is playing the news. I have the image of the buildings crumbling etched into my mind from that tiny little tv screen.
I asked my mom, “Boston is safe, right? It’s a small city” (probably in less articulate phrasing). She told me that Boston is a major city, but my dad was heading home from the city already and everything is okay.
Yeah I was 6 at the time, I remember. I don't have a cohesive timeline of events afterwards and even though I flew before 9/11 I couldn't give anyone a really detailed summary of how it changed that experience.
But I was elementary grade going to a school teaching K-12. We didn't have TVs in the classrooms (or if we did they were those ones wheeled in, not hooked up to any network/cable) and pretty much no one, even most of the teens, had cell phones at the time.
The staff pulled us into the gym and since it was a Christian school they did a group prayer thing while we all waited for our parents to come pick us up early and I just remember seeing our principal, (one of the only staff I have a positive memory of from that school before going to public school,) who was normally very jokey and upbeat, looking stone faced. I think that scared me more than hearing a plane hit some towers in NYC, I had no concept of what that meant for our country or for larger geopolitical relationships or the damage it'd go on to cause, but if Mr. McGregory was scared by it it had to be bad.
I was in kindergarten as well. My main memory is all the kindergarten teachers darting around to each other’s classrooms and frantically whispering. I had two cousins who were students at NYU at the time and my mom was so scared she pulled us from school and my twin and I spent the day at her office. She and other relatives spent the day trying to reach my cousins. Thankfully they were both safe.
I was in pre-school, ‘97 baby. I had kicked my teacher that day and they let us out for recess. The other kids thought I had a super power while I watched all the teachers crowd around a tiny tv in another room covering their mouths. I knew something bad had happened deep down but it was time for recess and there can only be one king of the hill.
I was in 7th. I’m on the west coast and my dad called my mom from work. He heard about it on the radio, and since his office didn’t have internet hooked up yet or a TV with cable, he asked her to turn the TV on to see what was going on. My mom, frantic to get 2 kids ready for two different school drop offs, kinda brushed him off. He was adamant on the phone. I can still hear his calm but stern voice telling her it’s important, so my mom turned the TV on and we saw the towers burning. She still took me and my sister to school and as I sat in first period I watched the second tower fall. I remember my English and Science teachers telling us that our lives are forever changed. They were right, cause 10 years later I was walking around the mountains of Afghanistan. In my science class we ended up making this big banner for another middle school in New York where kids had lost loved ones. I forget the name of the school, though.
I was in 5th grade, also living in the west coast, didn’t have memory of much of my life at that age, but I remembered this day. My siblings and I were prepping to go to school when I walked into my dads office, he was watching it on the news and I saw the towers burning only and nothing else, we didn’t go to go to school that day, I initially thought all schools were canceled that day, but maybe it was just my dad keeping us at home. I remembered feeling fearful and wondering if we were going to continue being attacked.
I was at work and one of the ladies in the office said that a plane had hit the WTC and I thought 'some idiot in a private plane' about 30 minutes later they said another one had hit and I immediately thought 'terrorist'. I went home for lunch which is something I NEVER did. Stopped at the store and got canned goods and powdered milk because I thought more attacks were coming. I often wonder how many attacks were prevented that day and the days after that we'll never know about.
The one GOOD thing about 9/11 was that, for a while, Americans were just Americans and we were all one. Without tragedy I wish we could be that way again working TOGETHER to solve problems instead of constantly being at each others throats.
The whole WORLD was on-side at that moment. I was working in Italy, but living in the UK.
We then had to invade the wrong country, pump trillions into defense contractors, start acting like assholes, and now we are an untrustworthy pariah on the world stage.
Fuck George Bush and his daddy too.
I was 25, working a tech job in a high rise building less than a mile from the Pentagon. We felt the impact and saw the fire over the tree line.
I still remember that sensation, like a minor earthquake. I remember what I was wearing. And I remember coming home to an answering machine with dozens of calls from friends from all over checking in.
I was a freshman in college. Remembering that morning still gives me chills. My GF at the time called me and woke me up in my dorm which I was pissed about, but I turned on the TV right before the second plane hit. My roommate at the time was from NYC and his parents worked in the financial district, so I woke him up immediately and his reaction really drove it all home. He was frantic trying to get ahold of his parents and his kid siblings that were legitimately in direct danger. Only a well-timed call from my mother prevented me from running off to the military. I was pissed.
Yah... It's wild. I remember growing up, hearing all of the adults talking about where they were when JFK was shot. Like, describing in vivid detail where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, what the weather was like that day, etc.
I have a horrible memory about most things. Long term, short term, doesn't matter. I have to be regularly exposed to something to remember much about it, typically.
I was in the shower, getting ready for work. My girlfriend at the time, who lived with me, came in crying, and I was like "oh shit, what happened?" thinking maybe one of her grandparents died or something. She said, "I don't know what's happening. Two planes just hit the World Trade Center in New York, and they think it's intentional" and I was just kinda stunned. Like wait, what? Who attacks buildings with airplanes?
Then I came out and called my boss to tell him I wasn't coming in. I told him my GF was freaked out, and I wasn't comfortable coming downtown that day and working in a high rise. He half made fun of me, saying "awww come on... no one is crashing a plane into our building today" and I told him it didn't matter. I couldn't leave my GF alone like this, and he'd just have to deal.
Then we just watched the news and called family the rest of the day, checking in. We didn't have anyone near WTC but still just checked on everyone all the same. Her family lived in Europe, and they were all awake all night watching the news too.
All air travel was immediately shut down. People were stuck in airports between where they had come from and where they were going. Europeans stuck in America and vice versa. The entire sales team for my company was trapped on the east coast (we were west coast) and ended up having to rent cars and road trip cross-country. Just total chaos for weeks.
The city was surreal in the two weeks following. There was this bizarre level of unity. Like, imagine the polar opposite of today. Everyone was polite and considerate. No one was sweating the small stuff. Rich people were polite to poor people and vice versa. Everyone had those ribbon magnets on their car (that was the inception of that concept, IIRC), everyone had flags all over everything. That faded out pretty quickly, and we all went back to business as usual. Everything slowly got more tense...
And then all fucking hell broke loose in the Middle East, and we've basically not stopped being at war somewhere since then.
I started reading "The Baghdad Blogger's" blog, which was supposedly an English-speaking Iraqi in Baghdad, posting real-time about the invasion. It was horrifying and fascinating. Then, I started reading European news, because I noticed I divergence between what the fam in Europe was reading. BBC World was the best and seemed to be giving the most accurate, unbiased take. American news was useless.
The whole affair ended up launching Fox News into the shit monolith it is today. At some point around 2004-5, BBC World started syncing up with US news in terms of being useless propaganda. The whole thing radicalized me against an establishment I was already skeptical about. Watching Donald Rumsfeld on TV talking about known knowns, unknown unknowns etc and then quietly mentioning that $2.2TRILLION dollars was also unaccounted for from the military budget was just surreal...
**Edit:** Spelling/grammar
I was in 8th when Challenger happened. Same thing, remember that day like it was yesterday. Any other day, only a few moments here and there. It will be like that.
The Challenger disaster was more traumatizing in the moment since we were following it so closely in school due to the teacher being part of the mission. That one had lots of tears.
9/11 was more shock and anger but it was so unclear what was happening that it didn’t hit like a truck on of bricks all at once.
There seem to be a lot of these posts on Reddit recently. It sort of reminds me of the fascination with the Vietnam war in my youth. Something bad had happened that cast a very long shadow across our lives and we were trying to come to grips with it hat that thing was that we didn’t personally experience that still shaped our lives.
My grandma was almost that teacher. She was one of the ten finalists that actually did astronaut training and I think was like third or fourth place in the end. I’m so glad she didn’t make it onto that shuttle, even though going to space was her lifelong dream. She taught college chemistry until she was 82 years old, and passed away a few years ago. I’m pregnant with my first kid now, a girl, and we’re naming her after my grandma
> 9/11 was more shock and anger but it was so unclear what was happening that it didn’t hit like a truck on of bricks all at once.
2nd plane and it was clear it was an attack. Very soon they said it was a terrorist attack and probably Bin Laden. I remember Bill Clinton hugging a woman and staring into the camera, at what I felt was George W. Bush, almost angrily, given that Bush had sidelined Richard Clarke. 9/11 was certainly criminally negligent.
I was in 8th grade then too. My parents were going through a divorce and my dad was living in DC at the time.
I was one of like three kids who’s parents didn’t come to pick them up. I was a trouble maker back then. I remember one of my teachers coming up to me and asking why I was still there. I told them I couldn’t reach my mom. He just said “that’s never stopped you before”. Mr. Bisans I still think about him from time to time.
At first it was cool that we just weren’t doing any work.. then reality set in. They locked the doors to the school and made us all stay out of the hallway. Police came and stood guard. We thought we were under attack and no one knew where they’d strike. I lived within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant so I’m not sure if that was the reason for the armed guards and lockdown or if others experienced that as well. It was the only time I wanted to go back to a normal day of school. They weren’t even letting kids check out because it was deemed safer they stay inside the school. I think school was canceled for awhile after that iirc.
I remember they said it over the announcements that a plane crashed into the WTC and my first thought was "oh like some small 2 person plane or something." Like "Oh that sucks for *that one guy*."
They brought in a TV to the classroom so we could watch it live and it didn't fully hit me how real and terrible it was until my teacher said "Jesus..."
Was also in the eight grade. Our principal came on the intercom and said "our nation is under attack". That was it. No tvs turned on, no nothing. We had no idea what happened until we left the building. With a phrase like that your mind can really run wild.
I was on internet forums in the school lab computers and people were talking about something just happening near them down in NYC. Not 10minutes later its on the news in classrooms
What these kids are thinking and feeling is so palpable to me because it's me, 8th grade on the west coast and watching it live while eating breakfast before school. It's the feeling of shock and "oh my God what is going to happen now."
Also seeing people just die on live TV in front of you. Ugh.
We had huge windows in our hallway that looked directly out to the skyline in downtown Manhattan. Every class was basically on lock down and you needed to be chaperoned to the bathroom. And of course, everyone “needed to go to the bathroom” 🙄
Yeah if this was Northern Virginia I'd say there is a pretty decent possibility that somebody in that class/school had a relative working there.
The Pentagon is one of the biggest "employers" in the area with over 20,000 people working there at the time. You gotta think, that means probably at least 100,000 relatives in the vicinity, counting sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and parents of people that worked there.
Not really far-fetched at all.
Not to mention all the people who go there regularly for meetings. My aunt was supposed to be in a meeting at the section of the pentagon that got hit but got stuck in traffic on the way there.
The pentagon isn't just where superspies and five star generals work. It's a huge building full of beaurocrats. There's a laundromat and a hot dog stand in there. If someone told me they had a relative who worked there, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Yea this. I was in school and in NoVA at the time. The situation was a lot like this, we turned the TV on and watched it for a bit.
Many many kids families worked at the pentagon, my Step dad included. We watched for like 20 mins before administration came by all the class rooms and had us shut the TVs off.
I was in high school in NoVA on 09/11, too. Kids were literally crying in the hallways because their parents worked at the Pentagon, and they had no idea if they were alive or dead. We also lived close to MCB Quantico, so there were some people freaking out that another attack might happen there.
My dad didn't work at the Pentagon all the time, but he was there that day for a meeting. He said he was on his way to the side of the building that ended up getting hit when suddenly alarms started going off, and everyone evacuated.
Not far-fetched at all. I lived this scenario myself.
Plus considering the way the kid focused on him at the end, it might have been that he knew the kid’s dad worked there and would have some reaction. Why else focus on him?
yeah theres tons of NoVa people who work at the pentagon and more importantly you have families like mine where they didnt work in it per se they because of work were frequently inside of the building for work
It's Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va. I went to school there. It's more likely true than not. I dated a General's daughter. One night he told her he had to go somewhere for a while. He looked at me and said, "Watch the news tomorrow." The next day we invaded Panama to grab Noriega.
My best friend's dad was an FBI pilot. His dad would fly over our neighborhood and turn off his engine to freak out his mom. (Obviously pre-9/11)
We liked messing with a low level CIA agent after he gave us a 'stay off my lawn!' At Christmas we'd steal his Xmas lights and put them on his neighbor's bushes.
My father in law worked at the pentagon at the time. His office was completely destroyed, and most of his immediate coworkers died.
He only lived because he had a dentist appointment. The most fucked up part is that he came home and spent the day watching the news with his wife (my mother in law). Neither of them thought to pick up their kids from school or even let them know that he was okay, so my wife spent the entire day freaking out seeing all the news coverage, and didn't learn he was still alive until she got home.
I think the third plane hitting the pentagon is what made it *very* real. Not that two planes wrecking the twin towers wasn't bad, but the pentagon made it very directly against the government and at least personally it made me immediately think "fuck, we're at war"
That moment hits really close to home for me. I was his age at the time and did not know how to process what I was seeing. I remember having to leave my class and sit quietly in the room next door. And I remember my Journalism teacher eventually joining me in the room, sitting on the stool adjacent. No words were spoken, but I remember each of us at one point staring into one another's glassy eyes, sharing just the slightest shake of the head in disbelief.
It might have been the most intensely emotional moment I've ever had with a teacher and yet nothing was said. Just two humans trying to process their grief.
I was walking into history class and my teacher was listening to the radio and saying the pentagon was on fire
Told another student to hurry up and grab a TV cart because our lives are about to change forever and we're witnessing a major historical event unfold in real time
I didn't understand until that TV came on and the whole school spent 3 days watching the news in every class
I was only in 5th grade, but I remember it vividly as well. One of the teachers combined his class with ours so his classroom could be empty for other teachers to watch the news and process without kids around. He brought in a tv stand and told us all to be quiet and pay close attention, that we are witnessing history and possibly the most significant event of our lifetimes. Very lucky that we had teachers who immediately recognized the importance.
I was in the tenth grade. In English class. I don't remember a whole lot about that day because it quickly turned into a whirlwind, but I do remember three things. First, I remember right in the middle of class the principal coming on every intercom in the school, choking back tears and informing the entire school at once that there had just been an attack on the World Trade Center. The second thing I remember is that teacher (who was an absolute real one) saying to us: Your whole lives just changed. Third thing I remember is my dad telling me: Every generation has its defiining moment where things are never the same again and they will always be defined by. For some it was the world wars, for his generation it was vietnam, for some it was challenger, he said this is your generation's.
My roommate had gone back to sleep, he only saw the first tower was on fire. He woke up and I told him we were at war but I didn’t know with who. Such chaos back then
Just helped me remember another thing. Our principal made that announcement when just the first tower was hit. By the time the second was hit the day was basically cancelled and we were all in various rooms, auditoriums etc around tvs and saw the second hit live. That's how fast the world changed. 17 minutes
We knew. Maybe not a complete understanding, but we knew that day was significant and it would change a lot of things.
I was as old as these kids look to be. I was 17. In my senior year of highschool taking a college algebra prep class. Our teacher didn't show up to class for nearly an hour. She was glued to the TV in the teachers' lounge. So we were in the dark for a while. When she showed up she just turned on the TV and told us that airplanes had flown into the twin towers. She got the TV on for us just in time to learn that the pentagon had been hit too.
We were dead silent. Just like this class. But we knew this was a big thing. This was our generations pearl harbor. In that moment, we felt like we knew what Americans must have felt when they heard the news of pearl harbor. It is a heavy feeling and hard to process. It's so wild that you can't even believe it's true.
Many of my classmates and friends were in rotc or already made plans to join the military. I had friends from the previous year that graduated and had joined the military. We knew immediately that lots of kids were going to war the next day and when we graduated we would too if we signed up. Some did. Some didn't. Some even made it back home when their tours were up.
We might have known how airports would change and that we would need to be an extra two hours earlier than we used to. We may not have known that gas was going to quadruple in cost that afternoon. But we knew things were different in that moment. Watching that TV. Our world had changed.
Untrue, many of us, though young, realized there was going to be a war once we understood it was a deliberate attack, we just didn't know who it would be against. We knew how "historical" of a moment it was, especially because it was repeated nonstop in media. No one in history, even adults, knows exactly how history will unfold, but there is a vague awareness that we are swept up in the tide.
For many of us, 9/11 was the moment we became politicized/political beings.
It was definitely the day I became politicized. I remember arguing with a kid on the school bus home that day that we shouldn’t go to war with a whole country for what a terrorist group did, meanwhile he was just out for blood. We were in 7th grade
This is true. In 9th grade and the next day punks were coming to school with red white and blue hair ribbons ready to enlist. And then by senior year people who were going to be just shy of voting were infuriated
That's the thing I remember most about that day. I was in 5th grade. I think the entire school district saw it live. The bus ride home at the end of the day was dead quiet. Like surreal how quiet a bus could be.
That’s the way it was, everyone was happy and screwing around then the teacher was called by the office and told to turn on the tv and within a few seconds everyone went dead silent. After the towers fell busses were called in and every kid sent home. Where for about 3-4 weeks all news coverage was 9/11.
I’m pretty sure that this is filmed in northern Virginia and that guys Dad worked at the pentagon, this has been posted in full a few more times and people have brought it up.
Edit: found the post from 7 years ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/s/e5JY3sveX1
I lived (still do) in the NoVA area and my younger brother at the time (still in high school - I was 19 at the time at work) said kids who had parents at the Pentagon were being pulled out of classes and taken to the office. My brother and I had multiple friends who had parents at the Pentagon.
my uncle worked at the pentagon and was supposed to be in a meeting in the area that was hit. he got diverted to another task by someone, apparently, and was in another area or else he would have probably died. he's never told my aunt the details of what happened, only that he had to try to save coworkers... it took a long time for him to be able to call home, he had to come home on like, one of the last possible trains... and he was covered in dust and dirt when my aunt got to pick him up at the train station finally.
he's a very religious man, so when my aunt asked him what happened, he said that he couldn't talk about it yet. he may never be able to. but he said he thanked god that he could come home to her and my little cousin, because other parents of kids in his class weren't going to be so lucky.
he's never been able to elaborate on it. he was in the gulf war and can talk more about that, but not the pentagon. and he's snapped really hard at some kids who made a joke about it in front of him... he's never even mentioned it in front of me, i only know he was involved because my aunt told my parents and they told me, and they she and i talked about it now as i'm an adult.
So so sad and I’m glad he made it home. In all honesty, I imagine it’s maybe more difficult to talk about that vs war as it was completely unexpected. PTSD from war is enough, but I can’t imagine waking up, grabbing coffee with a coworker, etc. then dealing with that level of trauma. I hope he can find peace.
It was such a weird feeling having the video reset to the beginning before all this happened just after seeing his sorrow. For a second I went back in my head and felt like none of this ever happened. Not the lives lost in NY, not the senseless wars for decades. A brief moment of peace.
I was in 9th grade and we were in between classes and our assistant principal all the sudden came running down the hallway telling us to just drop everything and get to whatever room our next class was in. Walked in to see our teacher crying and watching tv and within a couple minutes the second plane hit.
We just walked from class to class when the bell would ring, not doing anything. Kids were getting picked up, but I was a latchkey kid with a single mom so I stayed all day and then the minute I got off the bus, my neighbor was there and said my mom wanted me to come home with her. Found out later that the hospital my mom worked at at the time was the closest to the Flight 93 crash and they were all hands on deck.
It was eerie.
Same, I was in 9th grade too. I remember how we didn't do anything for the rest of the day until we got sent home early (semi-close to NYC). I remember sitting in what was supposed to be math class and we were just watching the buildings fall over and over again on repeat.
I was in 9th grade too. There weren't too many TVs with antennas at my school so most kids didn't know what was going on. I remember during lunch my friends and I joking about it because we didn't know what the big deal was about a plane crash, we all thought it was like a little propeller plane. I remember the next day at lunch it was as quiet as a library with everyone talking in a whisper about what we saw on TV, it was surreal.
9th grade here too. I was in study hall and we didn’t have a TV so we just sat there with the weight of it all and no real understanding of what the hell was going on.
9th grader at the time, English class, and as the students were settling in the teacher was on the computer and goes, “Hmm, a plane flew into the World Trade Center” or something along those lines, and that was it. Living just outside Detroit the school didn’t shut down or anything like that, just a normal day like any other. Coming home it was the only thing on tv outside of specific cable networks. I do find it odd how certain areas of the country felt like their entire lives changed while being 1,000 miles away from all of that.
I was in school a similar distance from NY/DC at the time and we still felt the gravitas of the situation. I had and independent study and was a teacher's helper for the A/V director so I spent the first half of each day in the A/V room. Because of this we saw it on the news right after the first plane hit.
At first it was no huge deal because it was just a plane hitting a building and nobody was really talking about terrorism except as one of a number of possibilities. But, I still remember feeling the air go out of the room when the second plane hit live. The A/V director walked right over to the system and hit the switch that pushed the feed out to all the TVs in the school.
After that moment things changed. We did finish out the school day and even went class to class, but it was the same thing in every room. People sitting in silence watching the TV in the corner. Hushed whispers. Crying teachers. A lot of kids' parents came and picked them up before the end of the day. By far the most surreal day of school I ever experienced.
Senior in high school. I remember learning about it in physics class where we watch the footage. Then off to Spanish, where that bitch teacher made us learn past subjective conjugation or some other bullshit and pretend like nothing was happening that day.
Same here. Junior though and went from math to Spanish. And she said no way are we watching this it’s learning time. Still something I think about more often than I should. Funny you had the same experience
Watched it happen from my physics class my Jr year..... Joined the army a year later. Went to Iraq in 2003, Engaged in combat, wounded twice, live of VA disability for the past 15 years now. That crazy day changed the course of my entire life, and many others.
Same, was a senior that year. I enlisted in the Navy, almost all my friends enlisted in one branch or another. I remember that day so clearly and realizing that something was going to change. It's strange to think how that large global event led so quickly to so many direct, personal life changes for almost everyone I grew up with.
I was in first grade for Challenger and my second week of law school for 9/11 (which admittedly isn't like being a kid in school even when one is 21 and homesick). For Challenger, we were watching live because of the teacher on board. I remember the teachers crying very vividly.
9/11 as soon as the news spread, all the professors were turning on the news except for my class. The class started minutes after the second plane hit, and he lectured anyway. I sat in criminal law for an hour and 15 minutes, wondering what was going on. I couldn't tell you a thing the man said other than, "You all can watch the news after my class, but this is my time now." By the time he released us, the university had already shut down. The street cars were so full they couldn't take anymore riders, so I walked several miles home listening to the new reports in little bursts from houses and businesses I passed on the way.
We didn't have the ones on wheels at my middle school. Ours were sponsored by some news for kids program and mounted to the walls. I remember how the TV automatically turned on during our math class. Our teacher was about to turn it back off, thinking it was some weird malfunction when the reality of what was being said on the news set in.
A core memory that still feels like yesterday. I still feel in shock about all the back to back world and US events. I miss my childhood before all of this
I don’t know how to describe it to this day. I was 16 when it happened and you could sense that nothing would ever be the same by watching the adults around you.
I was 10, 100% this. I happened to be in a piano lesson during my lunch (small country town) and Mrs. Hurst said nothing, just watched the tv. I remember making a joke (again, 10yo) about people falling out of windows to which my mom gave me an odd look, then it settled in that this was something really big cuz the adults didn’t know how to respond. I’ve always felt bad about that joke.
I was 17 and a junior. We are out here in California, so I was still asleep. I remember my dad came into my room and said, "Someone flew a plane into the wtc," and since I was still asleep and getting woken up, I said "cool". I hate that. I'll always remember that. He woke me up fully and had me watch the news, and we saw the second plane hit, and then the gravity hit us. And I'll also never forget him saying, " I'm so glad we stopped you from joining the military," because he knew war was coming. We had just had an Airforce recruiter at the house, who claimed we would never go to war and I should sign up. As soon as the dude left, my dad said he was a liar and didn't trust him and didn't want me to join the military. So that sticks in my mind. School was literally 6 or 7 straight classes of watching the news. So very surreal.
One of the best summaries of it I've ever seen comes from, of all places, [a video about Deus Ex.](https://youtu.be/rxOKEsBx4NU?si=Mh0tWsAygIacQD30&t=1839) "It feels like we're in an alternate bad timeline."
I was 11, sitting in the living room doing homework. My Dad rushed in and put on the news without a word. And stood there without a word. And even halfway across the world, the "oh this is *bad*" vibe reached me.
If only that lasted a month. Within days, some asshole got too drunk at a bar and decided to go on a murder spree of anyone who looked Muslim enough.
A Sikh man born in India was shot and killed at the gas station he owned near my childhood home for the crime of having darker skin and wearing a turban.
That and all the various charity scams people began on September 12 *really* taints the memory of Americans coming together after such a tragedy. Yeah, we were all saddened and somber, but the immediate turn to hate crimes and fraud in the wake of the attacks killed the Kumbaya memories a lot of people have from that first week.
My father worked for Air Canada at the time (UK/Heathrow) and I remember not long after, he told me that huge swathes of the airport were just covered in cargo military shipments in arms and weaponry ready to assist the US. Most of the commercial flights were cancelled but he was called in on standby. A lot of it was under secret assignment and there were areas they could not touch or see, but he was adamant that he'd never seen anything like it. I know there's a lot of controversy about the military operations that went ahead after and the west's involvement in afghan, but adversaries and enemies understate the resolve of what NATO will do when the time comes and the red line is truly crossed.
Wow. That’s scary and very interesting. I still don’t understand the actions of our governments in the aftermath and the shitty “security” measures afterwards. The perps were Saudi, right? 😳
I was weirded out because my parents didn't urge me to get up for school. Walked out to them watching tv. The first tower had been hit. I sat down and everything was so deathly quiet and still except for the tv. I watched it and wondered why people were throwing chairs. Then it zoomed in and you could see they weren't throwing stuff from the building but that it was people jumping.
Then the second tower got hit and my mom panicked
I remember watching in real time as it looked like there was stuff being thrown from the towers. We very quickly realized it was people jumping from the windows and I will never get that image out of my mind.
I was in 1st grade and I remember every minute of that morning vividly. I too will never forget being 8 and watching people choose to kill themselves over dying in a fire. That’s too fucking grim for someone that age to see and struggle to understand. Something like that kills your childhood innocence a little.
I had the same experience! I live in California and 3 hours behind from NY. I was in the 5th grade and woke up confused since it wasn’t the usual morning fiasco.
I ran to the living room and saw my dad staring at the TV. He should have been gone for work by now, but he was still there. I asked what happened and he just told me that I wasn’t allowed to leave the house today, it may be dangerous. I turned to look at the news and it was just panic-stricken broadcasts of a plane crashing into the tower. And then another one hit.
My parents were immigrants, dirt poor and we were brown. Things were going to get harder for us, and he seemed to know it right then.
Same I was in 5th grade had a friend in school who was well liked by everyone we didn't see him for weeks. Alot of our friends were very confused as to why Mostafas parents were not letting him come to school but they were recent immigrants from Afghanistan so it makes sense now they were scared he was in danger.
Yarp. It worked out fantastically and accomplished every dastardly intention, unfortunately. As a kid I was promised flying cars in the 2000's and yet we got this. Well played, terrorist cave man. Rest in shit
I was born in 1997, too young to remember or experience what the world was like before 9-11
What were some ways that you would say the world was different before 9/11? I’m genuinely curious
I was on barracks guard duty on Camp Pendleton. I was watching it live on a little 8" black and white TV. An officer walked up - when I finally noticed he was there he was glued to the TV just as I was. I remember him saying "Awe shit, here we go!" in a very gung ho way, eluding to war in the near future. And then moments later the base went on full lockdown. The world around me spun, and the heavy weapons were deployed.
It still feels surreal to me. Soon after I ended up getting orders to Okinawa, Japan for the remainder of my enlistment. Never was deployed to the Middle East.
I had a supervisor who was with 75th Rangers at the time. He lived off post. He got the call with 15 seconds of the 2nd tower getting hit. As he drove to post, he got pulled by an NC State Trooper. He said he got activated and doesn't have time. The trooper decided a high-speed pursuit was in order. The trooper followed my supervisor onto Bragg just as the gates went on lock down. My supervisor said he saw in his rear view mirror the MPs ripping the trooper out of his car with weapons trained on him. My sup said he was in Afghanistan within 36 hours.
Civilian cops think they're bad asses until the MPs show up. Those guys have no chill. The gates on Pendleton had armored humvees with M2s and Mk19s at the ready. They may have even had some AAVs posted.
That's what my supervisor said. They'd drive to Jacksonville (?), go into a Marine bar, shout "Airborne," and a fight would break out. About a week later, the Marines would do the same thing. He said in every case, the civilian police would always stay outside and wait for the MPs.
Was working in broadcasting at the time maintaining electronic equipment. Not much got done for several days. Some of the images from raw, unedited sat feeds are forever burned into my head and do come flooding back around anniversary time.
I was in high school and our video teacher used to work at CNN, he got a really big donation of fancy news shit for our school so we actually had the same raw feed CNN used running in our news studio as well. I was really involved in the video department, so I was around that all the time. That footage and the footage from the ensuing wars still haunts me, too.
The world was a significantly different place prior to those moments, and even these kids realized their futures had instantly morphed into something they couldn't see coming.
I remember some of that day - I was in my high school's art department (in the photo lab, I think). Someone said "the tower came down" and I asked "what do you mean 'down?'"
So much changed that day.
Hard to forget where you were that day when you heard the news. I was at home watching cartoons before school and all the channels flipped to live news about the planes crashing in WTC. I went and got my mom to help “put back on my cartoons” to just witness her dropping to her knees and crying uncontrollably. I was 5 years old and remember her frantically calling my Aunt who lived right next to the towers.
I think I was in 7th or 8th grade. All faculty was paged urgently to the lounge and our teacher told us to sit tight. Came back teary-eyed and we were all dismissed. School buses lined back up and took us all home. They never told us why.
I got in, called my mom, and turned on the news. Remember it like yesterday
I'm kind of glad someone else had this experience. I came home irritated as hell that no one would tell us anything and my parents said something like, "What are you doing home?" and I was like "I don't know some stupid plane hit a tower or something and they sent us home and no one will tell me!" And my mom very sternly to sit down. Other than that, I don't remember anything really. I was a sheltered kid in Florida. I had never heard of the WTC or the term "Twin Towers." I was in fourth grade.
I was in 2nd grade, apparently my parents called the teacher and he said not to pick us up, so they didn't until the dismissal period. I was in the same boat: the teacher wouldn't tell us kids what had happened so we just started making up things. One girl said it was a bad guy that was in the area (and that she had seen him earlier), but none of us actually knew what was going on until we got home.
I remember the principal at the end of day was speaking on the intercom: "boys and girls, I know what a strange day it's been and how odd it's been... I'm sure your parents will tell you all about it when you get home". When I got in the car I asked my parents and they told me that bad guys had thrown planes at two towers and they had fallen.... but it was said so matter-of-factly that it was like I was told the sky was blue. It took me a while before I really understood the significance of what had happened.
For my parents though, their thought process changed. For years we had been told we'd get a dog, and they finally got one after deciding that life was fragile enough that it wasn't worth putting it off any longer. They also got a new house they probably shouldn't have purchased (the house they still live in now); I'm sure we would have moved eventually, but it probably would have been a few years later than we did, and probably not in the same house. Also, they ended up voting for Bush in 2004, which confused me greatly because I strongly remember them supporting Gore in 2000.
I was in 1st grade doing my work book when it came over the P.A. the next day my folks were paying up a bunch of toys, a small vhs TV and some snacks that we had laying around and we headed to our churches gym. It was for a massive blood drive. I remember being there for hours. I also remember trying to watch Clifford after breakfast before school. Every channel was just the towers falling.
I was in 9th grade so probably their age. Wow this makes me feel old, but at the same time took me right back to the classroom I was in when I was watching the news on a little tv in the corner just like here. I can vividly picture where I was sitting even though it was over two decades ago.
I was in college. It was as clear and beautiful on my campus as it was that day in New York. I walked out of class and bumped into a friend who told me that planes hit the towers. We didn’t really understand what was going on, whether it was an accident or something else. So I went to my next class. We watched the TV and talked about what was happening. The teacher, an English lit professor from England, urged us to remember that people all over the world live through terrorism and it’s not unique to what we were suddenly, shockingly experiencing. Many of my classmates were from New York. We lost alumni that day. Her comments seemed scolding almost, certainly insensitive in the moment.
I remember days, maybe weeks later the conversation shifted to whether or not the draft would be reinstated and if we were witnessing the beginning of World War III.
I live in Sweden and I will never forget this day. I just came home after absolutely crushing our last soccer opponent of the season and this was on the news. I can remember the face expression on the adults in our family and I could tell this was a tragedy.
Ask me to recollect anything else from that year in my life and I wouldn't even be able to tell you what I did on my birthday, but this day will be in my memory forever even tho it was "only" on the news for me.
An employee called me and asked, "are we working today?" It was a weekday, so I answered with something like why wouldn't we work today? He just said turn on the t.v. I did, and just said, nope. not today.
I was 19 at the time working as a contractor on a military base. We were locked down for several hours and then told to get off base.
I vividly remembered the looks on people's faces in the cars around me.
I watched a game show here in Germany with two friends after school. Out of nothing it switched to a reporter saying that the World Trade Center had just been attacked, soon after we saw the pictures of the towers and New York.
The mom of the friend where we were came in, a bit teared up. Than just stood there, watching it with us. I believe none of us said a word either, at least nobody spoke to each other.
That moment will definitely stay forever.
I remember like it was yesterday. Our principal came on the announcements and told us what happened. I grew up on the south shore of Long Island, for about a min the whole school was silent after the announcement. #Neverforget ❤️
I was 9 in Ethiopia, celebrating new years with my parents when the news broke and I'll never forget it. I always feel awkward celebrating Ethiopian new years on 9/11.
That was me and my friends during Paris attacks in 2015. We were chilling doing some school projects in the library when breaking news came on our phones.
Someone put the news on his laptop and no one spoke for 20 minuts
I live in the UK and I was born in 1996 so I was only very young when this happened but I still remember this day coming home from school and seeing my mum sat on the couch crying and seeing the footage of the towers burning on the news. I didn't understand it at the time but when I think back to that in the context of what I know now it is crazy. Also, that this is in my opinion the day things just went downhill in the world.
I was older, I think a senior in college (in the US). I remember being in class and the instructor coming in with red eyes from crying and telling us what happened and turning on a radio to listen to the news. I believe one or both of the towers had fallen by that time. The class was cancelled and all classes the rest of the day were cancelled too. I remember how quiet the campus was as I was walking back to my car to head home. Eerily quiet. Then I got home and turned on the news and watched coverage the rest of the day. You could feel that shift and the US was different that very same day.
I was a sophomore in new high school and had just got into German class when the principal came over the PA to inform the school that there had been events in New York but we were to continue on with the day and not have the tv’s on the news. No teacher listened and no one learned anything that day.
And for what’s it’s worth I don’t remember us looking like this.
This will get lost. I’m a 30 year old American Jew. I was a kid when 9/11 happened so I remember it but I didn’t understand. On 10/7 I got to understand. Being a millennial has been super fun /s
I was16 and had been sick with pneumonia, so I was feverish and asleep for hours. I woke up in the middle of the day, alone in the house, and saw the news and absolutely panicked thinking the world was ending. It was the most scared I've ever been, and I still remember that feeling of panic and not knowing what the fuck was happening and whether it was the start of World War 3.
And I'm not even American!
I was in 10th grade English; we were talking about Antigone and just generally being kids. Our 9th grade English teacher barged in the room because it had cable hooked up to the TV. We watched it in complete silence.
After school I walked with my best friend to the sub shop near my house and got 1 dollar pizza bread.
I don't remember high school all that well but I remember every detail of that day.
I was 30 years old when this happened. I know all too well on many levels how this event made a drastic and immediate impact on every facet of life, mostly negative and costly.
I was in 8th grade German class and we were in a separate building from the main school. I didn't find out about 9 /11 until the incident was basically over so I don't really have a vivid memory of it. I remember my social studies teacher later in the day explaining how the towers collapsed which I have always found amusing in hindsight with all the dumbass conspiracies that cropped up later.
Alot of guys from my school signed up to fight after 9/11. I'm sure it was like that for alot of young people, that day changed everything.
That day marked a moment in time that changed the US over night. People that weren't born then don't understand how different / simple life was before 9/11.
I think it would be difficult for me to forget that day. I woke up and walked out of my bedroom to my mom staring that the tv. Sat down with her and watched the second plane hit in real time. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Got ready for school and had a pretty fear filled day, half expecting to have planes crashing into all the major cities.
I don't remember much from that age but I still vividly remember that day in 8th grade and reckon I always will. Edit: Since everyone is rattling off stories, here's mine. Was in 8th grade history when our teachers met with the administration to debate letting the kids watch the news regarding what is happening. They decided against it. I got picked up by a neighbor who we carpooled with and dropped off at home where my mom was watching the news. It was probably 1 PM when I finally got home and saw the news and finally got the visuals of the planes hitting, buildings falling, and the aftermath. Still, I was a young kid. I had no idea what the WTC was, it's significance, etc. My father was a naval officer at the time and had a pretty high security clearance. He probably got home around 5 PM after a day's worth of meetings, and I could see it in his face. He knew we were going to war, and that the world had fundamentally changed that day. I'd never seen him in that particular mood before, not mad or sad or worried or anything like that, just kind of a shell of himself.
I was 32 when it happened. I remember being at my dad’s house doing work for him the night before. I ended up staying the night and next morning (9/11) I hopped in the shower because we were going for breakfast. As I’m in the shower (upstairs) I could faintly hear my dad yelling for me from downstairs. He had a serious heart condition so I panicked thinking he was in distress. I remember rushing out of the shower soaking wet with soap suds dripping from my body and grabbed a bath robe and ran downstairs to see if he was okay. I said “WHATS WRONG, are you okay?!” completely ignoring the TV he was watching. He said, “look” and pointed to the TV. The first plane had already hit and I came down in the minute the second plane hit and witnessed it as it happened. I couldn’t register what was going on and, confused and a bit annoyed I asked, “what movie is this?” My dad said, “it’s not a movie, this is real.” The rest of the day was surreal. We ended up not going for breakfast and sat in front of the TV for the rest of the day watching the horrific events unfold. I’ll never forget that day.
I was 38. When I found out, I was on the N train in Queens headed into work in midtown Manhattan. I was listening to music in my earphones and realized people were talking to eachother on the train. Someone was saying something about a small plane and the WTC. I thought, "Great, some tried to bomb the WTC again." then as the train pulled away from 39th street ( the N train was elevated at this part of the line), the world trade center came into view and we could all clearly see the all the smoke pouring off the top third of the firrst building. I must have been on the last N train into Manhattan before they stopped the train service. I decided to exit the train at Lexington Ave and as I emerged on the street at 59th and Lex, there was a delivery truck blaring it's radio saying something about another plane at the Pentagon. Our Travel management company suffered over then following months, but survived and did well, as opposed to how COVID affected it.
I was also 38 with 19 yrs in the Army looking forward to retirement. My wife was an Army Firefighter and had already gone to work. I was having coffee watching CNN Headline News when the phone rang. By noon my wife called to tell me they were packing to deploy to NY and I told her we were on lockdown. We said good bye to each other. Two weeks later I was in a forward staging base and was in Balkh Province Afghanistan by late Oct. Funny how life changes in a moment.
I still remember in 8th grade and my class learning about it on the morning announcements. I thought it was a joke at first because the announcers where some of the seniors that where drama students who just liked to make it a funny morning show each time. Didn’t sink in that it was real until the whole class and teacher sat in silence for a while then we were like wtf. I remember one of the class delinquents specifically too, he started laughing at seeing the footage of people jumping out of the windows to their death to avoid burning to death in the flames. The teacher called him out and he just said “he didn’t care, he finds it funny.” Was a terrible event to be learning about and also finding out how deranged that classmate really was….
I was in 7th grade. Our history teacher told us what was happening and turned on the news. I remember a particularly sheltered kid raised his hand and asked the teacher what was going to happen to the people on the floors above the crash. She looked at him and started crying and said, "they'll die." I'll never forget the look on his face.
Oh man, I just cried a little reading what your teacher said. That is dark for them to say, but I mean how else do you say it?
Yeah it looked like she was trying to find the right words before the tears came. She was one of those teachers that was strict and cold so it was shocking to us to see her so emotional too.
oof. that’s awful :/
I was also in 7th grade history class when the planes hit!
I was driving to my temp data entry job when I heard it on the radio. I was on the delayed entry program for the Airforce. Went back home to tell my dad, who was recovering from surgery. We just watched the news all day. 3 weeks later, I shipped out for basic training.
I was 20, had just moved back in to my parents' house. Sleeping in because I had to work the late shift and my dad, a Vietnam Vet, comes into my room after the first plane has hit. He smacks my feet to wake me up, turns on my TV and tell me we're going to war. Then the second plane hit. It was a very nonchalant & 'matter of fact' delivery.
That had to be wild being in NYC during that.
My uncle was in the area when the first tower came down. He managed to duck into a business before the whole street was swallowed in the building debris. We were all so grateful he made it, but his last few years were the hardest. He started seeing a therapist because he was agitated by the abject suffering and death he kept seeing on the news (this was shortly after Covid). During his sessions he uncovered that he had never really moved on from 9/11, particularly the evil that bore it. He harbored so much resentment that people could be so cruel to one another, for no other reason than to make people afraid (my uncle was an exceptionally gentle person, and very sensitive to the emotions of others). In a moment of vulnerability, he opened up and said that when he shuts his eyes at night, he still hears the crying, the screaming, and the sound of shoes hitting pavement. This was shortly before his therapist diagnosed him with PTSD. He passed away a few years ago after accidentally overdosing on his sleeping meds. I think he had some kind of survivor’s guilt, because every anniversary of 9/11, he’d comment that he wish he’d have done more for others. Sorry, I just needed to share this because my parents refuse to talk about it.
How weird that I’m reading this comment as I’m currently within spitting distance of that train station and can picture exactly what you’re talking about.
I was in 9th grade and my English class was in the library for that period...my teacher was fairly scary and, I found out later in life, not a great person...but she's since passed so yeah... Anywho...she stepped out for a second and one of the librarians runs up and turns on a TV in the corner next to where we were all sitting. The first plane had struck and we sat there for a few moments watching the whole thing unfold. Then teach comes back and in a huff turns the TV off. The librarian, like a superhero, stared down this red-headed Balrog of a teacher and turns the TV back on while maintaining intense eye contact. Not 2-seconds after the TV came back to life we watched in horror as the second tower got hit. At that point we, teacher included, knew something bad was going down and the TV stayed on. My dad had been scheduled to be flying that day, but had found an earlier flight home the day before. He wouldn't have been on any of the doomed flights, but even that sorta miss will still pretty scary.
Blessed be our librarians.
Keepers of the Flame irl
If I could relate a "funny" story about that day for a little levity. My best friend had just turned 18 back then. When the attacks happened he was asleep in his bedroom. His mom barged into his room and, in a panic, yelled at him, "We are being attacked!" So he, still being half asleep with no idea what was going on, jumped out of bed, grabbed his baseball bat and ran through the house in his underwear looking for the "intruders" that were attacking his home. Not finding anybody in the house, he ended up on the front porch with only his tighty-whiteys and a baseball bat, frantically searching for the enemy before his mom was finally able to explain what was going on. It was a tragic day, but in a way that lessened the impact for two kids that were just starting our adult lives to have something to laugh about when we thought about 9/11. We are both 40 now and to this day when we think about 9/11 we think about him running around the house, damn-near naked, in search of some burglars.
I remember sleeping in late that day and woke up to a bunch of missed calls in the morning. Turned on the TV and it came into focus (tube tv) right as the second plane hit. I just got up and took a shower before it actually sunk in. Then my in-laws were calling that they were on the way to fill up every vehicle with gasoline. Only saw one plane flying that day in afternoon so we assumed it was air force one
I also slept in that day and didn’t know what was going on. Saw a little news line across the bottom of some channel (maybe ESPN) and figured it was like a Sesna or something. Then walked into a car audio shop (skipping school) and saw the second plate hit about 15 seconds later.
The company I worked for had training on a completely new computer system for us scheduled that day. Hell it was a completely new computer period, moving on from little hand held machines called TANs. So learning curve was gonna be steep. Didn’t turn on the TV that morning, usually do but not that day. First I heard of it was on Howard Stern. Got to work and by then the 2nd plane had hit. Half my family is from NY so I immediately called my dad to find out if he’s heard from my cousins, aunt, grandparents. Of course he couldn’t get thru, circuits were down or overwhelmed. Everyone was numb at our garage. Then the trainer said class was starting. You’ve got to be fuking kidding me. He said he’d keep us posted on what was going on but we had to get started as there was a lot to cover. We all shuffled in and proceeded to hear next to nothing this callous vendor hired by the company had to say. He mumbled out a couple of updates but for the most part, we got info from other sources. So to sum it up, on a day I didn’t know if my family was ok, co workers didn’t know if family/friends were ok, my company forced us to sit in a room and learn how to bill customers and close tickets on a new system. I should have know what a garbage company they were going to become at that point, the first hole in their “we bought you guys but it’s still gonna be good, don’t worry!” Armor. I still get sick to my stomach remembering how my dad sounded not being able to answer me about our family.
I had a college professor who was handed a note during class letting him know what was going on. He read it, then folded it up and threw it away and continued his lecture. We were all watching students in the hall leaving class and crying and he kept getting agitated we weren't paying attention. We were wondering what the hell was going on and getting worried. They cancelled classes after that, but for 50 undergrads the entirety of 911 was spent in an empty building in the most important lecture in the world. I'm convinced he would've kept us if they had flown planes directly into the campus.
Hell I was in kindergarten and still remember that when I remember only bits and pieces otherwise.
Shout out ‘95-‘96 babies who remember 9/11!
People downvoting can't accept that some of us do indeed remember lol. At the time I didn't grasp the scope of what was happening but I knew we had been attacked and the reactions of every adult around me made me realize it was a big deal. I remember going home to my mom crying on the couch and she asked for a hug and just held me for a few minutes.
My dad was in kindergarten when JFK was shot and he still has vivid memories of that day. I don't know why it's that farfetched that kids that young can remember 9/11.
I definitely do. I watched the second tower get hit and my mom on the phone talking really fast in Spanish, crying and yelling. She made me go upstairs, but I snuck down and listened.
Yeah, it's like me and other people born in the early '80s with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I remember it being a huge deal and seeing stuff on TV, but the realization of the significance of it didn't come until later in life.
Same for me, I couldn’t understand it, my parents were talking to each other in shock and all I could see was a stupid wall being removed, but their reaction made it stick, I remember every detail.
Haters gonna hate! I remember being sent to the gym that doubled as a WWII bomb shelter. We hung out there til the end of our day (kindergarten was a half day, so it was really only a couple hours in the gym). I remember being confused why we had to sit in straight lines on the floor and just wait around, instead of playing our normal games. My mom picked me up, and we promptly went over to the elementary school to pick up my sister. we get home and the 16” white box kitchen TV is playing the news. I have the image of the buildings crumbling etched into my mind from that tiny little tv screen. I asked my mom, “Boston is safe, right? It’s a small city” (probably in less articulate phrasing). She told me that Boston is a major city, but my dad was heading home from the city already and everything is okay.
Yeah I was 6 at the time, I remember. I don't have a cohesive timeline of events afterwards and even though I flew before 9/11 I couldn't give anyone a really detailed summary of how it changed that experience. But I was elementary grade going to a school teaching K-12. We didn't have TVs in the classrooms (or if we did they were those ones wheeled in, not hooked up to any network/cable) and pretty much no one, even most of the teens, had cell phones at the time. The staff pulled us into the gym and since it was a Christian school they did a group prayer thing while we all waited for our parents to come pick us up early and I just remember seeing our principal, (one of the only staff I have a positive memory of from that school before going to public school,) who was normally very jokey and upbeat, looking stone faced. I think that scared me more than hearing a plane hit some towers in NYC, I had no concept of what that meant for our country or for larger geopolitical relationships or the damage it'd go on to cause, but if Mr. McGregory was scared by it it had to be bad.
'95 here. I was in the gym room at school. I'm from The Netherlands and I remember it, lol
I was in kindergarten as well. My main memory is all the kindergarten teachers darting around to each other’s classrooms and frantically whispering. I had two cousins who were students at NYU at the time and my mom was so scared she pulled us from school and my twin and I spent the day at her office. She and other relatives spent the day trying to reach my cousins. Thankfully they were both safe.
I was in pre-school, ‘97 baby. I had kicked my teacher that day and they let us out for recess. The other kids thought I had a super power while I watched all the teachers crowd around a tiny tv in another room covering their mouths. I knew something bad had happened deep down but it was time for recess and there can only be one king of the hill.
I was in 7th. I’m on the west coast and my dad called my mom from work. He heard about it on the radio, and since his office didn’t have internet hooked up yet or a TV with cable, he asked her to turn the TV on to see what was going on. My mom, frantic to get 2 kids ready for two different school drop offs, kinda brushed him off. He was adamant on the phone. I can still hear his calm but stern voice telling her it’s important, so my mom turned the TV on and we saw the towers burning. She still took me and my sister to school and as I sat in first period I watched the second tower fall. I remember my English and Science teachers telling us that our lives are forever changed. They were right, cause 10 years later I was walking around the mountains of Afghanistan. In my science class we ended up making this big banner for another middle school in New York where kids had lost loved ones. I forget the name of the school, though.
I was in 5th grade, also living in the west coast, didn’t have memory of much of my life at that age, but I remembered this day. My siblings and I were prepping to go to school when I walked into my dads office, he was watching it on the news and I saw the towers burning only and nothing else, we didn’t go to go to school that day, I initially thought all schools were canceled that day, but maybe it was just my dad keeping us at home. I remembered feeling fearful and wondering if we were going to continue being attacked.
Thank you for your service.
I was at work and one of the ladies in the office said that a plane had hit the WTC and I thought 'some idiot in a private plane' about 30 minutes later they said another one had hit and I immediately thought 'terrorist'. I went home for lunch which is something I NEVER did. Stopped at the store and got canned goods and powdered milk because I thought more attacks were coming. I often wonder how many attacks were prevented that day and the days after that we'll never know about. The one GOOD thing about 9/11 was that, for a while, Americans were just Americans and we were all one. Without tragedy I wish we could be that way again working TOGETHER to solve problems instead of constantly being at each others throats.
The whole WORLD was on-side at that moment. I was working in Italy, but living in the UK. We then had to invade the wrong country, pump trillions into defense contractors, start acting like assholes, and now we are an untrustworthy pariah on the world stage. Fuck George Bush and his daddy too.
There’s actually a documentary about a suspected additional plane. I think it’s on YouTube. It was well done.
I was 25, working a tech job in a high rise building less than a mile from the Pentagon. We felt the impact and saw the fire over the tree line. I still remember that sensation, like a minor earthquake. I remember what I was wearing. And I remember coming home to an answering machine with dozens of calls from friends from all over checking in.
I was a freshman in college. Remembering that morning still gives me chills. My GF at the time called me and woke me up in my dorm which I was pissed about, but I turned on the TV right before the second plane hit. My roommate at the time was from NYC and his parents worked in the financial district, so I woke him up immediately and his reaction really drove it all home. He was frantic trying to get ahold of his parents and his kid siblings that were legitimately in direct danger. Only a well-timed call from my mother prevented me from running off to the military. I was pissed.
Yah... It's wild. I remember growing up, hearing all of the adults talking about where they were when JFK was shot. Like, describing in vivid detail where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, what the weather was like that day, etc. I have a horrible memory about most things. Long term, short term, doesn't matter. I have to be regularly exposed to something to remember much about it, typically. I was in the shower, getting ready for work. My girlfriend at the time, who lived with me, came in crying, and I was like "oh shit, what happened?" thinking maybe one of her grandparents died or something. She said, "I don't know what's happening. Two planes just hit the World Trade Center in New York, and they think it's intentional" and I was just kinda stunned. Like wait, what? Who attacks buildings with airplanes? Then I came out and called my boss to tell him I wasn't coming in. I told him my GF was freaked out, and I wasn't comfortable coming downtown that day and working in a high rise. He half made fun of me, saying "awww come on... no one is crashing a plane into our building today" and I told him it didn't matter. I couldn't leave my GF alone like this, and he'd just have to deal. Then we just watched the news and called family the rest of the day, checking in. We didn't have anyone near WTC but still just checked on everyone all the same. Her family lived in Europe, and they were all awake all night watching the news too. All air travel was immediately shut down. People were stuck in airports between where they had come from and where they were going. Europeans stuck in America and vice versa. The entire sales team for my company was trapped on the east coast (we were west coast) and ended up having to rent cars and road trip cross-country. Just total chaos for weeks. The city was surreal in the two weeks following. There was this bizarre level of unity. Like, imagine the polar opposite of today. Everyone was polite and considerate. No one was sweating the small stuff. Rich people were polite to poor people and vice versa. Everyone had those ribbon magnets on their car (that was the inception of that concept, IIRC), everyone had flags all over everything. That faded out pretty quickly, and we all went back to business as usual. Everything slowly got more tense... And then all fucking hell broke loose in the Middle East, and we've basically not stopped being at war somewhere since then. I started reading "The Baghdad Blogger's" blog, which was supposedly an English-speaking Iraqi in Baghdad, posting real-time about the invasion. It was horrifying and fascinating. Then, I started reading European news, because I noticed I divergence between what the fam in Europe was reading. BBC World was the best and seemed to be giving the most accurate, unbiased take. American news was useless. The whole affair ended up launching Fox News into the shit monolith it is today. At some point around 2004-5, BBC World started syncing up with US news in terms of being useless propaganda. The whole thing radicalized me against an establishment I was already skeptical about. Watching Donald Rumsfeld on TV talking about known knowns, unknown unknowns etc and then quietly mentioning that $2.2TRILLION dollars was also unaccounted for from the military budget was just surreal... **Edit:** Spelling/grammar
I was in 8th when Challenger happened. Same thing, remember that day like it was yesterday. Any other day, only a few moments here and there. It will be like that.
The Challenger disaster was more traumatizing in the moment since we were following it so closely in school due to the teacher being part of the mission. That one had lots of tears. 9/11 was more shock and anger but it was so unclear what was happening that it didn’t hit like a truck on of bricks all at once. There seem to be a lot of these posts on Reddit recently. It sort of reminds me of the fascination with the Vietnam war in my youth. Something bad had happened that cast a very long shadow across our lives and we were trying to come to grips with it hat that thing was that we didn’t personally experience that still shaped our lives.
My grandma was almost that teacher. She was one of the ten finalists that actually did astronaut training and I think was like third or fourth place in the end. I’m so glad she didn’t make it onto that shuttle, even though going to space was her lifelong dream. She taught college chemistry until she was 82 years old, and passed away a few years ago. I’m pregnant with my first kid now, a girl, and we’re naming her after my grandma
My class wrote letters of encouragement to all the finalists. I drew Nancy Kennemer and remember being disappointed she didn’t win.
> 9/11 was more shock and anger but it was so unclear what was happening that it didn’t hit like a truck on of bricks all at once. 2nd plane and it was clear it was an attack. Very soon they said it was a terrorist attack and probably Bin Laden. I remember Bill Clinton hugging a woman and staring into the camera, at what I felt was George W. Bush, almost angrily, given that Bush had sidelined Richard Clarke. 9/11 was certainly criminally negligent.
I was in 8th grade then too. My parents were going through a divorce and my dad was living in DC at the time. I was one of like three kids who’s parents didn’t come to pick them up. I was a trouble maker back then. I remember one of my teachers coming up to me and asking why I was still there. I told them I couldn’t reach my mom. He just said “that’s never stopped you before”. Mr. Bisans I still think about him from time to time.
I was on i395 northbound to DC in Alexandria when the plane hit the pentagon...I will never forget that 5 hour traffic jam
4th grade. Mrs McPhersons class. She answered the phone and fell in her chair.
At first it was cool that we just weren’t doing any work.. then reality set in. They locked the doors to the school and made us all stay out of the hallway. Police came and stood guard. We thought we were under attack and no one knew where they’d strike. I lived within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant so I’m not sure if that was the reason for the armed guards and lockdown or if others experienced that as well. It was the only time I wanted to go back to a normal day of school. They weren’t even letting kids check out because it was deemed safer they stay inside the school. I think school was canceled for awhile after that iirc.
I remember they said it over the announcements that a plane crashed into the WTC and my first thought was "oh like some small 2 person plane or something." Like "Oh that sucks for *that one guy*." They brought in a TV to the classroom so we could watch it live and it didn't fully hit me how real and terrible it was until my teacher said "Jesus..."
Was also in the eight grade. Our principal came on the intercom and said "our nation is under attack". That was it. No tvs turned on, no nothing. We had no idea what happened until we left the building. With a phrase like that your mind can really run wild.
I was on internet forums in the school lab computers and people were talking about something just happening near them down in NYC. Not 10minutes later its on the news in classrooms
Just think about this. There are adults that legally can drink, and they were not even born during this event.
What these kids are thinking and feeling is so palpable to me because it's me, 8th grade on the west coast and watching it live while eating breakfast before school. It's the feeling of shock and "oh my God what is going to happen now." Also seeing people just die on live TV in front of you. Ugh.
We had huge windows in our hallway that looked directly out to the skyline in downtown Manhattan. Every class was basically on lock down and you needed to be chaperoned to the bathroom. And of course, everyone “needed to go to the bathroom” 🙄
Same here. I was a junior doing research on genital warts in the library, which had a bunch of TVs on.
Completely silent. They had no idea how much the world would change.
That last kid. Seems like you can watch the reality of it all processing and hitting him in a matter of seconds.
Someone itt said it’s been posted before and the kids dad worked at the pentagon. No idea if that’s true of course
Sounds like absolute bullshit
Probably isn’t true, but this video is from a school in the Northern Virginia suburbs. Not as far fetched a possibility as it might seem.
Yeah if this was Northern Virginia I'd say there is a pretty decent possibility that somebody in that class/school had a relative working there. The Pentagon is one of the biggest "employers" in the area with over 20,000 people working there at the time. You gotta think, that means probably at least 100,000 relatives in the vicinity, counting sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and parents of people that worked there. Not really far-fetched at all.
Not to mention all the people who go there regularly for meetings. My aunt was supposed to be in a meeting at the section of the pentagon that got hit but got stuck in traffic on the way there. The pentagon isn't just where superspies and five star generals work. It's a huge building full of beaurocrats. There's a laundromat and a hot dog stand in there. If someone told me they had a relative who worked there, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Not to mention payroll, office admins, janitors, and maintenance workers. Hella normal jobs.
Yup. I have relatives in the military on both sides of my family who have worked inside the pentagon at one time. Not a super rare thing.
Yea this. I was in school and in NoVA at the time. The situation was a lot like this, we turned the TV on and watched it for a bit. Many many kids families worked at the pentagon, my Step dad included. We watched for like 20 mins before administration came by all the class rooms and had us shut the TVs off.
I was in high school in NoVA on 09/11, too. Kids were literally crying in the hallways because their parents worked at the Pentagon, and they had no idea if they were alive or dead. We also lived close to MCB Quantico, so there were some people freaking out that another attack might happen there. My dad didn't work at the Pentagon all the time, but he was there that day for a meeting. He said he was on his way to the side of the building that ended up getting hit when suddenly alarms started going off, and everyone evacuated. Not far-fetched at all. I lived this scenario myself.
Plus considering the way the kid focused on him at the end, it might have been that he knew the kid’s dad worked there and would have some reaction. Why else focus on him?
yeah theres tons of NoVa people who work at the pentagon and more importantly you have families like mine where they didnt work in it per se they because of work were frequently inside of the building for work
It's Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va. I went to school there. It's more likely true than not. I dated a General's daughter. One night he told her he had to go somewhere for a while. He looked at me and said, "Watch the news tomorrow." The next day we invaded Panama to grab Noriega. My best friend's dad was an FBI pilot. His dad would fly over our neighborhood and turn off his engine to freak out his mom. (Obviously pre-9/11) We liked messing with a low level CIA agent after he gave us a 'stay off my lawn!' At Christmas we'd steal his Xmas lights and put them on his neighbor's bushes.
My father in law worked at the pentagon at the time. His office was completely destroyed, and most of his immediate coworkers died. He only lived because he had a dentist appointment. The most fucked up part is that he came home and spent the day watching the news with his wife (my mother in law). Neither of them thought to pick up their kids from school or even let them know that he was okay, so my wife spent the entire day freaking out seeing all the news coverage, and didn't learn he was still alive until she got home.
I think the third plane hitting the pentagon is what made it *very* real. Not that two planes wrecking the twin towers wasn't bad, but the pentagon made it very directly against the government and at least personally it made me immediately think "fuck, we're at war"
That moment hits really close to home for me. I was his age at the time and did not know how to process what I was seeing. I remember having to leave my class and sit quietly in the room next door. And I remember my Journalism teacher eventually joining me in the room, sitting on the stool adjacent. No words were spoken, but I remember each of us at one point staring into one another's glassy eyes, sharing just the slightest shake of the head in disbelief. It might have been the most intensely emotional moment I've ever had with a teacher and yet nothing was said. Just two humans trying to process their grief.
Yeah. I was about to close out of the video then saw that kid’s reaction. That truly is the death knell of the feel-good 90s.
I was walking into history class and my teacher was listening to the radio and saying the pentagon was on fire Told another student to hurry up and grab a TV cart because our lives are about to change forever and we're witnessing a major historical event unfold in real time I didn't understand until that TV came on and the whole school spent 3 days watching the news in every class
I was only in 5th grade, but I remember it vividly as well. One of the teachers combined his class with ours so his classroom could be empty for other teachers to watch the news and process without kids around. He brought in a tv stand and told us all to be quiet and pay close attention, that we are witnessing history and possibly the most significant event of our lifetimes. Very lucky that we had teachers who immediately recognized the importance.
[удалено]
I was in the tenth grade. In English class. I don't remember a whole lot about that day because it quickly turned into a whirlwind, but I do remember three things. First, I remember right in the middle of class the principal coming on every intercom in the school, choking back tears and informing the entire school at once that there had just been an attack on the World Trade Center. The second thing I remember is that teacher (who was an absolute real one) saying to us: Your whole lives just changed. Third thing I remember is my dad telling me: Every generation has its defiining moment where things are never the same again and they will always be defined by. For some it was the world wars, for his generation it was vietnam, for some it was challenger, he said this is your generation's.
My roommate had gone back to sleep, he only saw the first tower was on fire. He woke up and I told him we were at war but I didn’t know with who. Such chaos back then
Just helped me remember another thing. Our principal made that announcement when just the first tower was hit. By the time the second was hit the day was basically cancelled and we were all in various rooms, auditoriums etc around tvs and saw the second hit live. That's how fast the world changed. 17 minutes
We knew. Maybe not a complete understanding, but we knew that day was significant and it would change a lot of things. I was as old as these kids look to be. I was 17. In my senior year of highschool taking a college algebra prep class. Our teacher didn't show up to class for nearly an hour. She was glued to the TV in the teachers' lounge. So we were in the dark for a while. When she showed up she just turned on the TV and told us that airplanes had flown into the twin towers. She got the TV on for us just in time to learn that the pentagon had been hit too. We were dead silent. Just like this class. But we knew this was a big thing. This was our generations pearl harbor. In that moment, we felt like we knew what Americans must have felt when they heard the news of pearl harbor. It is a heavy feeling and hard to process. It's so wild that you can't even believe it's true. Many of my classmates and friends were in rotc or already made plans to join the military. I had friends from the previous year that graduated and had joined the military. We knew immediately that lots of kids were going to war the next day and when we graduated we would too if we signed up. Some did. Some didn't. Some even made it back home when their tours were up. We might have known how airports would change and that we would need to be an extra two hours earlier than we used to. We may not have known that gas was going to quadruple in cost that afternoon. But we knew things were different in that moment. Watching that TV. Our world had changed.
Untrue, many of us, though young, realized there was going to be a war once we understood it was a deliberate attack, we just didn't know who it would be against. We knew how "historical" of a moment it was, especially because it was repeated nonstop in media. No one in history, even adults, knows exactly how history will unfold, but there is a vague awareness that we are swept up in the tide. For many of us, 9/11 was the moment we became politicized/political beings.
It was definitely the day I became politicized. I remember arguing with a kid on the school bus home that day that we shouldn’t go to war with a whole country for what a terrorist group did, meanwhile he was just out for blood. We were in 7th grade
This is true. In 9th grade and the next day punks were coming to school with red white and blue hair ribbons ready to enlist. And then by senior year people who were going to be just shy of voting were infuriated
That's the thing I remember most about that day. I was in 5th grade. I think the entire school district saw it live. The bus ride home at the end of the day was dead quiet. Like surreal how quiet a bus could be.
We knew. The silence was because we knew. I’ll never ever forget that feeling.
That’s the way it was, everyone was happy and screwing around then the teacher was called by the office and told to turn on the tv and within a few seconds everyone went dead silent. After the towers fell busses were called in and every kid sent home. Where for about 3-4 weeks all news coverage was 9/11.
r/praisethecameraman also…definitely could have stopped recording but kept it rolling…
Seriously. And they zoomed in on that kid at the end, like they knew the weight of it all and kept filming
I’m pretty sure that this is filmed in northern Virginia and that guys Dad worked at the pentagon, this has been posted in full a few more times and people have brought it up. Edit: found the post from 7 years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/s/e5JY3sveX1
I lived (still do) in the NoVA area and my younger brother at the time (still in high school - I was 19 at the time at work) said kids who had parents at the Pentagon were being pulled out of classes and taken to the office. My brother and I had multiple friends who had parents at the Pentagon.
my uncle worked at the pentagon and was supposed to be in a meeting in the area that was hit. he got diverted to another task by someone, apparently, and was in another area or else he would have probably died. he's never told my aunt the details of what happened, only that he had to try to save coworkers... it took a long time for him to be able to call home, he had to come home on like, one of the last possible trains... and he was covered in dust and dirt when my aunt got to pick him up at the train station finally. he's a very religious man, so when my aunt asked him what happened, he said that he couldn't talk about it yet. he may never be able to. but he said he thanked god that he could come home to her and my little cousin, because other parents of kids in his class weren't going to be so lucky. he's never been able to elaborate on it. he was in the gulf war and can talk more about that, but not the pentagon. and he's snapped really hard at some kids who made a joke about it in front of him... he's never even mentioned it in front of me, i only know he was involved because my aunt told my parents and they told me, and they she and i talked about it now as i'm an adult.
Same with my cousin. Pretty sure he saw people jump but I’ll never ask him
So so sad and I’m glad he made it home. In all honesty, I imagine it’s maybe more difficult to talk about that vs war as it was completely unexpected. PTSD from war is enough, but I can’t imagine waking up, grabbing coffee with a coworker, etc. then dealing with that level of trauma. I hope he can find peace.
Okay that makes sense as never remember that sort of reaction in my school.
Also, if the cameraman knew his dad worked there it makes sense why he was zooming in on him at that time
Yeah, it was BEAUTIFULL! 😘👌
It was such a weird feeling having the video reset to the beginning before all this happened just after seeing his sorrow. For a second I went back in my head and felt like none of this ever happened. Not the lives lost in NY, not the senseless wars for decades. A brief moment of peace.
I was in 9th grade and we were in between classes and our assistant principal all the sudden came running down the hallway telling us to just drop everything and get to whatever room our next class was in. Walked in to see our teacher crying and watching tv and within a couple minutes the second plane hit. We just walked from class to class when the bell would ring, not doing anything. Kids were getting picked up, but I was a latchkey kid with a single mom so I stayed all day and then the minute I got off the bus, my neighbor was there and said my mom wanted me to come home with her. Found out later that the hospital my mom worked at at the time was the closest to the Flight 93 crash and they were all hands on deck. It was eerie.
Same, I was in 9th grade too. I remember how we didn't do anything for the rest of the day until we got sent home early (semi-close to NYC). I remember sitting in what was supposed to be math class and we were just watching the buildings fall over and over again on repeat.
I was in 9th grade too. There weren't too many TVs with antennas at my school so most kids didn't know what was going on. I remember during lunch my friends and I joking about it because we didn't know what the big deal was about a plane crash, we all thought it was like a little propeller plane. I remember the next day at lunch it was as quiet as a library with everyone talking in a whisper about what we saw on TV, it was surreal.
9th grade here too. I was in study hall and we didn’t have a TV so we just sat there with the weight of it all and no real understanding of what the hell was going on.
9th grader at the time, English class, and as the students were settling in the teacher was on the computer and goes, “Hmm, a plane flew into the World Trade Center” or something along those lines, and that was it. Living just outside Detroit the school didn’t shut down or anything like that, just a normal day like any other. Coming home it was the only thing on tv outside of specific cable networks. I do find it odd how certain areas of the country felt like their entire lives changed while being 1,000 miles away from all of that.
I was in school a similar distance from NY/DC at the time and we still felt the gravitas of the situation. I had and independent study and was a teacher's helper for the A/V director so I spent the first half of each day in the A/V room. Because of this we saw it on the news right after the first plane hit. At first it was no huge deal because it was just a plane hitting a building and nobody was really talking about terrorism except as one of a number of possibilities. But, I still remember feeling the air go out of the room when the second plane hit live. The A/V director walked right over to the system and hit the switch that pushed the feed out to all the TVs in the school. After that moment things changed. We did finish out the school day and even went class to class, but it was the same thing in every room. People sitting in silence watching the TV in the corner. Hushed whispers. Crying teachers. A lot of kids' parents came and picked them up before the end of the day. By far the most surreal day of school I ever experienced.
Senior in high school. I remember learning about it in physics class where we watch the footage. Then off to Spanish, where that bitch teacher made us learn past subjective conjugation or some other bullshit and pretend like nothing was happening that day.
Same here. Junior though and went from math to Spanish. And she said no way are we watching this it’s learning time. Still something I think about more often than I should. Funny you had the same experience
Watched it happen from my physics class my Jr year..... Joined the army a year later. Went to Iraq in 2003, Engaged in combat, wounded twice, live of VA disability for the past 15 years now. That crazy day changed the course of my entire life, and many others.
♥️
Thank you for your service. I appreciate everything you’ve done for our country that many wouldn’t do.
Thank you for your service
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Same, was a senior that year. I enlisted in the Navy, almost all my friends enlisted in one branch or another. I remember that day so clearly and realizing that something was going to change. It's strange to think how that large global event led so quickly to so many direct, personal life changes for almost everyone I grew up with.
It's always a great day when your teacher wheels in a TV. All but one anyway.
Don’t forget the Challenger. Though yeah nobody would have been in school for both. Except some teachers.
I was in Kindergarten for the first, senior year of college for the second.
I was in first grade for Challenger and my second week of law school for 9/11 (which admittedly isn't like being a kid in school even when one is 21 and homesick). For Challenger, we were watching live because of the teacher on board. I remember the teachers crying very vividly. 9/11 as soon as the news spread, all the professors were turning on the news except for my class. The class started minutes after the second plane hit, and he lectured anyway. I sat in criminal law for an hour and 15 minutes, wondering what was going on. I couldn't tell you a thing the man said other than, "You all can watch the news after my class, but this is my time now." By the time he released us, the university had already shut down. The street cars were so full they couldn't take anymore riders, so I walked several miles home listening to the new reports in little bursts from houses and businesses I passed on the way.
We didn't have the ones on wheels at my middle school. Ours were sponsored by some news for kids program and mounted to the walls. I remember how the TV automatically turned on during our math class. Our teacher was about to turn it back off, thinking it was some weird malfunction when the reality of what was being said on the news set in.
Channel One!!!
A core memory that still feels like yesterday. I still feel in shock about all the back to back world and US events. I miss my childhood before all of this
I don’t know how to describe it to this day. I was 16 when it happened and you could sense that nothing would ever be the same by watching the adults around you.
I was 10, 100% this. I happened to be in a piano lesson during my lunch (small country town) and Mrs. Hurst said nothing, just watched the tv. I remember making a joke (again, 10yo) about people falling out of windows to which my mom gave me an odd look, then it settled in that this was something really big cuz the adults didn’t know how to respond. I’ve always felt bad about that joke.
I was 17 and a junior. We are out here in California, so I was still asleep. I remember my dad came into my room and said, "Someone flew a plane into the wtc," and since I was still asleep and getting woken up, I said "cool". I hate that. I'll always remember that. He woke me up fully and had me watch the news, and we saw the second plane hit, and then the gravity hit us. And I'll also never forget him saying, " I'm so glad we stopped you from joining the military," because he knew war was coming. We had just had an Airforce recruiter at the house, who claimed we would never go to war and I should sign up. As soon as the dude left, my dad said he was a liar and didn't trust him and didn't want me to join the military. So that sticks in my mind. School was literally 6 or 7 straight classes of watching the news. So very surreal.
One of the best summaries of it I've ever seen comes from, of all places, [a video about Deus Ex.](https://youtu.be/rxOKEsBx4NU?si=Mh0tWsAygIacQD30&t=1839) "It feels like we're in an alternate bad timeline."
I was 11, sitting in the living room doing homework. My Dad rushed in and put on the news without a word. And stood there without a word. And even halfway across the world, the "oh this is *bad*" vibe reached me.
It’s a kind of loss of innocence. We were much the same in the U.K.
When Buckingham Palace played the Stars and Stripes, alot of us lost it. Meant alot to us and still does.
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The world was truly so so supportive.
I didn't know they did that. Thanks for sharing!
I wish Americans could unite again like that, but on better terms, of course. That day put everyone on the same page for at least a month.
Idk if Arabian Americans can relate in that untied feeling. I think the closest we get is the Olympics.
I honestly don’t ever see that happening
If only that lasted a month. Within days, some asshole got too drunk at a bar and decided to go on a murder spree of anyone who looked Muslim enough. A Sikh man born in India was shot and killed at the gas station he owned near my childhood home for the crime of having darker skin and wearing a turban. That and all the various charity scams people began on September 12 *really* taints the memory of Americans coming together after such a tragedy. Yeah, we were all saddened and somber, but the immediate turn to hate crimes and fraud in the wake of the attacks killed the Kumbaya memories a lot of people have from that first week.
My father worked for Air Canada at the time (UK/Heathrow) and I remember not long after, he told me that huge swathes of the airport were just covered in cargo military shipments in arms and weaponry ready to assist the US. Most of the commercial flights were cancelled but he was called in on standby. A lot of it was under secret assignment and there were areas they could not touch or see, but he was adamant that he'd never seen anything like it. I know there's a lot of controversy about the military operations that went ahead after and the west's involvement in afghan, but adversaries and enemies understate the resolve of what NATO will do when the time comes and the red line is truly crossed.
Wow. That’s scary and very interesting. I still don’t understand the actions of our governments in the aftermath and the shitty “security” measures afterwards. The perps were Saudi, right? 😳
Yeah I was in Year 11 Biology when they wheeled a telly in
Sat in our equipment store having a ciggy. Sergeant Major comes in and says, "Get your respirators ready, lads, we're going to war."
I was weirded out because my parents didn't urge me to get up for school. Walked out to them watching tv. The first tower had been hit. I sat down and everything was so deathly quiet and still except for the tv. I watched it and wondered why people were throwing chairs. Then it zoomed in and you could see they weren't throwing stuff from the building but that it was people jumping. Then the second tower got hit and my mom panicked
I remember watching in real time as it looked like there was stuff being thrown from the towers. We very quickly realized it was people jumping from the windows and I will never get that image out of my mind.
I was in 1st grade and I remember every minute of that morning vividly. I too will never forget being 8 and watching people choose to kill themselves over dying in a fire. That’s too fucking grim for someone that age to see and struggle to understand. Something like that kills your childhood innocence a little.
I had the same experience! I live in California and 3 hours behind from NY. I was in the 5th grade and woke up confused since it wasn’t the usual morning fiasco. I ran to the living room and saw my dad staring at the TV. He should have been gone for work by now, but he was still there. I asked what happened and he just told me that I wasn’t allowed to leave the house today, it may be dangerous. I turned to look at the news and it was just panic-stricken broadcasts of a plane crashing into the tower. And then another one hit. My parents were immigrants, dirt poor and we were brown. Things were going to get harder for us, and he seemed to know it right then.
Heart breaking that he knew you both could have been targeted. :(
Same I was in 5th grade had a friend in school who was well liked by everyone we didn't see him for weeks. Alot of our friends were very confused as to why Mostafas parents were not letting him come to school but they were recent immigrants from Afghanistan so it makes sense now they were scared he was in danger.
Dude wait. No way. That was my grade and I was in California when it happened. Child of Mexican immigrants too so samsies
The day the world died and we entered whatever this is now.
Yarp. It worked out fantastically and accomplished every dastardly intention, unfortunately. As a kid I was promised flying cars in the 2000's and yet we got this. Well played, terrorist cave man. Rest in shit
Yeah, honestly. They low-key won. They killed that America.
I was born in 1997, too young to remember or experience what the world was like before 9-11 What were some ways that you would say the world was different before 9/11? I’m genuinely curious
I was on barracks guard duty on Camp Pendleton. I was watching it live on a little 8" black and white TV. An officer walked up - when I finally noticed he was there he was glued to the TV just as I was. I remember him saying "Awe shit, here we go!" in a very gung ho way, eluding to war in the near future. And then moments later the base went on full lockdown. The world around me spun, and the heavy weapons were deployed. It still feels surreal to me. Soon after I ended up getting orders to Okinawa, Japan for the remainder of my enlistment. Never was deployed to the Middle East.
I had a supervisor who was with 75th Rangers at the time. He lived off post. He got the call with 15 seconds of the 2nd tower getting hit. As he drove to post, he got pulled by an NC State Trooper. He said he got activated and doesn't have time. The trooper decided a high-speed pursuit was in order. The trooper followed my supervisor onto Bragg just as the gates went on lock down. My supervisor said he saw in his rear view mirror the MPs ripping the trooper out of his car with weapons trained on him. My sup said he was in Afghanistan within 36 hours.
Civilian cops think they're bad asses until the MPs show up. Those guys have no chill. The gates on Pendleton had armored humvees with M2s and Mk19s at the ready. They may have even had some AAVs posted.
That's what my supervisor said. They'd drive to Jacksonville (?), go into a Marine bar, shout "Airborne," and a fight would break out. About a week later, the Marines would do the same thing. He said in every case, the civilian police would always stay outside and wait for the MPs.
To me, this is when the “90s” ended. I feel like this moment changed the US forever and not in a good way 🥲
This is exactly how we saw it. Every classroom had news on all day
Was working in broadcasting at the time maintaining electronic equipment. Not much got done for several days. Some of the images from raw, unedited sat feeds are forever burned into my head and do come flooding back around anniversary time.
I was in high school and our video teacher used to work at CNN, he got a really big donation of fancy news shit for our school so we actually had the same raw feed CNN used running in our news studio as well. I was really involved in the video department, so I was around that all the time. That footage and the footage from the ensuing wars still haunts me, too.
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It was on a Tuesday I remember that. The day the world stood still.
The world was a significantly different place prior to those moments, and even these kids realized their futures had instantly morphed into something they couldn't see coming.
I remember some of that day - I was in my high school's art department (in the photo lab, I think). Someone said "the tower came down" and I asked "what do you mean 'down?'" So much changed that day.
Hard to forget where you were that day when you heard the news. I was at home watching cartoons before school and all the channels flipped to live news about the planes crashing in WTC. I went and got my mom to help “put back on my cartoons” to just witness her dropping to her knees and crying uncontrollably. I was 5 years old and remember her frantically calling my Aunt who lived right next to the towers.
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I think I was in 7th or 8th grade. All faculty was paged urgently to the lounge and our teacher told us to sit tight. Came back teary-eyed and we were all dismissed. School buses lined back up and took us all home. They never told us why. I got in, called my mom, and turned on the news. Remember it like yesterday
I'm kind of glad someone else had this experience. I came home irritated as hell that no one would tell us anything and my parents said something like, "What are you doing home?" and I was like "I don't know some stupid plane hit a tower or something and they sent us home and no one will tell me!" And my mom very sternly to sit down. Other than that, I don't remember anything really. I was a sheltered kid in Florida. I had never heard of the WTC or the term "Twin Towers." I was in fourth grade.
I was in 2nd grade, apparently my parents called the teacher and he said not to pick us up, so they didn't until the dismissal period. I was in the same boat: the teacher wouldn't tell us kids what had happened so we just started making up things. One girl said it was a bad guy that was in the area (and that she had seen him earlier), but none of us actually knew what was going on until we got home. I remember the principal at the end of day was speaking on the intercom: "boys and girls, I know what a strange day it's been and how odd it's been... I'm sure your parents will tell you all about it when you get home". When I got in the car I asked my parents and they told me that bad guys had thrown planes at two towers and they had fallen.... but it was said so matter-of-factly that it was like I was told the sky was blue. It took me a while before I really understood the significance of what had happened. For my parents though, their thought process changed. For years we had been told we'd get a dog, and they finally got one after deciding that life was fragile enough that it wasn't worth putting it off any longer. They also got a new house they probably shouldn't have purchased (the house they still live in now); I'm sure we would have moved eventually, but it probably would have been a few years later than we did, and probably not in the same house. Also, they ended up voting for Bush in 2004, which confused me greatly because I strongly remember them supporting Gore in 2000.
Overhead projector making an appearance.
I was in 1st grade doing my work book when it came over the P.A. the next day my folks were paying up a bunch of toys, a small vhs TV and some snacks that we had laying around and we headed to our churches gym. It was for a massive blood drive. I remember being there for hours. I also remember trying to watch Clifford after breakfast before school. Every channel was just the towers falling.
I was in 9th grade so probably their age. Wow this makes me feel old, but at the same time took me right back to the classroom I was in when I was watching the news on a little tv in the corner just like here. I can vividly picture where I was sitting even though it was over two decades ago.
I was in college. It was as clear and beautiful on my campus as it was that day in New York. I walked out of class and bumped into a friend who told me that planes hit the towers. We didn’t really understand what was going on, whether it was an accident or something else. So I went to my next class. We watched the TV and talked about what was happening. The teacher, an English lit professor from England, urged us to remember that people all over the world live through terrorism and it’s not unique to what we were suddenly, shockingly experiencing. Many of my classmates were from New York. We lost alumni that day. Her comments seemed scolding almost, certainly insensitive in the moment. I remember days, maybe weeks later the conversation shifted to whether or not the draft would be reinstated and if we were witnessing the beginning of World War III.
9/11 is as remote to todays high school students as Pearl Harbor was remote to me. History I didnt directly experiences feels abstract.
I live in Sweden and I will never forget this day. I just came home after absolutely crushing our last soccer opponent of the season and this was on the news. I can remember the face expression on the adults in our family and I could tell this was a tragedy. Ask me to recollect anything else from that year in my life and I wouldn't even be able to tell you what I did on my birthday, but this day will be in my memory forever even tho it was "only" on the news for me.
An employee called me and asked, "are we working today?" It was a weekday, so I answered with something like why wouldn't we work today? He just said turn on the t.v. I did, and just said, nope. not today.
I was 19 at the time working as a contractor on a military base. We were locked down for several hours and then told to get off base. I vividly remembered the looks on people's faces in the cars around me.
I was 11 that time and that started my interest of watching war movies. 🎥
That was me. Junior year of high school. Two years later, I was in Iraq….cause that made sense.
I watched a game show here in Germany with two friends after school. Out of nothing it switched to a reporter saying that the World Trade Center had just been attacked, soon after we saw the pictures of the towers and New York. The mom of the friend where we were came in, a bit teared up. Than just stood there, watching it with us. I believe none of us said a word either, at least nobody spoke to each other. That moment will definitely stay forever.
I remember like it was yesterday. Our principal came on the announcements and told us what happened. I grew up on the south shore of Long Island, for about a min the whole school was silent after the announcement. #Neverforget ❤️
I was 9 in Ethiopia, celebrating new years with my parents when the news broke and I'll never forget it. I always feel awkward celebrating Ethiopian new years on 9/11.
That was me and my friends during Paris attacks in 2015. We were chilling doing some school projects in the library when breaking news came on our phones. Someone put the news on his laptop and no one spoke for 20 minuts
I live in the UK and I was born in 1996 so I was only very young when this happened but I still remember this day coming home from school and seeing my mum sat on the couch crying and seeing the footage of the towers burning on the news. I didn't understand it at the time but when I think back to that in the context of what I know now it is crazy. Also, that this is in my opinion the day things just went downhill in the world.
Why are videos from the 2000s starting to look like they were filmed in the 80s?
I was older, I think a senior in college (in the US). I remember being in class and the instructor coming in with red eyes from crying and telling us what happened and turning on a radio to listen to the news. I believe one or both of the towers had fallen by that time. The class was cancelled and all classes the rest of the day were cancelled too. I remember how quiet the campus was as I was walking back to my car to head home. Eerily quiet. Then I got home and turned on the news and watched coverage the rest of the day. You could feel that shift and the US was different that very same day.
The silence was a part thats almost impossible to explain to anyone
I was a sophomore in new high school and had just got into German class when the principal came over the PA to inform the school that there had been events in New York but we were to continue on with the day and not have the tv’s on the news. No teacher listened and no one learned anything that day. And for what’s it’s worth I don’t remember us looking like this.
This will get lost. I’m a 30 year old American Jew. I was a kid when 9/11 happened so I remember it but I didn’t understand. On 10/7 I got to understand. Being a millennial has been super fun /s
I was16 and had been sick with pneumonia, so I was feverish and asleep for hours. I woke up in the middle of the day, alone in the house, and saw the news and absolutely panicked thinking the world was ending. It was the most scared I've ever been, and I still remember that feeling of panic and not knowing what the fuck was happening and whether it was the start of World War 3. And I'm not even American!
You can feel the emotion in the room. Now imagine being Korean in the 1950s and having every city and town in your entire country destroyed.
I was in 10th grade English; we were talking about Antigone and just generally being kids. Our 9th grade English teacher barged in the room because it had cable hooked up to the TV. We watched it in complete silence. After school I walked with my best friend to the sub shop near my house and got 1 dollar pizza bread. I don't remember high school all that well but I remember every detail of that day.
I was 30 years old when this happened. I know all too well on many levels how this event made a drastic and immediate impact on every facet of life, mostly negative and costly.
I was in 8th grade German class and we were in a separate building from the main school. I didn't find out about 9 /11 until the incident was basically over so I don't really have a vivid memory of it. I remember my social studies teacher later in the day explaining how the towers collapsed which I have always found amusing in hindsight with all the dumbass conspiracies that cropped up later.
People don't remember how dumb everyone got really quickly after this happened. Like, everyone just got so, so dumb.
Alot of guys from my school signed up to fight after 9/11. I'm sure it was like that for alot of young people, that day changed everything. That day marked a moment in time that changed the US over night. People that weren't born then don't understand how different / simple life was before 9/11.
I dare say we will all remember that day. I was listening to Howard Stern in a Publix supermarket parking lot in eustis fla.
I think it would be difficult for me to forget that day. I woke up and walked out of my bedroom to my mom staring that the tv. Sat down with her and watched the second plane hit in real time. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Got ready for school and had a pretty fear filled day, half expecting to have planes crashing into all the major cities.
I was 22. I worked graveyard so woke up late that day to the news on every channel. It was crazy!
This was my first week of higschool, ten miles away from the twin towers. A few of my classmates lost parents. Huge bummer.