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Post by verasthebrujah on Sept 11, 2011 1:01:20 GMT -5
I was in 8th grade. Between periods, I had to go from gym to band. Between changing out of my gym clothes, walking from one corner of the school to the other, and getting out my baritone, I was usually late; and this day was no exception. I rushed into the band room, grabbed my instrument, and turned around, expecting to hear angry reprimands from the director for my slight tardiness. Instead, she had a grim look on her face and the television was on. She told me to put my instrument away--airplanes had been flown into the Twin Towers. Shortly into the period, the Pentagon was hit.
We watched the news for the rest of the day. My classmates and I were 13 and 14 years old: old enough to understand that what had happened was important, but not necessarily just how much it would change the world. But then, maybe nobody really knew it then.
Now, I teach students ranging from ages 9 to 18. The high school students have only very vague memories of 9/11/01. The junior high doesn't remember it at all-- and some weren't even born yet. This is a school for gifted/high-ability kids, so they are all extremely intelligent and quite capable of understanding the world, but the memory of that day creates a huge difference in one's understanding of the world. When bin Laden was killed, I, a yuppie who laments the loss of virtually any human life, was sad that another human being had to be killed, but nonetheless satisfied if not outright glad that such an evil man was dead. My high school students could not understand that perspective. This diverse group of students, from an atheistic socialist to a girl who swears by the Creation Museum, unanimously agreed that they could not even comprehend hating another human being so much that one would rejoice at news of their death.
Where were you?
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Post by Art Vandelay on Sept 11, 2011 1:15:01 GMT -5
I remember back when I was 10, I came home from school and sat down to watch TV, as was my afternoon routine at the time to find every channel was streaming CNN reports of the attack. Being 10 I didn't quite comprehend what had happened and was in fact rather pissed that I couldn't watch my usual TV shows.
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Post by Thejebusfire on Sept 11, 2011 1:18:37 GMT -5
I was taking a quiz in math class when someone called the teacher and told her to turn on the tv.
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Khris
Full Member
Looks older than they are
Posts: 225
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Post by Khris on Sept 11, 2011 1:27:34 GMT -5
i was about 6 at the time it was during lunch when all the Tv's were turned on it i didn't understand until about a week later.
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Post by anon87311 on Sept 11, 2011 1:30:21 GMT -5
I was taking a quiz in math class when someone called the teacher and told her to turn on the tv. same thing here. then after the call, my P.E. teacher walked in. saw the second plane hit live...
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Post by Shane for Wax on Sept 11, 2011 1:32:18 GMT -5
I was in the car in Alabama when the news on the radio changed to reports of the twin towers being struck. My dad called us shortly after. I had a psychiatry appt that day so I wasn't in class. Dad had mum take money out of the bank and we went to the psychiatry appt as usual for some reason. I was too pre-occupied with what was going on in New York to really care about the psychiatry appt (not to mention I hated it).
Some time when my dad came home we kinda went into lockdown and started calling everyone we knew who was in the area of the attacks (DC, New York, etc.,). My dad's old office was nearly hit by the DC plane. Everyone turned out to be okay.
The military base was on lockdown. It was really scary.
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Post by tacticalgrace on Sept 11, 2011 1:37:45 GMT -5
I was sixteen, and it was in Latin class. The guy who told us was known to be an asshole prankster, so I didn't believe it until I got on the bus to go to the arts school I attended in the afternoon. There was a man with a gun in the area, so we didn't go to school.
After I came home, I watched the replay a couple times, then turned the tv to pbs's kids shows. They kept showing the kids' shows on, but had a ticker tape of the events on the bottom.
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Post by tolpuddlemartyr on Sept 11, 2011 1:42:12 GMT -5
Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, I read it on the cover of the MX free newspaper. I remember saying "there's gonna be a war" out loud, then I was quiet for most of the rest of the day.
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Post by ironbite on Sept 11, 2011 1:43:34 GMT -5
I was a senior in high school. Some friends in Australia broke the news to me as I had skipped off to the library to chat with 'em. Yeah it was sobering and I just kept remembering how quiet the walk home from school was. No plans flying overhead and it was just eerie.
Ironbite-very very eerie.
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Post by Runa on Sept 11, 2011 1:46:37 GMT -5
I was woken by my mother at 6:30AM Australian EST after my nanna, who was awake even earlier, had called Mum. The following week had everybody at university being stunned. Even our university bar was showing a live stream of it.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Sept 11, 2011 1:51:12 GMT -5
I was in English class in 7th grade, I believe. Didn't really appreciate the breadth of the situation, but I did know that a lotta people had died...which is always a bad thing. I still remember the "daaaamn" moment I had, watching the replays. Put me a bit in shock...
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Post by MaybeNever on Sept 11, 2011 1:55:29 GMT -5
I've always been curious about what foreigners thought when they heard about the 9/11 attacks. I remember seeing a picture taken of a German destroyer which unfurled a banner to a nearby American vessel shortly after 9/11; the banner read "we stand by you". International solidarity (and how people view events across national boundaries) is a curious thing that interests me a great deal.
At the moment itself, I had the good luck to be a sophomore in college, in a political science course of all places. All we did was watch CNN that day, and it was neat to have an expert in the field talk regularly to us about what was going on, where it had come from, and what it could mean.
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Post by HarleyThomas1002 on Sept 11, 2011 2:21:26 GMT -5
Like most seven or eight year olds I was unaware it was happening or happened.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Sept 11, 2011 2:25:44 GMT -5
I was waking up... I think it was another school day... and the day just kinda slowed down as Mom and I were watching the news. We ended up not having school that day.
Truth be told, the impact of the situation shocked me, but I didn't really comprehend it as well as I should've, and I remember thinking that to myself as I started at the TV screen. "I don't comprehend this."
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Post by Jodie on Sept 11, 2011 2:28:29 GMT -5
I was 21 and attending the post-secondary special arts school (BealArt) in my city. We didn't hear anything in the morning and classes were as they were on any normal day.
At lunch break my friends and I were walking to the fast food place down the street to get something to eat and one of my friends was listening to the radio on his headphones and was saying the the newscaster was hysterical, talking about building falling down and stuff.
When we returned to school, the Prime Minister of Canada was broadcast to all the schools with his response to the attacks and classes were pretty much cancelled after that. We couldn't leave until the last period and spent the rest of the day watching incoming news reports of the attack on the tv in our classrooms.
I cannot remember exactly how I responded but I know that I couldn't manage a dramatic response because my PSTD was triggered and I was dissociating. I do that when feeling extreme stress and confusion.
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