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Post by Amaranth on Sept 11, 2011 10:35:21 GMT -5
Is my school the only one that didn't function any differently at all? If I had been out in the bathroom or something when the principal told us, I wouldn't have had the slightest clue anything was out of the ordinary. The only difference was the TVs being on during lunch but they were low volume and no one was watching. I can see schools closer to NYC not functioning, but how about others like mine in the west and midwest? To be fair, I was in Greenfield MA, which isn't too far (relatively) from where two of the planes took off. I was told, though I never followed up, that all or most of the schools were closed in Mass. At that point, there was still a lot of confusion as to how many planes may have been hijacked and what other targets might be. Even if I doubt it would be NYC, the Pentagon, Camp David, GREENFIELD, it probably made sense to play it safe.
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Post by malicious_bloke on Sept 11, 2011 10:38:00 GMT -5
At home, skiving off school. Got a text from a mate of mine telling me to turn the news on.
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Post by anti-nonsense on Sept 11, 2011 10:43:12 GMT -5
I was 14 and in grade nine and getting ready to go to school, my dad was watching TV downstairs I guess and he called me downstairs, to see what was going on, I didn't really fully understand the significance at that moment, it took me a little while to realize how many people could potentially have been killed, Anyway I went off to school, despite my dad freaking out a little bit. and we ended up spending all of Social Studies watching news footage.
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Post by ragabash on Sept 11, 2011 11:05:07 GMT -5
I was staying at my parents' place that day and I'd slept in. After I woke up my mom told me terrorists had attacked the US, and the first words out of my mouth were "So it finally happened?"
I make no claims that it wasn't a cynical response, and I remember being glad that the attack wasn't carried out with a nuclear device.
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Sept 11, 2011 11:15:31 GMT -5
With pretty much nothing but 9/11 24/7, I just kind of went numb by the end of day one. I remember that numb feeling. I was only 15 at the time, so I wasn't emotionally prepared to process the full horror of what was happening -- by the end of the day, my brain had basically gone into the biological equivalent of Windows safe mode. I think it was the footage of the jumpers that ultimately pushed me into that state. The whole thing was just too surreal. Even now, I have difficulty getting my head around the fact that 5,000 people -- the equivalent of a small town -- were killed that day, never mind the hundreds of thousands who have died in the aftermath as a result of what happened. When you factor in the people who lost a love one, you've got millions of individuals whose lives were turned upside down. The human brain just isn't equipped to deal with those kinds of numbers.
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Post by Amaranth on Sept 11, 2011 11:21:36 GMT -5
I HATE how young you all are!
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Sept 11, 2011 11:26:01 GMT -5
How old are you? I always figured late 20s or early 30s.
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Post by Amaranth on Sept 11, 2011 11:26:49 GMT -5
31. That's still a TON older than most of you.
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Sept 11, 2011 11:28:19 GMT -5
Eh, you're only six years older than I am.
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Post by Amaranth on Sept 11, 2011 11:33:11 GMT -5
STOP BEING SO YOUNG!!!!
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Post by SimSim on Sept 11, 2011 11:34:14 GMT -5
Ugh, I had forgotten about seeing the jumpers.
The numbness kicked in for me as the towers collapsed. That was when it hit home for me that a lot of people were dying or going to die.
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Post by Her3tiK on Sept 11, 2011 11:41:01 GMT -5
My family and I were in Connecticut visiting some friends. We'd planned on going up to NYC that morning to take a tour of the WTC and Statue of Liberty, but were delayed by dirty laundry of all things. As we went into our friends' house to use their laundry room (we stayed in our RV in the driveway), she had CNN on and the first tower was already burning. To think of how close I'd come to being in those towers... not a pleasant thought *shudder* Naturally, we postponed our trip for the day and just watched the news. Being 11 at the time, I didn't really understand the significance, though I distinctly remember wondering why Cartoon Network was the last cable channel to either switch to a news feed or put up a message stating that their hears go out to the victims of the attack.
For some reason, my parents decided to go into NYC the next day. Everything was closed, and we could see smoke rising from where the towers once were. Got some pics of that, as well as military vehicles and soldiers on the streets. We also got pics of the Pentagon when we went to DC a week or so later (it was a very long family road trip). I'd post them if I had them, but I don't think I took those pictures with me when I moved out.
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Post by erictheblue on Sept 11, 2011 11:48:57 GMT -5
31. That's still a TON older than most of you. I'm older than you. I was 25 and in the Navy. My ship was scheduled to deploy on the 13th anyway, so we were fully loaded up with weapons and ammo. The only clear memory I have of that day (brain damage is a bitch) is standing in my stateroom, watching the news on TV and wondering what my ship was going to be assigned to do. We ended up pulling out of port that afternoon and spending several days floating off NYC.
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Post by tiado on Sept 11, 2011 12:14:53 GMT -5
I remember waking up to my clock radio, and the radio station that I had tuned played their news segment, and there was a report of a plane crashing into the WTC. I didn't think much of it, and hit the snooze button. That was because I remember hearing of a plane that had once crashed into the Empire State Building back in the early 20th century. At that moment I thought it was just another unfortunate accident.
I get ready to go to my college classes, I was running late so I didn't even bother watching any TV that morning. While driving I was listening to a cassette in my stereo so I didn't even hear the radio then. It wasn't until I actually got to my first class that I was informed of what happened. After hearing about all the stuff that happened so far, I remember being able to take the rest of the day off after that class.
I remember spending the rest of that day glued to the TV, radio, and internet. Grabbing every news article as I could off the web, and recording everything off the TV on to videocassettes, as well as recording reports off the radio.
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Post by MaybeNever on Sept 11, 2011 13:18:26 GMT -5
With pretty much nothing but 9/11 24/7, I just kind of went numb by the end of day one. I remember that numb feeling. I was only 15 at the time, so I wasn't emotionally prepared to process the full horror of what was happening -- by the end of the day, my brain had basically gone into the biological equivalent of Windows safe mode. I think it was the footage of the jumpers that ultimately pushed me into that state. The whole thing was just too surreal. Even now, I have difficulty getting my head around the fact that 5,000 people -- the equivalent of a small town -- were killed that day, never mind the hundreds of thousands who have died in the aftermath as a result of what happened. When you factor in the people who lost a love one, you've got millions of individuals whose lives were turned upside down. The human brain just isn't equipped to deal with those kinds of numbers. Happily - I guess - it was actually slightly fewer than 3,000 people who died, including the hijackers. And you're right that we aren't equipped to handle millions, which frankly makes 3,000 a far worse number to think about. Because we can handle 3,000. We've seen 3,000 people together at the same place before. STOP AGING! In a few years we'll all catch up. I had a friend going to American University, which sounds like a diploma mill but is actually a very good school in DC. It's only a few miles from the Pentagon, which as you may recall was also hit, so the military locked down the school. One kind of cool thing, according to his report, was that it wasn't our military that did it, but foreign soldiers from a number of different countries. I assume they were units attached to the Pentagon for NATO stuff.
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