10 years...

[62896dude]

I realize that first off, not all of you guys are from America, and that also, this is a rather sensitive topic for some people, so I would like to keep opinions out of this on what happened on September 11th, 2001. I was only 5 at the time, so I remember very few details of my own experiences on that day. Would anyone care to share their memories from 9/11, either from America or not? I'm actually curious as to how other countries reacted, or if they even reacted that much at all.

[Chris]

I remember seeing it on the news and thinking it wasn't April yet. I was 9.

[Xaleph]

I remember, I was just getting back from college, just sat down on the couch, turned on the news and the second plane hit the towers, after at, just kept watching. All in all, it was a shock to realise what happened, but it`s not as big as a shock to me as it was to the Americans. In all fairness, i`m no big fan of the US, I love the country, but I would never want to live there.

However, I do hate what happened there, the event itself was a shock, but everything following up on it as well. The wars, the war on terror, the new control grid et cetera, privacy is something of the past nowadays. So yeah, I hate it happened.

And I do feel sorry for the losses of that day, it was a black day in the history of America ( and the rest of the world ). All in all, mixed feelings, mostly the aftermath though. People die all the time, some from plane crashes, some by terror, most by heart attacks really, but yeah.. It was sad.

[OldRod]

When the attacks actually happened, I was in my car, driving to a meeting with a client. I was listening to a morning show on the radio and they were talking about a plane flying into the World Trade Center and then everything unfolded from there. By the time I arrived at my meeting, both towers had been hit and they were speculating that a car bomb had gone off at the Pentagon.

By the time my meeting was over, it was clear what was going on - the FAA had grounded all aircraft and I remember seeing dozens of contrails in the sky from jets making sharp turns/U-turns to head to the nearest airport to land. It was all very surreal - a bright blue beautiful September sky marred by dozens of curving jet trails. Driving back to the office I heard the accounts of first one tower, then the other, collapsing. I was a volunteer fireman back then... I knew exactly what that collapse meant to the firemen inside. I nearly threw up while driving my car.

That was already an emotional/stressful time in my life - My wife and I had just given birth to our first and only child (we were both 40 years old at the time). He was born 10 weeks premature and weighed less than 2 pounds, so he ended up spending 3 months in a Neonatal ICU 120 miles from where we lived. He was only 12 days old when 9/11 happened and I remember sitting in the hospital waiting room watching the aftermath on television (you could only go into the ICU during certain times of the day).

All during the time of the tragedy and the aftermath, including the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, we were running back and forth between home and the hospital, trying to juggle work and home life, all amidst the horror that was going on in the world. It was especially stressful because the anthrax attacks happened during that time and there were stories of hospitals being targeted for further attacks, plus that whole "blow up a mall on Halloween" scare that went around... there was a mall just up the street from the hospital. It was not something I want to go through ever again.

Our son turned out fine after a lot of doctoring throughout his first year of life. He just turned 10 last week... he knows about 9/11 from school and from watching YouTube videos. I hope he never experiences anything like that again in his lifetime.

[Jackolantern]

Wow, haha, I was almost 20 (quite a shock to remember how old I am compared to some members here). I was woken-up in the morning (I would usually get up at about 11am or noon to work 2nd shift) by one of my buddies banging on my door. Back then I lived in a huge party house/mansion with about 7 other people, and my friend was yelling "Hey! I don't think you are going to work today!" The gravity really didn't hit me, and I thought "Oh yeah, right! AT&T is going to expect us to be there" and kept getting ready. I was thinking that some planes hit a building. Very sad, but not a huge deal. It was only after I got to work at my call center and they pulled us all off the phones (which weren't ringing at all anyway, which was very strange) to watch the news casts. Only then did I find out it was a terrorist attack, the buildings were the World Trade Center, and thousands of people were trapped inside. I think while we were watching the first tower collapsed. We were all told once all business was called off for the day to go home. I bought about 10 of the emergency print newspapers being sold outside my building on Brainerd Rd. in Chattanooga with the headline "Attacked at Home" on the front page, and went out to get a bite to eat with my work friend and then went home. Only once I got home and watched some more news did I find out really how serious it was, and saw the now-infamous images of the "falling man".

And if you were too young to remember, there was a huge international reaction. Pretty much all business was called off in most developed countries. I remember seeing a video of some Japanese college students who were crying and holding each other in a huddle, so the effects were felt all around the globe.

It just blows my mind that it has been 10 years already. It still feels like it was only a year or two ago to me, but I guess that is just getting older.

@OldRod: Ohh, that reminds me. One of my best friend's at-the-time wife was pregnant leading up to 9/11, and they had planned to induce that Tuesday, early. When the news came in of the first plane hitting, they had just given her the oxytocin, so she was going to have the baby that day, either way. In the end, she was hearing the news come in while in labor, and had her baby that day. So her baby's birthday is September 11, 2001

[SpiritWebb]

I was almost 21. I remember waking up briefly (as I leave my TV on at night) to turn over, and saw the buildings on smoke on the news. I didn't think anything of it. I thought they were demolishing a building. I was half asleep. Then my brother comes running up to wake me up and tell me what was going on. Only then did I realize we were being attacked...

[hallsofvallhalla]

I was 20 something. I didn't pay too much attention. Had my own worries and problems. This is not the first terrorist attack in history and by far was not the most lives lost by one. There are better ways to respect and remember the dead than turning such a terrible event into a holiday and letting Hollywood make their millions. My theories on what really happened are far too crazy to post here so I won't even go into what we have done wrong since then.

[Chris]

There are better ways to respect and remember the dead than turning such a terrible event into a holiday

I was just thinking the exact same thing, in another 100 years people in America will be taking 9/11 off as a holiday and say, "Happy 9/11!" Without even knowing the meaning behind it. The same thing happens in my town on the 8th of October, they celebrate the fact that the Spanish couldn't get far enough through the bog land with their cannons to actually capture my town, so instead they headed east to capture a different town. What they fail to remember is that that day also counted the highest death toll due to running out of food from being sieged, the holiday is actually meant for remembering the dead. That's why we now let off fireworks.

[62896dude]

Hehe, halls, I definately have some crazy theories, we may share some similar ones, but nonetheless, I don't think that it is so much of a holiday as a remembrance, but I definately agree that Hollywood has wrongly taken advantage of this event for their own gain.

[Ark]

All what I gotta say is that I feel sorry for every US citizen in here. It must be pretty sad to see you country being attacked by terrorists and watching thousands of your countrymen dying.

Perhaps as the title says... That happened 10 years ago, so cheers! You guys live in the most wonderful country in world!