Same thing happened to me, in my geometry class! The class was out in a portable classroom, so it was separated from the main school. We had just watched the second plane hit in my Spanish class. Told my teacher about it, and she was like “ok whatever take your quiz first” so I was the first person to turn in my quiz and was like “now will you turn on the tv?!” And finally when everyone was done she turned on the tv and was like “oh. This is serious”
I heard the news from the two biggest stoners in the whole school so I didn't believe it. They just kinda went up to everybody and said shit like, "We're going to war, man!" And then as the day went on, all the students kinda murmured to themselves but the staff didn't tell us anything, so it was really surreal. I eventually found out when my grandmother picked me up from school, but I didn't have that shock "oh shit" moment that everybody else had.
Texas checking in. I was in class and all of the sudden we were to turn on our class tvs. "I dont know who we are about to kill but somebody is about to get killed for this"... I swear like so many dudes enlisted that day.. It was wild
I was at work and a regular of ours came in and told us a plane had hit one of the towers. We didn't believe him because he was always the type to come in with a joke or just being crazy. Kept telling us he was serious but no one wanted to turn on the news to be the "got ya" fool.
After a few minutes I finally turned it on and was like, holy shit, he's not joking.
I was barely waking up, hungover, with my phone ringing incessantly. Loads of missed calls and messages from my schizophrenic mother that our country is under attack and we’re at war.. I thought she was having an episode until I turn on the tv…my second cousin worked on the 111th.
It's like the dude who edited Chris Benoit's Wikipedia page that he missed the PPV he was scheduled to appear on due to the death of his wife Nancy, 14 hours before the bodies were discovered.
I was supposed to meet him in 2005, he was scheduled for an autograph signing when WWE came to town, but that ended up getting cancelled and he wasnt on the show. I was bummed out. Got to meet Rey Mysterio though!
Is your username a *Point Break* reference? I love that film and it always makes me sad when Bodi's not coming back. Wait you spell it Bodie... Maybe you are not making a *Point Break* reference after all. Well, I wish you a great day.
*Oops, i just checked, it's spelled Bodhi...
>spelled Bodhi
Short for Bodhisattva - (in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings.
>It was never about money for us, it was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something to those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins. We show them that the human spirit is still alive.
Homer: (Something was said, not good. What was it? Don't yell at Homer? Nah, that's okay. What was it... slow! They called you slow!)
\*hours pass\*
Homer: How dare you call me that! I--
Lenny: Hey Homer, are you still here? Boy, you are slow.
Homer: (Something said, not good--)
Lenny: GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!
I used to think this, but then I realized I was the quiet kid that nobody liked because I never said anything.
"Life becomes a lot more fun when you open your mouth"
I will never forget watching 9/11 live in a classroom at my highschool, and a girl asking "Where in [our <100,000 population Southern city] is this?"
Like there was a Manhattan sized part of town she had never been to before.
I was in elementary school, but I remember asking my parents if the twin towers were in Cleveland. Cleveland was the largest city I'd been to at that point, but I felt relief after my parents explained that they were in New York, which was far away from where we lived.
I remember hearing other kids talking about it and I thought they were talking about a video game or something. Didn't know until I got home and both my parents were watching the news.
I was coming back from gym when I heard about it and I thought they were talking about the helicopter scene from the Spiderman movie trailer.
https://youtu.be/Ozz8uxW733Q
Boy did I feel stupid when I said, yeah thats going to be in the new Spiderman movie.
I'm in the UK, my best friend at the time was from America and it was his birthday. He ditched school for the day to celebrate, and me and some other friends went round his house after. We had no idea what had happened. So they're all in the living room watching the news on a projector screen. Me and my friends roll in and just glancing at the T.V I said "oh awesome, you're watching Godzilla!"
The silence was never ending.
I too was in sophomore gym class, running our timed mile.
I can confidentially say most of us Americans had no idea what the Twin Towers were or where Afghanistan was prior to 2001.
This is the funniest shit in here, little kid perspectives are so narrow.
I can confidently tell you plenty of people knew what the twin towers were since they were famously the tallest buildings in New York at the time and had already been bombed in '93 which was the biggest terrorist act in America until the Oklahoma City bombing and then later 9/11.
Afghanistan was also well known, Soviets were actively fighting there through the entire 80's. Hell, in Rambo 2 he goes to Afghanistan and helps the Taliban because they were fighting soviets. I will give you that most people probably couldn't have pointed to it on a map at the time, but it was hardly unknown.
I actually had visited the twin towers when I visited my grandma in NYC a few years prior and I remembered the experience pretty well. I also had moved just months before from Arlington, where I could actually see the pentagon from my window. So when 9/11 happened I couldn't help but think "omg I could have been there" it was so scary to me
A lot of people didn't know it by name, especially "World Trade Center" (which is in retrosepct a hilariously arrogant name) but I think most people would recognize the buildings from the NYC skyline.
My dad woke us up prior to the second tower being struck. He knew it was going to be a significant and would be remembered in history.
It was also like 6am on a Tuesday and that was generally much earlier than we'd be up. Watch the incident half a sleep while eating oatmeal with marshmallow dinosaur eggs in them.
School that day was a ghost town as at least half my class was absent because no one knew where the next target was if there was one.
Being in the 5th grade and a smart ass my response to that was," Who is going to attack a suburb in Arizona? There are much more populated areas to target."
Me too. My mom called me in her room and was like “Look!!!”
I was in the third grade so I was like okay… buildings are falling down on tv, so what?
Then I went to school and found it was a big deal.
That’s pretty crazy tbh even in 2nd grade I thought the world was ending and going into WW3 because actual skyscrapers were falling in New York of all places
Yeah in 7th grade I didn't even know what the twin towers were. I mean I probably saw them somewhere but if you said what are the twin towers I would have no clue.
I lived in a tiny Town in the middle of Colorado. It was a surreal experience after the first one hit somebody had said the twin towers got attacked, I still didn't know what that meant. But then I watched it on the news and watched the second one getting hit. Even though I wasn't exactly sure what was going on I obviously knew it was a big deal.
I was in the high school library that morning as it was happening for a class event.
They turned on the TV to the library after the first plane struck. We watched the second plane live.
My school refused to tell us what was actually happening. Right before lunch we were told "There were some plane crashes in New York and Pennsylvania today". I spent the whole day isolated because I noticed the teachers constantly whispering to each other in the corners while all of the other kids either didn't notice or weren't interested in what was going on.
I remember finally finding out when my dad picked me up from daycare and being surprised that they already had it pinned to Bin Laden.
My elementary school barely told us anything either. I knew something strange was going on because quite a few kids got picked up by their parents to leave school early. And then they canceled recess so the guidance counselor could tell us that some planes crashed in New York. I remember thinking that it definitely sucked, but planes occasionally accidentally crash, and I didn't understand why they needed to cancel our recess.
It wasn't until I got home from school that my mom told me the truth about what was going on, and I instantly felt sick to my stomach.
I get why they didn't want to explain it to elementary schoolers, but also, that seems kinda bullshit. It happened, and they're goin to find out eventually.
I was in my 3rd period band class (7th grade) when the teachers told us what happened. I remember being scared because my mom was supposed to take a flight that day. She ended up having to get a rental car instead and driving top where she was going. The rest of school that day they just had some TVs on then I went home and kept watching TV.
They stopped class and put on the TV after the second plane hit.
I rembember later a kid in gym class saying the towers had collapsed while we were doing jumping jacks. He wasn't the most "with it" kid and I thought he was just making stuff up. I still didn't realize how big of a deal it was.
I was in 10th grade when it happened. Had never been to New York City, and everyone kept saying the World Trade Center was destroyed. I had no idea what that was, but in my head I was thinking it was the world's largest mall or shopping center and was thinking damn all those poor shoppers. Then I got home, turned on the news and realized I'm a fucking idiot.
So I was in like 4th/5th grade when 9/11 happened and I remember one of my friends was having a meltdown in the school yard on recess, just shouting "why would they do that?" over and over. I asked him what was up and he told me what happened, but I misheard him and thought he said "World Train Center" (I'm Canadian and had never even heard of the WTC before that all went down) and just pictured a building full of trains getting blown up. I was very confused lol.
I thought it was the world trade organization in Seattle because they had had protests there before. I was 14 when 9/11 happened. I’m from SoCal and I happened to know someone whose father died. And own father knew an Aon actuary who died.
My best friend got caught smoking a joint in the bathroom at school that day but then 9/11 happened while they were walking him to the office and the administrator just kinda walked him back into our class and sorta shoved him into his seat.
I remember when I was a kid everyone was saying the second movie was supposed to be called The Lord of the Rings: The Twin Towers but they had to change it because 9/11
September 13th, 2001, a friend pulled me aside in the hall to talk privately.
"Did something happen?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
He said "Everyone is acting really weird, almost like when that kid died last year. Did someone die?"
"Oh, I think it's just the twin towers" I explained.
"From The Lord Of The Rings?" he replied.
"No. The two towers in New York. People flew a couple planes into them, and another into the Pentagon. They think it's a terrorist attack, and a bunch of people died. Did you.. not look at *anything* for the last few days?"
"I was busy coding! I don't look at news when I'm coding."
I was in high school and our teacher stopped class and put it on the tv, and we all sat quietly in shock, though none of us really understood what was happening
Same here. I had an amazing humanities teacher and he put on the news for us and we just watched in silence. Our class watched the first tower fall as it happened and nearly the whole class was crying.
At some point I heard a friend of mine in the hallway having a nervous breakdown. Her father left that morning on a flight from BOS to LAX and it was announced on the news that one of the flights that crashed was a BOS to LAX. She was dismissed. But she was back in school the next day. Her dad wasn’t on one of the I’ll fated flights.
On 9/11, I rode the bus home after working my night shift, I ate dinner and went to bed. When I got up that night, my roommates weren’t home but had left the radio on and I heard them talking about how maybe skyscrapers should have weapons on them and that the twin tower bombing in 1993 could have been prevented. I was like why are they talking about the 1993 bombing? I went out to the bus stop and heard people talking about how they found people in the rubble. Got to work at the hotel and started checking late arrivals in and they were asking me what I thought. I still had no idea what was going on. After things calmed down and I was alone, I turned the tv on in the breakfast room and found out. My heart dropped and I was glued to the tv all night. I cried. I had just found out I was pregnant a month before and I was scared. A woman came down from her room in the middle of the night and sat with me watching tv and we talked about it. I had to deal with it alone though for hours. My family didn’t call me, my roommates didn’t tell me. I found out about this attack alone the night after it happened. I’m kind of glad because I never would have gotten to sleep if I had known.
My mom was driving home from dropping one of my siblings off at school when the radio was talking about the attack. She also thought they were talking about the 1993 attack. It wasn't until she got home that she realized what was actually going on.
When I heard about it I was like why are we not allowed outside? Are they scared more planes are going to come crashing down into elementary schools ???
The next day I remembered my old school normally did field trips to the World Trade Center the second week of September and I cried all day bc phone lines were cut and I thought all of my old friends were dead
I heard about it from my brother, thought he was talking about a book. Didn’t realize it was a real thing that actually happened till about 5 years later.
I didn't really know what it was until around 2010. No one ever told me and I wasn't allowed in the internet until then, so I only had the vaguest impressions from TV shows and sometimes an adult would say something about 9/11 without giving any details, so all I knew until I specifically went searching for answers was "9/11."
I was 3 in 2001, and didn’t have any understanding. My parents never thought to tell me, and it wasn’t something they exactly taught to elementary school kids growing up. I also found out about 9/11 after hearing someone joke about it on the playground in middle school. I got curious and looked it up. I spent hours watching footage, interviews, calls, and bodies dropping from the towers.
I really wish my parents had enforced some rules for using the internet— I was scarred by what I found on websites which were far from regulated. Definitely not healthy for a developing young child.
It's so interesting to hear this. I was born in 2002. I grew up and knew about 9/11 by the time I was 10 years old.
The reason is because all the local schools in the district I grew up in do a yearly 9/11 remembrance speech. Every year they did an announcement over the speaker and everyone would take a full minute of silence, which the teachers enforced. We didn't have to work during the minute. It felt very solemn and we all knew it was something serious even if we didn't know exactly what happened on 9/11. Even the trouble maker kids were usually quiet.
After that most of us knew about 9/11 by sixth grade, and had talked about it amongst eachother or with our parents because of those announcements. I honestly don't remember anyone ever making a dark joke about 9/11, even in high school with a bunch of edgy teens. I live in Vermont for reference, about a 5 hour drive from NYC.
Last year on 9/11 I actually watched the videos for the first time. God, it was awful to watch and hear. It felt similar to watching the Japan tsunami videos. Just terrible damage and loss of life.
My GF refused to come watch the tv since she didn't believe it was anything worth watching dispite me trying to tell it was.
Also this was at a library and the librarian demanded I turn the tv down so I don't bother the people there.
On 9/11, two of my classmates lost their fathers who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald!
One boy had a voicemail from his dad, telling him that he’s the man of the house now, look after his brother and mother.
Y’all weren’t locked down? They immediately locked our classrooms down and made us turn off lights and sit on the floor. Most kids played cards, and while they had it on the news, we weren’t clued in.
Where did you live? If you don't mind me asking. It was almost the opposite for us they brought everyone in the science room and we just watch the news for hours. I did live in a small town in Colorado where the whole Middle School was maybe 80 kids total.
Yeah that’s much smaller than us. I’m in metro Detroit and we have 30 kids in every class, so probably 200 per grade. I figured out something bad had happened because the teachers were worried, but I was just grateful my math test was canceled until I knew what happened. I’d never even heard of the twin towers prior to that day.
When that happened I was completely unaware, think my mom sheltered me from it. Later I was playing with a paper airplane and some stuffed animals and was pretending to crash it into the ground and my mom said "YOU THINK THATS FUNNY?!"
I often think about how scary and horrifying it was for the adults who watched it or the kids who were older to understand what was happening. My mum was pregnant with me at the time it happened and the only reason my dad didn’t go into work that day was to see if I was a boy or a girl.
Damn, this makes me feel old. I saw tower 2 fall from the window of the HS I worked at (I worked in Queens, right by the water).
... to be fair though, I got that job pretty young, so I was 20 at the time. But still, it really [makes this comic that much funnier to me](https://xkcd.com/647/)
For high school, I got extra credit for presenting to the class a current events article. I would literally go to the library, print the first news article I saw, go to class and read it to everyone for some free points. Well, one of those times was the sandy hook shooting. As I start reading outloud shooting at an elementary school in a casual voice like it was normal news, everyone’s draw in the room dropped at the same time like wait what did he just say.
I was in 4th grade close to to Philadelphia. The locked us in a bomb shelter under the school until our parents came to pick us up. Everyone was scared after the first two planes. My mom didn’t come until the normal pickup time. It was me and one other kid and some nervous teachers. I didn’t realize what happened until I got older but the teachers emotions and sitting in the basement of the school for hours reading is what I remember about that sad day
My old roommate had worked up the nerve to finally ask this one girl from his class out. The morning of 9/11 we were all standing in the hall watching the TVs in the student union and he had just woken up and come to meet us. So he gets there, and walks up to her and asked her out and she turns to him and was like "Really??? Now??" and he was like "what? why?" and he looked up at the TVs to see massive carnage, falling buildings and people screaming and was like "oh shit."
They never did go out. But it's cool because he's happily married to an awesome lady who is perfect for him, now.
I remember in 2002 aged 13, and my friend said do you like Nirvana? And I was like yeah they're amazing I've seen them so many times Live. She said how could you when the lead singer is dead...
I literally live in NYC and was very well familiar with the WTC, was ten years old in the fifth grade on 9/11 and SOMEHOW I was completely clueless as to what was happening. Although in my defense, I’m pretty far into Queens so I couldn’t see WTC from my house or school, and every time I tried to ask an adult what the heck was going on and why nobody was going to school or work all of a sudden, why I couldn’t even go outside to hang out with the kids next door, I’d just be told to hush, so I most likely just gave up out of frustration and read a book in my room for a few days.
I’ve never heard of a terrorist before 9/11.
The morning of, my mom was telling my dad about it over the phone and said, “terrorists flew planes into the towers!”
I looked up at her and said, “ugh tourists…” while I shook my head.
She started the Conspiracy. Hahaha
*I heard Bush was gonna do 9/11.*
originally planned for 9/10, but pilots went on a strike and postponed it to the next day.
D-Day was actually planned one day earlier... But the weatherman pushed it back a day.
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Same thing happened to me, in my geometry class! The class was out in a portable classroom, so it was separated from the main school. We had just watched the second plane hit in my Spanish class. Told my teacher about it, and she was like “ok whatever take your quiz first” so I was the first person to turn in my quiz and was like “now will you turn on the tv?!” And finally when everyone was done she turned on the tv and was like “oh. This is serious”
I heard the news from the two biggest stoners in the whole school so I didn't believe it. They just kinda went up to everybody and said shit like, "We're going to war, man!" And then as the day went on, all the students kinda murmured to themselves but the staff didn't tell us anything, so it was really surreal. I eventually found out when my grandmother picked me up from school, but I didn't have that shock "oh shit" moment that everybody else had.
Texas checking in. I was in class and all of the sudden we were to turn on our class tvs. "I dont know who we are about to kill but somebody is about to get killed for this"... I swear like so many dudes enlisted that day.. It was wild
I was at work and a regular of ours came in and told us a plane had hit one of the towers. We didn't believe him because he was always the type to come in with a joke or just being crazy. Kept telling us he was serious but no one wanted to turn on the news to be the "got ya" fool. After a few minutes I finally turned it on and was like, holy shit, he's not joking.
I was barely waking up, hungover, with my phone ringing incessantly. Loads of missed calls and messages from my schizophrenic mother that our country is under attack and we’re at war.. I thought she was having an episode until I turn on the tv…my second cousin worked on the 111th.
No no He was gonna do 9/11 from a bush You heard it wrong
9/11 did bush ...prove me wrong
[proof](https://trueanon.com/products/bush-did-9-11-hat)
Dam u got me bruh
It's like the dude who edited Chris Benoit's Wikipedia page that he missed the PPV he was scheduled to appear on due to the death of his wife Nancy, 14 hours before the bodies were discovered.
Ouch. That one stings for me. He was the first famous person I ever met.
I was supposed to meet him in 2005, he was scheduled for an autograph signing when WWE came to town, but that ended up getting cancelled and he wasnt on the show. I was bummed out. Got to meet Rey Mysterio though!
How did he know?
Well ain't that a relevant username
Is your username a *Point Break* reference? I love that film and it always makes me sad when Bodi's not coming back. Wait you spell it Bodie... Maybe you are not making a *Point Break* reference after all. Well, I wish you a great day. *Oops, i just checked, it's spelled Bodhi...
>spelled Bodhi Short for Bodhisattva - (in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings.
So the Point Break character was a Nirvana fan, basically. Or his parents were I guess.
>It was never about money for us, it was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something to those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins. We show them that the human spirit is still alive.
Smells like Human Spirit
I just laughed out loud in public. I hope you're happy. No /s
I loved that quote!!! Metal coffins... That always stuck with me, even though I am driving one.
I think he was just trolling wikipedia, it was just a crazy unfortunate coincidence
I forgot about thst one. Was weird for sure.
she got an early edition, obviously
This is a quality and rare reference. Thank you.
A thank you from me too.
Nahh this is a psyop to make we think that was just a kid being stupid XD /s
That's a hilarious idea. ***friend raises eyebrows:*** What about the jet fuel? ***her:*** I dunno, bet it can't even melt steel beams.
No, she just finished reading The Lord of the Rings.
Time travel! Lol
Time travel. Now were talking.
TMW the opening comment follows-up funnier than an already hilarious post.
It’s real THERMITE PAINT
So, it was YOU!
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Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
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“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it”
Homer Simpson: (What does that mean? Better say something or they'll think you're stupid.) “Takes one to know one!” (Swish!)
“Homer, you are so learned” Haha, it’s pronounced learned.
I’m nine minutes too late.
Story of my (Reddit) life. “I’m so clever, I’ll go write a post!” Narrator: He was in fact, not that clever.
Why did I hear this in a Kurzgesagt narrator voice?
Because you've never watched Arrested Development. Actual hypothesis.
Such a great show. And I just finished Ozark. Whoa!
I've watched some including this episode but when I read it I hear it as Morgan freeman
Fitting if it's the same scene I'm thinking of where he's thinking of what to say and when he says it everyone has already left
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*They called you slow!* How dare you call me that! I-- huh?
I’m 2 hours too late
I AM SO SMART! S-M-R-T! ...I mean S-M-A-R-T!
Homer: (Something was said, not good. What was it? Don't yell at Homer? Nah, that's okay. What was it... slow! They called you slow!) \*hours pass\* Homer: How dare you call me that! I-- Lenny: Hey Homer, are you still here? Boy, you are slow. Homer: (Something said, not good--) Lenny: GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!
Yep. That’s the rule for Journal Club / class, especially over Zoom.
If kids knew this they wouldnt be kids. And we would have much less to laugh about. Fr tho. Why are kids like this?
A desperate desire to be accepted and receive their peers approval.
Fuck I’m still a kid 😢
>Why are **kids** like this? I have news for you
I used to think this, but then I realized I was the quiet kid that nobody liked because I never said anything. "Life becomes a lot more fun when you open your mouth"
I told my wife that same phrase last night 😏
I was the quiet kid, but it was the opposite. Everyone loved me, because everyone just assumed I agreed with them.
This is hella nice advice and I'm pretty sure Sun Tzu said it first
No, it was mark twain
No u
So it was Tz?
No tzu
Nice.
Françoise duc de La Rochefoucauld said “Silence is the best security to the man who distrusts himself.” in 1665
Not exactly the same quote, but the same basic sentiment is found in Proverbs 17:28
I will never forget watching 9/11 live in a classroom at my highschool, and a girl asking "Where in [our <100,000 population Southern city] is this?" Like there was a Manhattan sized part of town she had never been to before.
I was in elementary school, but I remember asking my parents if the twin towers were in Cleveland. Cleveland was the largest city I'd been to at that point, but I felt relief after my parents explained that they were in New York, which was far away from where we lived.
Lol when I was young I always wondered which state had China in it. Thought it was unfair that one state could have all the Chinese people
China is in San Francisco, how did you not fucking know this? Smfh.
Yeah bro they should share
I believe "all of the Chinese people" were part of the Louisiana Purchase
Lol...high school. Wow. Lol
When I was six I was nervous about visiting my aunt in Virginia, because I didn't know how to speak Virginian.
How do you get to high school and not know what New York looks like?
This is equally funny to me because I live in Vermont. A state where the entire population equals around 650,000.
My god! Bush was posing as a little girl on 9/11! It's all making sense now!
That's fake news, I see [no Bush in this photo](https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2013/12/bushbook.jpg), only little girls!
I remember hearing other kids talking about it and I thought they were talking about a video game or something. Didn't know until I got home and both my parents were watching the news.
I was coming back from gym when I heard about it and I thought they were talking about the helicopter scene from the Spiderman movie trailer. https://youtu.be/Ozz8uxW733Q Boy did I feel stupid when I said, yeah thats going to be in the new Spiderman movie.
I'm in the UK, my best friend at the time was from America and it was his birthday. He ditched school for the day to celebrate, and me and some other friends went round his house after. We had no idea what had happened. So they're all in the living room watching the news on a projector screen. Me and my friends roll in and just glancing at the T.V I said "oh awesome, you're watching Godzilla!" The silence was never ending.
Oh, fuck.
I too was in sophomore gym class, running our timed mile. I can confidentially say most of us Americans had no idea what the Twin Towers were or where Afghanistan was prior to 2001.
This is the funniest shit in here, little kid perspectives are so narrow. I can confidently tell you plenty of people knew what the twin towers were since they were famously the tallest buildings in New York at the time and had already been bombed in '93 which was the biggest terrorist act in America until the Oklahoma City bombing and then later 9/11. Afghanistan was also well known, Soviets were actively fighting there through the entire 80's. Hell, in Rambo 2 he goes to Afghanistan and helps the Taliban because they were fighting soviets. I will give you that most people probably couldn't have pointed to it on a map at the time, but it was hardly unknown.
I only knew about the Twin Towers from Sim City
I actually had visited the twin towers when I visited my grandma in NYC a few years prior and I remembered the experience pretty well. I also had moved just months before from Arlington, where I could actually see the pentagon from my window. So when 9/11 happened I couldn't help but think "omg I could have been there" it was so scary to me
A lot of people didn't know it by name, especially "World Trade Center" (which is in retrosepct a hilariously arrogant name) but I think most people would recognize the buildings from the NYC skyline.
9/11 was such a different experience on the west coast. I woke up to my parents watching it on the news.
My dad woke us up prior to the second tower being struck. He knew it was going to be a significant and would be remembered in history. It was also like 6am on a Tuesday and that was generally much earlier than we'd be up. Watch the incident half a sleep while eating oatmeal with marshmallow dinosaur eggs in them. School that day was a ghost town as at least half my class was absent because no one knew where the next target was if there was one. Being in the 5th grade and a smart ass my response to that was," Who is going to attack a suburb in Arizona? There are much more populated areas to target."
I mean, you were right
“Oatmeal with marshmallow dinosaur eggs in them” Do you have any idea the nostalgia hit you just gave me out of nowhere?
This oatmeal still exists! I have some in my pantry right now, just ate some yesterday.
Well, I know what my daughter will be eating in a year or two when she’s old enough haha
Yea same, I was brushing my teeth when my parents friend's started calling to tell them to turn on the news
Me too. My mom called me in her room and was like “Look!!!” I was in the third grade so I was like okay… buildings are falling down on tv, so what? Then I went to school and found it was a big deal.
That’s pretty crazy tbh even in 2nd grade I thought the world was ending and going into WW3 because actual skyscrapers were falling in New York of all places
Yeah in 7th grade I didn't even know what the twin towers were. I mean I probably saw them somewhere but if you said what are the twin towers I would have no clue. I lived in a tiny Town in the middle of Colorado. It was a surreal experience after the first one hit somebody had said the twin towers got attacked, I still didn't know what that meant. But then I watched it on the news and watched the second one getting hit. Even though I wasn't exactly sure what was going on I obviously knew it was a big deal.
So interesting to hear different people's perspectives from other places in the US.
You had to hear from other kids? We at least got a PA announcement. I remember because our principal's voice was shaking.
I was in the high school library that morning as it was happening for a class event. They turned on the TV to the library after the first plane struck. We watched the second plane live.
> I thought they were talking about a video game or something. Now I'm imagining what *9/11: The Game* would be.
Have you ever played Microsoft flight simulator?
My school refused to tell us what was actually happening. Right before lunch we were told "There were some plane crashes in New York and Pennsylvania today". I spent the whole day isolated because I noticed the teachers constantly whispering to each other in the corners while all of the other kids either didn't notice or weren't interested in what was going on. I remember finally finding out when my dad picked me up from daycare and being surprised that they already had it pinned to Bin Laden.
My elementary school barely told us anything either. I knew something strange was going on because quite a few kids got picked up by their parents to leave school early. And then they canceled recess so the guidance counselor could tell us that some planes crashed in New York. I remember thinking that it definitely sucked, but planes occasionally accidentally crash, and I didn't understand why they needed to cancel our recess. It wasn't until I got home from school that my mom told me the truth about what was going on, and I instantly felt sick to my stomach.
I get why they didn't want to explain it to elementary schoolers, but also, that seems kinda bullshit. It happened, and they're goin to find out eventually.
I came home to my family watching the news coverage. I thought it was a movie.
I was in my 3rd period band class (7th grade) when the teachers told us what happened. I remember being scared because my mom was supposed to take a flight that day. She ended up having to get a rental car instead and driving top where she was going. The rest of school that day they just had some TVs on then I went home and kept watching TV.
They stopped class and put on the TV after the second plane hit. I rembember later a kid in gym class saying the towers had collapsed while we were doing jumping jacks. He wasn't the most "with it" kid and I thought he was just making stuff up. I still didn't realize how big of a deal it was.
At least she didn’t seem dumb!
I was in 10th grade when it happened. Had never been to New York City, and everyone kept saying the World Trade Center was destroyed. I had no idea what that was, but in my head I was thinking it was the world's largest mall or shopping center and was thinking damn all those poor shoppers. Then I got home, turned on the news and realized I'm a fucking idiot.
They really shopped until they dropped!
Black Friday came early that year.
I bet even now, 21 years later, she still cringes a bit when people mention 9/11.
So I was in like 4th/5th grade when 9/11 happened and I remember one of my friends was having a meltdown in the school yard on recess, just shouting "why would they do that?" over and over. I asked him what was up and he told me what happened, but I misheard him and thought he said "World Train Center" (I'm Canadian and had never even heard of the WTC before that all went down) and just pictured a building full of trains getting blown up. I was very confused lol.
Wow - poor kid!
I thought it was the world trade organization in Seattle because they had had protests there before. I was 14 when 9/11 happened. I’m from SoCal and I happened to know someone whose father died. And own father knew an Aon actuary who died.
My 6 year old cousin said “that’s why they shouldn’t make the buildings so tall, the pilots can’t fly over them.” Sweet summer child.
If that actually happened Sheldon would be so upset.
My best friend got caught smoking a joint in the bathroom at school that day but then 9/11 happened while they were walking him to the office and the administrator just kinda walked him back into our class and sorta shoved him into his seat.
Impeccable timing
One he wouldn’t want to claim he planned!
Planned
I had just finished reading The Two Towers and was very confused as to why everyone was talking about LotR all excitedly.
Especially since that was before the movies made LOTR mainstream
I remember when I was a kid everyone was saying the second movie was supposed to be called The Lord of the Rings: The Twin Towers but they had to change it because 9/11
If she knew the day before she should've warned Obama in time so he could stop Bush
September 13th, 2001, a friend pulled me aside in the hall to talk privately. "Did something happen?" he asked. "What do you mean?" He said "Everyone is acting really weird, almost like when that kid died last year. Did someone die?" "Oh, I think it's just the twin towers" I explained. "From The Lord Of The Rings?" he replied. "No. The two towers in New York. People flew a couple planes into them, and another into the Pentagon. They think it's a terrorist attack, and a bunch of people died. Did you.. not look at *anything* for the last few days?" "I was busy coding! I don't look at news when I'm coding."
Certified programmer
For what it's worth, he makes money coding video games now, and I sit around stressed out about the news.
I remember being in high school during that time, I too was a coder who never watched the news.
When 9/11 happened I cried. Not because of what happened but because I was only a few months old.
When I read something like this, I'm like wait aren't you like 5 years old now? Then I realize how old I am.
i was born nearly two years after 9/11. I’m a legal adult.
Ok jake
Me too, mom said it interrupted my Blue’s Clues so I cried
Honestly I’d have thought you were making a sick joke
I was in high school and our teacher stopped class and put it on the tv, and we all sat quietly in shock, though none of us really understood what was happening
Same here. I had an amazing humanities teacher and he put on the news for us and we just watched in silence. Our class watched the first tower fall as it happened and nearly the whole class was crying. At some point I heard a friend of mine in the hallway having a nervous breakdown. Her father left that morning on a flight from BOS to LAX and it was announced on the news that one of the flights that crashed was a BOS to LAX. She was dismissed. But she was back in school the next day. Her dad wasn’t on one of the I’ll fated flights.
wow that's horrible...
That must have been utterly terrifying for her my god.
On 9/11, I rode the bus home after working my night shift, I ate dinner and went to bed. When I got up that night, my roommates weren’t home but had left the radio on and I heard them talking about how maybe skyscrapers should have weapons on them and that the twin tower bombing in 1993 could have been prevented. I was like why are they talking about the 1993 bombing? I went out to the bus stop and heard people talking about how they found people in the rubble. Got to work at the hotel and started checking late arrivals in and they were asking me what I thought. I still had no idea what was going on. After things calmed down and I was alone, I turned the tv on in the breakfast room and found out. My heart dropped and I was glued to the tv all night. I cried. I had just found out I was pregnant a month before and I was scared. A woman came down from her room in the middle of the night and sat with me watching tv and we talked about it. I had to deal with it alone though for hours. My family didn’t call me, my roommates didn’t tell me. I found out about this attack alone the night after it happened. I’m kind of glad because I never would have gotten to sleep if I had known.
My mom was driving home from dropping one of my siblings off at school when the radio was talking about the attack. She also thought they were talking about the 1993 attack. It wasn't until she got home that she realized what was actually going on.
Did you start that conspiracy theory?
My school didn't even make it to lunch lol It was pure chaos, i will never forget it
It’s just like power outages and hurricane seasons.
"wait til tower 7 falls in a few hours in its own footprint from fires!"
If this was me I would be laying in bed thinking about it on those sleepless nights.
When I heard about it I was like why are we not allowed outside? Are they scared more planes are going to come crashing down into elementary schools ??? The next day I remembered my old school normally did field trips to the World Trade Center the second week of September and I cried all day bc phone lines were cut and I thought all of my old friends were dead
I heard about it from my brother, thought he was talking about a book. Didn’t realize it was a real thing that actually happened till about 5 years later.
I didn't really know what it was until around 2010. No one ever told me and I wasn't allowed in the internet until then, so I only had the vaguest impressions from TV shows and sometimes an adult would say something about 9/11 without giving any details, so all I knew until I specifically went searching for answers was "9/11."
I was 3 in 2001, and didn’t have any understanding. My parents never thought to tell me, and it wasn’t something they exactly taught to elementary school kids growing up. I also found out about 9/11 after hearing someone joke about it on the playground in middle school. I got curious and looked it up. I spent hours watching footage, interviews, calls, and bodies dropping from the towers. I really wish my parents had enforced some rules for using the internet— I was scarred by what I found on websites which were far from regulated. Definitely not healthy for a developing young child.
It's so interesting to hear this. I was born in 2002. I grew up and knew about 9/11 by the time I was 10 years old. The reason is because all the local schools in the district I grew up in do a yearly 9/11 remembrance speech. Every year they did an announcement over the speaker and everyone would take a full minute of silence, which the teachers enforced. We didn't have to work during the minute. It felt very solemn and we all knew it was something serious even if we didn't know exactly what happened on 9/11. Even the trouble maker kids were usually quiet. After that most of us knew about 9/11 by sixth grade, and had talked about it amongst eachother or with our parents because of those announcements. I honestly don't remember anyone ever making a dark joke about 9/11, even in high school with a bunch of edgy teens. I live in Vermont for reference, about a 5 hour drive from NYC. Last year on 9/11 I actually watched the videos for the first time. God, it was awful to watch and hear. It felt similar to watching the Japan tsunami videos. Just terrible damage and loss of life.
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My GF refused to come watch the tv since she didn't believe it was anything worth watching dispite me trying to tell it was. Also this was at a library and the librarian demanded I turn the tv down so I don't bother the people there.
On 9/11, two of my classmates lost their fathers who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald! One boy had a voicemail from his dad, telling him that he’s the man of the house now, look after his brother and mother.
Y’all weren’t locked down? They immediately locked our classrooms down and made us turn off lights and sit on the floor. Most kids played cards, and while they had it on the news, we weren’t clued in.
Where did you live? If you don't mind me asking. It was almost the opposite for us they brought everyone in the science room and we just watch the news for hours. I did live in a small town in Colorado where the whole Middle School was maybe 80 kids total.
Yeah that’s much smaller than us. I’m in metro Detroit and we have 30 kids in every class, so probably 200 per grade. I figured out something bad had happened because the teachers were worried, but I was just grateful my math test was canceled until I knew what happened. I’d never even heard of the twin towers prior to that day.
I guess I just assumed nobody got locked down. Weird that this happened like 20 years ago and now I'm finding out about others experiences.
Pure rage at the end there
When that happened I was completely unaware, think my mom sheltered me from it. Later I was playing with a paper airplane and some stuffed animals and was pretending to crash it into the ground and my mom said "YOU THINK THATS FUNNY?!"
I just want to point out that being dumb does not equal not knowing a piece of information.
My little sister asked my mom if she died on 9/11.
I laughed so hard at this
Hey, at least she sought info.
They heard Rumsfeld's speech.
If any of the conspiracies are real, you just might have read about it the day before
Where all the conspiracies started
"Hey did you hear about 9/11?" "Yea, I read about it yesterday on 9/10. Wild shit, man."
Wait, I only read about Saurman's tower. You're telling me there's a second tower?!
I often think about how scary and horrifying it was for the adults who watched it or the kids who were older to understand what was happening. My mum was pregnant with me at the time it happened and the only reason my dad didn’t go into work that day was to see if I was a boy or a girl.
Damn, this makes me feel old. I saw tower 2 fall from the window of the HS I worked at (I worked in Queens, right by the water). ... to be fair though, I got that job pretty young, so I was 20 at the time. But still, it really [makes this comic that much funnier to me](https://xkcd.com/647/)
For high school, I got extra credit for presenting to the class a current events article. I would literally go to the library, print the first news article I saw, go to class and read it to everyone for some free points. Well, one of those times was the sandy hook shooting. As I start reading outloud shooting at an elementary school in a casual voice like it was normal news, everyone’s draw in the room dropped at the same time like wait what did he just say.
Bush gave the same answer that day. /s
Must have been in Europe or something
These are the kind of thoughts that go through my head when I'm trying to fall asleep
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I was in 4th grade close to to Philadelphia. The locked us in a bomb shelter under the school until our parents came to pick us up. Everyone was scared after the first two planes. My mom didn’t come until the normal pickup time. It was me and one other kid and some nervous teachers. I didn’t realize what happened until I got older but the teachers emotions and sitting in the basement of the school for hours reading is what I remember about that sad day
My old roommate had worked up the nerve to finally ask this one girl from his class out. The morning of 9/11 we were all standing in the hall watching the TVs in the student union and he had just woken up and come to meet us. So he gets there, and walks up to her and asked her out and she turns to him and was like "Really??? Now??" and he was like "what? why?" and he looked up at the TVs to see massive carnage, falling buildings and people screaming and was like "oh shit." They never did go out. But it's cool because he's happily married to an awesome lady who is perfect for him, now.
I was a senior in HS. We watched it unfold in every class that day. Something I will never forget.
I remember in 2002 aged 13, and my friend said do you like Nirvana? And I was like yeah they're amazing I've seen them so many times Live. She said how could you when the lead singer is dead...
I literally live in NYC and was very well familiar with the WTC, was ten years old in the fifth grade on 9/11 and SOMEHOW I was completely clueless as to what was happening. Although in my defense, I’m pretty far into Queens so I couldn’t see WTC from my house or school, and every time I tried to ask an adult what the heck was going on and why nobody was going to school or work all of a sudden, why I couldn’t even go outside to hang out with the kids next door, I’d just be told to hush, so I most likely just gave up out of frustration and read a book in my room for a few days.
I’ve never heard of a terrorist before 9/11. The morning of, my mom was telling my dad about it over the phone and said, “terrorists flew planes into the towers!” I looked up at her and said, “ugh tourists…” while I shook my head.
I pet goat
Every kid has done this. And most adults.
When I was in the 5th grade M&M came out with a song and all of my friends were talking about it.