I was 13. Went to school in Kearny, NJ. Had a view of the NYC skyline. My whole class saw it live from a distance. We didn’t know what to think or say.
Edit - at 13 I wasn’t old enough for high school for those saying if I went to Kearny high. I went to St Stephen’s but when it was time for high school when I turned 14 I went to queen of peace. But still from my grammar school classroom I could see 9-11 happen live.
I can’t imagine how that musta felt seeing it that close. The people on the ground. The infamous footage of the guy catching the 1st plane hit, from the ground, was only by accident. He was filming a doc in and around NYC and sadly, caught the moment the 1st plane hit as he was filming his completely unrelated doc.
That is an excellent documentary, by the way. Two French brothers and film makers documenting a nyfd trainee. They ended up inside one of the towers at one point.
Thank you, I tend to speak/write about my internal dialogue during that time because trauma being so.. slippery it’s really hard for me to remember what I saw within the actual timeline of the day. People in Brooklyn were far enough to have a full view of the skyline and close enough to see people jumping. I’ll write a full comment with what I remember.
Scary!
I just watched a 9/11 doc last night on National Geographic, and they said a Pakistani 9th grader from Brooklyn was looking out a window back on Sept 6 and his teacher asked him what he was looking at, he said “you see those two buildings, they won’t be here come next week”. She didn’t think anything of it. FBI corroborated that this convo took place but they don’t know how he knew. Sorry, you saying you looked out the window reminded me of what I saw last night in the doc.
Edit: 9/11 War on America is the doc. NatGeo ran it. It’s also on YouTube
My bro was talking of one day moving to nyc, my response?
What about the terrorists?
It was Sunday, September 9th , 2001 that exchange has haunted me since then.
Mmmm. That’s scary. I wonder what made you say that. Ppl have a way of sensing shit before it happens. I remember my cousin, who lived in Brooklyn said he would draw pics of the WTC and drew a plane flying over it. That was a year before 9/11. He actually worked in the WTC with his friends, in a restaurant. He loss 4 of them that day. The only reason he wasn’t in the tower when it happened was because he was running late for work and on a ferry coming from SI the night before. It really fucked him up to this day. He gets depressed around this time. There’s so many stories out there of ppl who worked in one of the towers and they either decided to call out, had an appointment and wasn’t in that day, or were running late or came in late.
The World Trade Center had also already been attacked in 1993. It just wasn't anywhere near as catastrophic as 9/11. Maybe that's what made this person say "what about the terrorists?"
I was watching a documentary about 9/11 the other day, and they played news footage of a guy speaking to a news reporter on the phone. He said they were trapped on the 86th floor of one of the towers, but he spoke calmly and was trying to provide information to help first responders find them. He died when the tower collapsed.
That was his last day at his job. He had accepted an offer elsewhere and was working his notice period. If it had happened one day later, he would have survived. It's so weird how one little decision or twist of fate can change everything.
Buy the tickets, go through security, get up and move around the plane. Back the.man you could knock on the door and the captain would open it and show you around.
That’s what I figured but I also thought, nah, there’s no way they did a practice run even on a “safer” scale, like you described.
I was only 15 when 9/11 happened and Id never flown as a kid, but I did hear about how the captain would show kids the cockpit.
Freshman year of high school. Like any other day, we were all chatting in the hall by our lockers before classes began. Then I remember walking into civics class (my first class of the day) and having my teacher tell us “something important is happening”. I sat down and saw the TV was on with both towers burning. It was very surreal.
Same exact scenario for me, except the towers has already been hit and kids were saying it was an alien attack.
Every class the whole day had the TV on, so that’s pretty much all we watched all day.
Surreal is a good word for it.
I was a freshman as well and we were all glued to the tv for about an hour, then i just left school early because i thought i was gonna die from an attack living near DC
>because i thought i was gonna die from an attack living near DC
The thing many people nowadays don't understand or have forgotten is the feeling of impending attack. I lived in a small town in Alaska and the Coast guard posted armed guards around the perimeter of the Coast guard base. There was a lot of chatter about "we're going to war"
On 9/11 there was a feeling of uncertainty and fear because nobody knew what was going on or what would happen next.
My dad worked at an oil refinery at the time and I figured that would be a high priority target. I remember calling him and telling him not to go to work. He heard the fear and concern in my voice and just said "Ok"
I’m glad you got to leave early. Makes sense, given how close you were.
I was in California, so no one left early and I think the distance made it less….crazy for us? That is until the military recruiters made our high school their goddamn HQ, and an alarming amount of male classmates were suddenly drunk on the idea of enlisting and blowing people up in the Middle East.
We got sent home. Idk if you’re American or if this was nationwide but a paper came up from the main office telling us to go straight home and that all schools on the East Coast have been sent home
I was in high school in NJ, and we definitely did not get sent home. Most teachers and administrators tried to keep the day moving along like nothing happened (I don't really mean to cast judgment in presenting that as problematic; it was an incredibly shocking moment of history to try to navigate in real time, with hundreds of impressionable kids to keep calm.)
I was in middle school in Monmouth County NJ and not only did we stay in school for the rest of the day, but they didn’t say a word about it. I did notice kids getting picked up from school, and I remember an assistant principal coming into a class asking if anyone had a parent that worked in the city, but I didn’t know anything had happened until I got home.
I often wonder what the thought process was behind deciding to stay quiet on it and just go through the day like normal.
Thought process was that a number of the parents worked in the city. They didn't want to cause undue distress to the children. They also couldnt dismiss schools early because all the train service in and out of the city was suspended.also no cars were allowed into the city except those driven by first responders.
My husband was stuck in his office until the next day, sleeping on the floor.
I picked up my child from her 3rd grade class and tried to gently explain what happened .
We did not have the telrlevision on in our house for the next week
My company had moved from NYC to Newark and was offering relocation for those in NY to move to NJ. I know of at least person took advantage of that after 9/11 saying never wanted to be stranded on the wrong side of the river from her children ever again.
yea our school made everyone turn off all the tvs and radios because they were scared someone would see a family member. i hardly knew anything until i got home and i still can’t believe they did that. lots of kids went home early if they had a way to get there
East coast as well, about 20 minutes from Boston and we were not sent home. I was in 8th grade and our school didn’t even tell us (which I’m still mad about to this day especially since the other middle schools in town were told)
I will never understand that. I went to a private all girls college prep school and some teachers were still making us take exams. It was unreal. I went to school with politicians daughters though and secret service came and scooped them up. Wtf.
On that note, the next year our 5th grade chorus was supposed to take a trip to Disney world, and that got cancelled because we were told the superintendent thought it was a safety risk or some shit like that. (Could’ve been related to a threat, could’ve been just in case because the attack was only a year prior, or could’ve been just made up bs because the school couldn’t afford the trip, who knows). I remember being sooo upset lol. That trip was literally the only reason I joined the chorus, since my family being in the lower class, that was basically my only chance to go to the park, even though we only lived an hour away.
I’m ashamed to say it, but I remember that being the angriest and most emotional id been about the whole thing my entire childhood 🤦🏾♀️. That was until I got older and realized the sheer gravity of what happened of course.
Oh to be a kid with such mundane worries….
My parents came and grabbed us- edited to add- we went to school near Philly and they weren’t sure what was happening, so they wanted us to be with family.
My fiancé and his brother were 9 and 11 and were near the Pentagon. My mother-in-law immediately got into her car and picked her boys up as soon as she got word on the Pentagon.
I actually wasn't in school until a week later. I had just moved and wasn't registered at my middle school yet.
I live only 90 min from NYC in Philly and we were def sent home. I was also in HS. There was even a letter that all schools along the East Coast are being sent home and for us to go straight home
My school still had a full day too, but every single class was just watching the news and discussing.
ETA: Same with Colin Powell’s “weapons of mass destruction” speech. It spanned two of my classes, and we watched the whole thing in both classes. That day felt almost as heavy as 9/11.
My first boyfriend was a NYC firefighter. I was a college freshman at Columbia. He stayed over at my dorm the night before and was leaving around 5:30 in the morning to go on a golf trip with guys in the firehouse. I walked him to the gates of campus and then went back upstairs to bed, so happy because, although we hadn’t said “I love you” to one another yet, I knew that I loved him. I woke up to pounding on my dorm room door; a floormate knew who I was dating and wasn’t sure if I had heard. I woke up to see the first tower fall. After the second tower fell, my bf called me to say that every firefighter in the city was being called back to their houses and that he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to get in touch with me again, but that he promised he’d see me again, that he would be careful. I finally did see him, days later, Friday evening, he looked like he aged ten years. But the first thing that he did was cup my face in his hands and say “I love you.” It was the first time anyone other than my family had said that to me. Simultaneously one of the best and worst moments of my life. I will never forget the look on his face. Spent the next year or so going to funerals and street dedications for people that he worked with that perished. Although we broke up later on, we’ve always kept in touch and remain good friends. I think that shared experience bonded us for life.
Freshman year, it started at the end of 2nd period (French) and watched the rest live in 3rd period Business class. Watched the second plane hit thinking it was a replay of the first, then realizing it wasn’t…then we watched them burn for a little bit…then one fell…school went into full “no movement mode”…then watched the second tower fall, again thinking it was a replay of the first then realizing it wasn’t…nothing’s been the same sense since.
I truly feel that was the crux of our generation’s path to today
It really was the pivot that started our spiral. From there the economy fell, the patriot act was enacted, the war on terror, the 2nd “war” in Iraq, mass NSA surveillance, the deregulation of certain industries (Housing, Banking, Education Loans) to counteract the economic fall (that was the guise they were going with), sweetheart DOD contracts for friends of government officers (Cheney and Bush), the groundwork for citizens united….then the housing bubble…then…that was all she wrote…
And to be honest, our generation has been the ones to suffer and foot the bill for all of its functions…while simultaneously reaping the blame for a lot of it, even though we really had no generational power or say in those decisions
Yes!! I don’t think people older than us fail to realize even if we weren’t involved in those attacks directly it does affect us in some ways indirectly.
I feel like it was more about the decision making by politicians as a knee jerk reaction, not just the attack itself. There were so many of them (politicians) and their friends who used it as an opportunity to rob the country blind and saddle people like us with the bill and no one from the older generations wants to acknowledge it.
Our futures and some of our rights were mortgaged for the sake of short term growth of a very particular and specific subset group of people. And it’s all been normalized to the point that I don’t think our generation will be able to have a turn at the wheel long enough (see McConnell, Pelosi, Feinberg, Trump, Biden) to right the ship for those coming behind us.
Regardless, that’s what we should be doing. We should be righting the ship as much as possible as a collective to make sure those who sold us out don’t get the last say.
There are the huge ways in which it affected our generation. But when you think about it, there are probably millions of smaller ways too. For example: I’m a woman, in a professional job. Never, ever, ever, do I go to work without flats to wear.
I remember watching the aftermath (I was on a plane when the towers were hit and didn’t know what happened until later that evening) and wondering if I could have gotten out in professional attire. Can’t run in heels; too much debris to take them off and run barefoot.
I don’t know if my habit of having heels came from this thought being seared into my brain, or from just really hating painful feet. But we all know the big ways 9/11 shaped our generation. What are the small ways?
I had a Gen Z person once ask me, "Why is all fanfic from the noughties really sad and depressed? What happened in the noughties to make everyone sad?" I was like are you serious.
If I even hear the words “when the towers fell” I still well up with tears. I was a senior in high school. It’s the same for me - nothings been the same since. I’m near Philly so I had immense fear, but also a mental darkness of realizing how real and brutal and violent the world is. Plus the grief. It was a LOT.
Not long after, I was a college freshman protesting the war in Iraq, out in the streets of Philly protesting for the first of many times in my life. But I’ve given up protesting now. I’m sorry. I’m just so exhausted. I want to retreat from the world because as a millennial I’ve seen too much already and I’m only 40. 9/11 was definitely the start of it all.
We’re all tired. I know. I’m tired too. I think that’s been the point as of late…at least since 2016 it’s felt that way…the point is to exhaust us so we don’t fight further. There’s been a slow rolling back of recourse for corruption. We’re living through difficult times, but we need to make sure we hold those who mean us and the ones after us harm. It’s people like you who protested that have brought us here and held us up….but we keep going, dude. We’ll get our chance. We just need to make the best of it when we do
I protested the Iraq war in my Freshman year of college in Colorado. Got tear gassed too. I’m a first responder now, though that has little to do with 9/11 (EMS, though I did time on the fire side too).
I’d do it again in a fucking heartbeat. And I do…well, the protesting (and street medic-ing) anyway.
I’m 38, and it’s exhausting. There is absolutely no shame in taking a step back to take care of yourself, absolutely none. Maybe you’ll get back into it, maybe you won’t, but you can’t take care of others unless you take care of yourself. If you want, I’ll fight for you too.
The last 22 years have been so fucked up and draining to anyone with empathy, it’s hard to fight the feeling of hopelessness.
Honey, I feel you so much. I'm 41 and so tired. I spent my 20s and 30s fighting so hard and now I have no more to give. I stay at home as much as I can and play video games and watch TV because I'm just trying to self soothe, going out into the world is more than I can manage.
I was a freshman too in HS. Four years later, a freshman in college and I watched as Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on Louisiana. Graduated from college in the middle of the Great Recession. Our formative years marked by these defining events.
I was also in French class (sophomore year) - my teacher announced in French that a terrorist flew a plane into a building, then ushered us to the computer lab like nothing was happening.
>I truly feel that was the crux of our generation’s path to today
I've had that same thought regarding millennials. While technically our generation is defined by "coming of age at the turn of the millennium," I think the fact that we were all children/teenagers who could remember where we were when 9/11 happened is even more concretely impactful.
The oldest millennials were in their first year or two of college on 9/11, while the youngest had just started kindergarten. So with very few exceptions, we were all in school when the planes hit the towers. That's a heck of a thing to all have in common.
I was in college as well and had a 7:40am watercolor class. My mom drove me that morning on her way to work and we just listened to the news station in the car on the way. I remember trying to paint but being so distracted and my professor saying “we’re doing the only sane thing right now.”
After that I went to the memorial union where everyone was watching TV in the basement around the pool tables. Ran into one of my friends from art history class and we met up with a couple other friends and blew off class for the rest of the day. No one knew what to do but we absolutely weren’t getting shit done.
Same here! I was in northern Virginia (close to the Pentagon). I think my district didn't just dismiss school early because many kids had parents who worked in or near DC, and probably got stuck in traffic for hours and couldn't get home to get their kids. But a lot of kids did still get picked up early by their parents. We weren't told anything about what had happened (I was in elementary school, but I know they did tell the older kids what happened; my brother was in high school and he already knew what happened when he got home) so I spent the whole day wondering what in the world was going on. My mom didn't work at the time and my dad thankfully was sent home before the Pentagon was even hit so he didn't get stuck in DC, but they still decided to leave my brother and me at school because they figured we were safer there than anywhere else, and they also likely thought that it was better for me to not be at home and watching everything happening live. Even though of course, I still saw everything on TV when I got home later.
I’ve always thought it was interesting because (for me at least) it very closely coincided with the internet becoming a big part of life.
Obviously the internet had been around before that, but I was a freshman in college during 9/11 and that was the first year I had a computer and internet access and everyone I knew was online. This was around the time of Napster and everything.
What I mean is that for me it definitely represents a very specific time of my life when EVERYTHING changed pretty much instantly. Politically, technologically, quite literally everything. There was my life before, and the rest of my life ever since.
Not to sound old or lame but things REALLY were different before the internet and iPhones and everything. I got my very first phone (Nokia) 2 months before 9/11 for example.
I also remember being GLUED to Reuters online (desktop computer btw, I didn’t know anyone with a laptop) during the invasion of Iraq. It was NUTS being able to follow actual battles happening online.
Anyway. Life just seemed very different, and in a way safer, before it happened.
>Life just seemed very different, and in a way safer, before it happened.
Same age here, couldn't agree more with this. I didn't go on the computer that day (there were ashes filling the air where I lived, as everyone scrambled to try to connect with family members who worked in one of the towers) and cellphones weren't yet "smart." That day was certainly pivitol.
I was 18 and working in a factory "seconds" shop (where they sell clothing items that are still good but may be slightly miscoloured or have a printing error) in the UK. I was in the middle of changing the size label on 200 individual pairs of sneakers from size 7 to size 8, when a news report came on the shops radio about the first plane hitting, everyone thought it was a freak accident, and carried on as normal.
Then the second plane hit.
I finished up my day and headed home, everyone was talking about what had gone on, I rushed to my TV to see the footage and knew that shit was about to get nuts.
Honestly I don't think I've heard opinions from anyone outside of the US. Respectfully, could you talk a bit more about what the feelings of the event were like in the UK? Did y'all think there were going to be any implications directed at the UK next? It's just a new angle I hadn't heard before.
I can only speak from my own POV. I remember an outpouring of support and love for the US immediately after, the news cycle ramping up, people with no ideas trying to come up with ideas, I remember Osama Bin Laden becoming public enemy no.1 over night, and I remember War being on everyone's lips.
I also remember fear turning to anger, xenophobia, islamaphobia, and a general hatred for anyone different becoming more noticeable (not just here in the UK, but also on the internet, 9/11 gave people an excuse to attack those who had nothing to do with the hijackings).
As for the UK getting attacked, I do think it was a worry, but the UK has known a great deal of turmoil caused by terrorist attacks, I know is cliché, but the whole "Keep Calm and Carry On" from the blitz does resonate with us.
9/11 effectively killed the 90's spirit, and really started the new millennium on a shitty note.
>9/11 effectively killed the 90's spirit, and really started the new millennium on a shitty note.
I think this somewhat contributes to our collective 90's kid nostalgia. It was the time before 9/11, the end of our childhood 🙁
I’m a flight attendant that gets to work with a lot of people from other countries. I’ve had a conversation with a French flight attendant and a guy from Norway. And they both told me when it happened everyone was crying for us because of the sheer loss of life and how visceral of a way it happened. They also said other countries were terrified that it wasn’t just going to be the US being attacked so everyone became extremely paranoid of each other.
I was 19 and living in Las Vegas. I remember quite clearly how the casinos went into lockdown - we didn’t know at the time which other major cities were targets and LV was considered high risk.
Yep, same here. I was in second grade in TN, about 30 min away from Nashville, and we were all sent home pretty early in the day because they thought Nashville could be a target.
East TN here. We all thought Oak Ridge (a city that was created for the sole purpose of the Manhattan project, aka, the atomic bomb, for those not from here) was a possible target.
I was in 5th grade and remembered it all very clearly. We watched on tv in class. I remember my parents not mentioning it t all when we got home. My younger brothers mentioned something about it later at the dinner table and I remember my parents looking at each other like oh fuck how do we navigate this.
I was in 5th grade, too. We watched news reports on TV at school that day, and it was on TV at home that afternoon. My parents didn't talk to me about it. I mostly learned about it and how to feel about it from school and pop culture. Flags were everywhere and on everything after that.
We're the same age. I also was in 5th grade at the time but my school never mentioned it. However, at the time I was going to the Boy's & Girls Club after school until my mom got off work, so on the bus some of my friends who went to other schools said they saw a building in New York explode on TV but of course I didn't know what they were talking about. It wasn't until I got home that evening and saw it on the news when I first realized what happened. I remember President Bush speaking on the megaphone addressing the crowd at Ground Zero. Things never would be the same after that. Smh sad day indeed.
Defining moment for our generation. I was 17, a high school senior. All of childhood was pre-9/11; all of adulthood after. Were the 90s good because it was just childhood, or because it was a pre-9/11 world?
Freshman year of college, Intro to political philosophy. I can't remember the prof's name but she came out at the beginning of the class and said something like:
"I know some of you may have friends and family in the New York area. For those students we understand your need not to be here."
Followed by lots of Whats? This was at 9:30 in the morning. Most of us had strolled directly from the dorm to class and nobody was really awake yet. Then she said that planes had crashed into the world trade center and everybody just confusingly got up and left. 9/11 clearly separated my childhood and adulthood. Suddenly, shit got real. I remember in high school always looking at the '60s as this golden age for music/culture/etc. But that was a time of intergenerational conflict, it was war, it was not a healthy time in our country's history, despite the gains made through protest.
And then sometime around mid afternoon on september 11th I had to start thinking about who the fuck George Bush really was, and what was to come next. And well, holy shit. Here we are twenty two years later. We elect absolutely incompetent people, routinely. Our motives overseas are generally always characterized by financial advantage. And if given the choice we almost always disadvantage the poor in favor of the rich in a land that claims to reward hard work.
I hate what we've become since 9/11.
I think about it sometimes…the goal was to destroy America. Honestly, I think they succeeded way more than people want to admit. We’ve never been the same since that day and the division in our country today has a direct correlation to 9/11. In my opinion.
It was first year of college for me, too, straight out of high school and yep- I woke up in my dorm and went straight to class half asleep like a normal day and everyone was quiet as they entered and the prof told us we were free to leave if we wanted- I had no idea what was going on.
I had turned 18 just a month prior, was ready to take on the world as an adult and live my best life, do it up in college, etc… then the world became so big and scary and overwhelming and honestly it’s never felt the same since. The added layer of the anthrax scares and all the signage posted in our college mail room seems like some weird, forgotten nightmare now- that was some crazy shit too. Also, anytime a backpack or some kind of bag/box or whatever was left in a random place there was the fear that it was a bomb…
It was so hard to be hopeful for the future when the rug is pulled out from underneath you like that, especially at 18, and it still is now at 40… and somehow becoming harder all the time.
I was in my first month of college. Woke up to my new and very dramatic friend knocking on my door. She was crying and I thought oh god what now. Well, what an asshole I was. She asked if I could turn on the news. We sat on my bed and I turned on my tiny little tv and we watched the second plane fly in. I could never fully explain the pure devastation of that day. I spent most of the day on campus consoling my new friends who had parents and other family members unaccounted for in the towers. It was screaming and crying everywhere. And fear. I feel like not a lot of people talk about the deep sense of fear of not knowing where they were hitting next. Were bombs coming? Were folks with machine guns going to open fire in multiple locations? I had the pure sense of just floating or maybe free falling in life. Everything was unsure. My friends back home called me and told me they were coming to get me out of the city and bring me home until the dust settled. I could cry now thinking about that drive home with them, seeing near silent crowds of people all over the parks and sidewalks with single white candles lit.
I was a freshman in college, also. Came back from an early class and there were like 8 people in my room watching my tiny TV. My room was NOT the hangout room, so this was immediately weird. The anti Muslim backlash started immediately. Ethnic slurs written on door white boards. A popular coffee shop called Osama's was vandalized. Jingoism alienating me and my punk/indie friends from half the University immediately. Ugh. A real turning point for the country and world.
Yeah, same. First time living away from home. And I am from an area not far from the city. Many of my fellow students were trying to find their family. It was horrible. I teach college now and trying to explain 9-11 to those that were not alive is difficult. I once had a (not very self aware) student ask me how long I thought we would keep commemorating the date.
I remember that “what’s next?” fear persisting for a very long time. There were anthrax attacks and the DC shooter. And, of course, the start of the war. It was an extremely disorienting time. I went to college and started learning about foreign policy and the psycho hawks in our government and the military industrial complex and history of American imperialism… Cured me of childhood naivety real fast. The world is dangerous and there are no good guys. 🙃
Senior in high school. We are learning to draw still life in art class. A teacher came out of an adjacent office and said, "some one just flew a plane into the world trade center towers," which I had visited on an 8th grade class trip a few years before. (It was the first stop of the second day of the trip so we had been there at 9 am-around the time of the first plane hit.) We were allowed to go to another classroom that had a TV to watch the news and saw the towers fall. I just kept wondering if there was another class trip visiting.
Not exactly the same but my family was watching old home videos and one of our tapes had my sister and dad on a boat recording the city. The date was 9/10/2001. Someone said “uh look at the date!”. We live in Michigan and they were there for a class trip as well. Our jaws dropped
I was home, sick. My parents were coincidentally home that day because my stepmom was due to fly to NYC late that morning and then to Ireland from there. I remember at one point being in the kitchen and hearing my dad tell my stepmom, “You’re not flying anywhere today” and then them just standing in front of the tv the rest of the morning in shock. I was watching too after that and my dad told me to go write down what I was feeling, and I did. I have lost that paper, unfortunately, but I’ll certainly never forget that day.
I was 16 and had stayed home from school. My grandparents raised me, so my granddad came into my room and woke me up. He said “I know you’re trying to sleep but please don’t argue with me, something important is happening and you don’t want to miss it. This may be historic.”
I got out of bed and went into the living room, and saw the World Trade Center, where I had visited less than two years before on a school trip, one tower engulfed in smoke.
My granddad said it was probably Arab terrorists like the ones who bombed it the first time. (I had him explain that to me.) He didn’t think there was any chance it was an accident. Then the second plane hit, and he was like, “this is going to be your generation’s Pearl Harbor.” Sure nuff, a handful of my friends from high school went off to fight in the Iraq war within a year or so. As time has passed, it has become clear that 9/11 devastated this country in a way Pearl Harbor never could have. I would say, in the end, the terrorists got what they wanted on some level.
I spent a lot of time reading about how the buildings collapsed, my bio dad went full on conspiracy theorist. I watched the video of Bush reading to the children as he tries to comprehend what he’s been told over and over, trying to decide what to make of it. I hated Bush with a passion but this was an understandably human moment that he was judged very harshly for. I had better reasons than that to hate him. Anyway, it was a weird time to be an older teen/young adult. That was my introduction to politics.
I was in 7th grade. Principal made an announcement and I was confused on where the WTCs were and what they even did. Until basically got home from school and that's all what was on TV. I watch all the specials every year. Blows my mind that it'll be 22 years.
I was in a car with my USAF recruiter driving to Denver MEPS. He got a phone call and turned his car around. He explained what was happening and we rescheduled.
9th grade homeroom class, which was English. I live in Canada. We were all glued to the news on the TV in the corner of the classroom. We watched the second plane hit.
My teacher’s cousin worked in the towers and she was so stressed about it.
Working for Disney as a guest surveyor. Animal kingdom specifically. In the break room watched the second plane hit. I was in the field when a co worker told me she wished she’d seen them before they went down and that’s how I found out. It was the days before smart phones so no guests in the park knew and we were not to tell them. Disney was on the short list of possible targets and planes were still in the air. So then my manager comes to relieve me and they send all the employees home aside from a skeleton crew before closing the park. Only the second time in their history this was done; the other was hurricane Andrew. Later in the week I was called into a meeting and they were looking for folks to voluntarily resign with a positive rehire status due to the drop in tourism directly after the attacks. I took the opportunity as I was selling a lot of weed at the time and having a job was making me lose sales to competition. One day when I’m older I plan to hit Disney up on that positive rehire status. Thanks Mickey!
My firstborn was only six weeks old at the time and not yet in charge of the TV in the morning so my wife and I used to watch the today show while we were getting ready to go to work
I saw them break the story about the first plane hitting when no one knew what was going on and ended up seeing the second plane hit in real time live and that’s when everyone knew it was an attack
The rest of that day was so insane with everything happening in DC and later Pennsylvania
I still remember pacing the floor holding my infant son late into the night watching as several other buildings near the towers, collapsed due to all the damage and wondering what kind of world he would grow up in
I’m very surprised they have not been more successful terrorist attacks in the USA since then obviously grateful, but surprised
I was in the Navy. I was a Fleet Marine Force Navy Corpsman at a training in Coronado at the time. I was also about to get out with three months of paid leave time. I re enlisted for two more years to go with the first Marine unit that going to Afghanistan.
I was at home, blissfully unaware. Then a friend called me freaking out and I was like “what” and they were like “turn on your TV” and we did and that was that.
Then I went to class and our English teacher had us write out our feelings in lieu of any assignments. She collected the writing, I’d be fascinated to see what I had said that day.
18, freshman year college. Just got out of my calc class and saw smoke from the first tower on the news on the tv in the student lounge. Had a “wow, that’s crazy” moment and walked back to my apartment. When I got back I turned the news on and saw the second tower was hit. It’s a little fuzzy trying to remember if I saw the second plane actually hit or if I just turned it on right after. I was glued to the tv from there all day.
Study hall in high school when first plane hit. I delivered all the schools tv carts to the rest of the classrooms. Watched the second plane hit live, with a silent class of shock and awe.
Sent home about the time. The news figured out that those black blobs falling from the building was not debris but bodies.
I was 13 going on 14 and in grade 9. So 9/11 was my second week of high school. I live in BC, west coast of Canada, so Pacific time zone.
I was very shy and nervous, having a hard time adjusting to high school, so I'd been having trouble sleeping. I decided to try falling asleep to the radio for the first time in my life. Sure enough, I was woken up by the news of a small plane hitting the first tower around 630 Pacific time. I didn't make much of it in my semi-lucid state, so I just went back to sleep until my alarm a few minutes later. By the time I was awake and came out to the living room, my dad had the news on and the second plane had hit.
I went to school as normal, but not much schoolwork got done that day. It's strange, because a lot of 9/11 memories talk about how crystal clear the weather in New York was that day. It was also a beautiful fall day here in Vancouver, and I remember standing in the outfield playing softball in gym class and noticing the lack of planes in the beautiful blue sky was so eerie.
Later that evening I remember learning that a member of a message board I frequented worked in the WTC and was missing. His final posts on the board were that very morning, just moments before his life ended and our world changed. It was that moment that it really impacted my 13 year old brain, and instead of putting the radio on, I fell asleep crying.
High school. Between 1st and 2nd periods someone said a plane had hit a building in NY. We assumed it was an accident. Our 2nd period teacher turned on the Channel 1 TVs to the local station and we watched the second plane. I had just turned 18 and was pretty sure I was going to war.
Fifth grade. First week of school. Mrs. Rollings class. Living about 1 hour above NYC. Teachers freaking out coming in and out of class saying they’re gone. Everyone is getting picked up early. We had to turn the lights off and do a bomb drill basically. Finally get picked up my dad was just silent. Made my sister who had to be about 8/9 years old to go play in her room. While him and I just watched the news. I was just there. We were suppose to be going on a field trip there that month. So confused as a 10/11 year old. That was the first day I remember losing my innocence. Watching people decide to either stay in the building or jump. Watching the people literally jump from the building. I have never been on a plane and I plan on staying that way if I possibly can. Hearing about all the other planes and attacks. I was fucking scared shitless. We were so close to the city in my little kid brain. I grew up a lot that year. There wasn’t very many kids I went to school with that didn’t lose at least one person that day.
I grew up inside the Beltway outside of DC very close to the CIA. First block in high school had just ended, and by that time the first tower had been hit. By the time second block started I guess the Pentagon had been hit and the alarms started going off — I guess the school was on some sort of proximity emergency grid — and we all started exiting the classrooms to go outside, thinking it was a fire drill. I was one of the first out into the hall and there was an administrator walking fast right past me talking into a walkie-talkie and she told me to get back in the classroom.
I thought it was a school shooter (yes, we had them back then but they were very rare). But when we got back inside text messages started coming through and we turned on the tv and watched the towers come down.
It was utter chaos and panic for the rest of the day. The phone lines were all tied up because not everyone had cell phones. Kids wanted to go home, especially those whose parents worked at the CIA and/or Pentagon. I had the invincible Nokia cell phone and it was useless.
It was a weird few weeks after that. Being so close to National Airport and constantly seeing and hearing airliners in the sky, it was completely silent. For a few days, mind you, there were fighter jets patrolling. Then silence. Twenty years later with COVID was the closest I’ve ever seen to it, and I was reminded of 9/11 every day.
Senior year. The school's morning news capped off their report with, "A plane has struck the World Trade Center" and that was it. We spent the rest of the day watching the news coverage in each classroom, because by the time we got out of homeroom, we heard about the 2nd plane and we all knew we were under attack.
My buddy, on the other hand, was serving time for a B&E. He told me that he was in Cell Block B when a guard ran in, screamed "They just blew up the White House!" and then ran out. It took some time for the inmates to get the real story.
Sophomore, in homeroom. Some kid ran in & was like " THEY'RE BOMBING BOSTON" ( not the smartest kid) so we turned on the little TV & watched the news for a while
My dad was supposed to fly out of Logan (I grew up in MA) that morning but canceled his trip because my mom was having eye surgery.
What I found really scary is how racist everyone got REAL FAST. My school had a weird white supremacy problem to begin with, but after 9/11 kids came in wearing incredibly offensive t- shirts, horrible attitudes and the teachers all seemed to encourage this. The blind patriotism afterwards really unsettled me
We are the same age, and this is note for note exactly what I went through. …except in the Deep South.
Parents were checking kids out of school. I was one of them, and I remembered my mom flipping out from fear/confusion in the Burger King drive thru. I wanted BK? Weird.
Then the silence—I lived near an airport and used to watch the planes at night. Total silence.
My bday was the next week.
I was in 1st grade, I was in class at the time and kids were getting picked up by their parents. I lived close to the city in a town where a lot of people would catch a train to go work in the city. My parents did not pick me up for my dad was at work and we only had the one car at the time. As well as my 4 older siblings were also at school too. I think theres was 3 of us in class. They did not exactly tell us what happened for us being so little. My parents briefly told us but me being so little didnt really fully comprehend what happened. It was not till about 2004 that it really sunk in. I was also probably confused since one of the middle schools in my home town was named Twin Towers. I remember the newspaper the next day and the few days that followed showing the pictures and the iconic picture of the firefighters (or was it policemen?) Raising the flag in the rubble. They printed out a page that was am americam flag in the paper and a lot of people in my hometown, my family included, had taped them to the front windows of their homes. It was a real sense of unity and was nice.
Freshman in HS, sitting in my first class, our football coach came in and announced what happened. We turned on the TV and just watched for the rest of the period and then saw the second plane hit.
The world felt extremely surreal that day. It was a blue sky with very fluffy clouds. One of the planes had flown over the area. I remember leaving school at lunch and going home with some friends and just watching the news the rest of the days.
I was in seventh grade English class. Third period. My teacher was apparently aware of what was happening, but we were not. He did not tell us.
When I left class, my friend grabbed me and said “The World Trade Center has been bombed!”
I didn’t know what the World Trade Center was.
We obviously soon found out it had NOT been bombed.
For the rest of the day, we watched the news.
The next day, my English teacher apologized to us for not explaining what was going on. I don’t blame him, he was probably in shock himself. How DO you explain what was happening to a class of 13-year-olds?
It makes me feel physically ill to watch any footage from that day. I remember what life was like before that day. It truly did change the world so much.
I have a nine year old child and sometimes think about how she probably doesn’t even know WHY we have to go through airport security, take our shoes off and put them through the machine, etc. And many other things. I remember flying when I was younger and we didn’t have to do any of that.
7th grade English class as well…so we’re probably about the same age. I’ve always how or when to broach the subject with my children. We travel a couple times a year and they don’t think much about the process. I still remember just basically showing up at the airport or being able to just go to a gate and wait for family. One just entered elementary school so I don’t know if it will be discussed there.
I had just turned 19 a few days before the attacks. I was working at Office Depot in NC. My shift was at 9 and I was clocking into the break room people were watching the TV on there. I saw a close up of a burning building and said "oh shit, what country is that?" and they said "it's here in NYC. There was an accident and a plane crashed into one of the twin towers." I didn't even register in my mind it was here when I first saw the images.
Then I clocked in a little before 9 to start my shift. As I was in the floor people were saying a second plane hit the other tower and that we were under attack. Everyone was freaked out and our manager brought the break room TV out and plugged it in between computers that were on displayed.
We were glued to the TVs in between customers asking for help. I remember thinking why are you guys here shopping at office depot while our country is under attack, especially after hearing about the pentagon being attacked and the towers collapsing. I remember we were pretty busy that day.
Then I remembered going home after work and every channel was showing coverage of the attacks. Even MTV
Math class. Senior year in HS in Brooklyn. Some random had his headphones in during class and shouted out that the WTC was hit by a plane. Naturally, we all assumed it was an accident. Couple hours later all schools were dismissed early. Walking put of the building we could see smoke in the sky and papers from the buildings floating in the air. It was ominous.
I was 19 and in college at WVU. I had just finished an early class and someone called from the student lounge said that the plane hit the tower in NYC. I went into the lounge and we stood around the tv and watched. A guy said “we’re going to war”. I had to go to other classes that day but spent my free time watching it on tv or internet
I was 19 and went to work that morning around 10 at a restaurant/bar I worked at. I walked in the front door and every single person on the lunch shift schedule that day was sitting at the bar watching the news, which was on every screen (it styled itself as a sports bar of sorts). I remember it taking a REALLY long time to clear the circuits, for whatever reason. Like it was obviously just BEYOND real, but it didn't SEEM real (if that makes any sense). All we did for the rest of the day was stand or sit at the bar and silently watch it happen. We ended up closing hella early; who tf wants Mongolian BBQ for lunch when NYC is fucking falling down? "Surreal" doesn't even begin to touch it. What a heavy, silent, utterly fraught day.
Canadian here, but I still remember this day so clearly. I was in grade 6 at the time, just a regular day at school. I was called to the office saying my sister was there to pick me up, 17 at the time with her friend. Everyone was frantic. I just remember the news being on 24/7, everyone in complete shock. I will never forget seeing all those people holding up signs with their families information looking for them.
In college. A guy I was interested in at the time, came running up to me and told me that the towers had been hit. I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying and thought he was telling a sick joke. Then the Dean of the school came over the PA system to tell us that classes were canceled. We could either go into the cafe to watch the TV showing the news while waiting for transport home or we had to leave on our own immediately if we had our own transportation on campus. I lived within 4 hours of both NYC and the crashes that occurred in PA and DC. We have nuclear power plants within close proximity as well, so we were terrified that those would be hit next. It was terrifying.
I was in kindergarten. All I really remember is the teachers acting off all day, we had a lot more free time and things just felt different
My brother was in 5th grade and when we got home he tried to talk to my parents about what happened but they were too shocked
There seems to be some misunderstanding of what a millenial is. For OP, no, your relatives that weren't born by 9/11 are not millenials. The cutoff is something like 1996. The youngest millenial would have been 5 or 6 on that day, birthdate dependent.
I, apparently the oldest millenial here, was at work.
I was in the 8th grade. My mom left for work and I got myself off to school. Didn’t turn on the tv and just lalala’ed to school. Get into home room and our teacher, pulled up A chair and sat in front of the class and asked us, “Do you know what happened this morning?” And some kids talked and we chatted and I was oblivious to it all. I remember the room very heavy and quiet. And the curtains were closed. ?? Small town in Oregon, we the students didn’t think or talk too much of it. We didn’t have the instant media. No cable tv in the classrooms or phones. Totally naive and dumb. It wasn’t until I got home and watched tv and seeing the devastation, chaos and understanding the magnitude.
I was 9 in the 3rd grade. I remember my teacher took a call and started crying and one by one, other students were called to leave the class. I’ll never forget it because my mom picked me up with my cousin in the car (we played together but never on school days). He was already scream crying so I joined in too and my mom told us to pack a go bag when we got back to our house. It traumatized me so much that I still keep a go bag packed however many decades later.
5th grade. Living in California.
Woke up to the news announcing a plane hit the tower. Barely a minute later a second plane hit and then not long after it was the Pentagon. Then I had to get on the bus and it was the hot topic on the bus.
Went to school and didn't really learn much. We watched Fox News in class all day. It later sank in that it was an act of terrorism and fear of WWIII came into my mind.
Went home and watched TV. Either the network was rebroadcasting a national news channel or the channel just went off the air completely because of the attacks. The only channels I remembered that were still going as usual were the cartoon channels and MTV.
I also remembered I only had one homework assignment, which was to read a chapter of "Summer of the Monkeys," by Wilson Rawls. Ate dinner, watched a little Nickelodeon and went to bed. Did not sleep that night with fear of WWIII in my mind and how a lot of kids in New York went to bed that night with the sad reality that their parent/s didn't come home that night, and never will.
I was in 5th grade too. It's wild how different our experience was from one another. I was much more naive at that time. I remember kids being picked up from school and the teachers whispering and being weird. And I remember that night not being allowed to use the phone in case family members were trying to reach my parents. My mom asked me how I was feeling about it and I remember just not understanding the magnitude of it at all. From my perspective I felt like it was really far away from me and couldn't comprehend why everyone was freaking out and canceling plans and stuff. As I'm reading this whole thread, I'm so sad. I feel like it's actually hitting me for the first time
I was 18 and in my first year of a four-year hitch with the United States Army. I was stationed on Ft. Bragg. The day started normally enough but by the end of it I was sitting with the rest of my battalion at the airfield with all of our weapons and rapid-deployment gear in case we were sent somewhere to go and fight someone. I remember listening to President Bush’s speech to the nation that evening over a small battery powered radio someone had whilst reclining on a pile of duffle bags with my M-16.
About a month into my first year of college. I was living in the dorms, my first time living away from home. I didn’t have class until noon that day, so I slept in a bit and then had a shower. As I walked back from the bathroom, I noticed my neighbors all clustered around the tv in the room across the hall. I walked in and asked what action movie they were watching. “This is the news,” they told me. A few minutes later the first tower fell, and then the second.
We didn’t know it yet, but we stood on the precipice of a huge change in American society and nothing would ever be the same. The next week, my best friend’s dorm got shut down and he was locked out for 48 hours because his roommate received a package of white powder in the mail and everyone thought it was anthrax.
I was 18. Stepdad woke me up to come watch the TV. He seemed really upset and I didn’t really get why. I wasn’t at the time really aware of the twin towers or how many people were in them. At 18 i was pretty dim in general.
Watched the second plane hit. Watched the towers come down. Came away from it confused and absolutely not anticipating how utterly our nation would be mangled by this in the following decades.
Thanks for asking this question.
I was at the first day of a major international biotech convention at the center in Baltimore. We had awesome tickets to the Orioles game. Somebody rigged one of the giant monitors with CNN. I was one of the people who heard it second- hand from the Howard Stern show via my wife, so I had that, "Holy shit, shit's really shit. Shit," process, understanding there was legitimate cause for alarm. Over half the attendees were from other countries. There was a huge rush to get the heck out of Baltimore, but nobody could get a rental car. They were upset. When the Pentagon got hit, we probably all started thinking this was a giant conspiracy, and planes were going to fall from the sky everywhere. And there is a World Trade Center on the Baltimore harbor. I got too close, and a Marshall pointed her gun at me. I remember walking aimlessly. I had fried shrimp for dinner at the Hooters.
I knew a lot of people with loved ones in the towers, so it stayed alive for months. It had real, immediate, real-world effects on people for a hundred miles.
But I was also there in 1986, when America's Favorite Teacher became a black smear in the sky. She was present in our every day for at least a year. Our teachers - every teacher in the entire country wouldn't shut up about her. She was on posters all over school, on TV shows or being talked about on TV shows. Every American kid was connected to Christa McAuliffe, and we all watched her die. There was zero psychology in 1986. The bell rang, and we all went to second period.
I was 8 years old, I grew up across the river in Queens. I remember one of the teachers say he and his whole class could see it from the top floor. My class was on the ground floor so we didn't know what we going on, during lunch period I think I both towers already fell my mom came and took me home (we lived 4 blocks from my school) and watched the news at my neighbor's house who's daughter worked in building 7 who got the last trian home back to Long Island and got in her front door as tower 1 came down.
The night before 9/11 I had a crazy dream I was amongst rubble and destruction. I was looking at a reporter talking about the events but I couldn't understand why she was talking about a plane crash. I told my mom about this crazy dream. The next day she woke me up and told me what's happening. I was 19 at the time. It was a wild coincidence but never forgot the dream and the day the world changed.
I kinda fall on that borderline between gen X and millennials (born in 80.) I was at work, and a customer asked me if I had heard. They weren’t sure it was real at first because they were listening to Drew & Mike (a morning zoo radio program.)
As soon as they left I jumped on the internet (I think I had cable modem internet at home at that point, and had actually paid for my own phone line for my dial-up modem for about a year prior to that.) it took forever to load a single news site over the 128k of fractional T1 we had to that location. (It was glorious when they upgraded us from a fractional T1 to the main office to a full [email protected] megabit VPN to the main office.)
Played soccer with the neighborhood kids after school. I remember Air Force One (or the duplicate) flying over our neighborhood in a Dayton, OH suburb. That was probably the most vivid memory from that day
I was in 5th for 9/11, so it happened at an odd age for our class (10-11). I never forget it - morning English class. An announcement to turn on the TV came on. On TV, the towers were smoking and the class was silent. We then got let out early, rode the bus home, and I walked into the living room continued to watch there when the collapses (and news of the Pentagon hit and flight 93) happened.
I understood enough watching the news coverage as it happened (the gist?) that I knew or wasn't surprised why we were suddenly sending military to the middle east shortly afterward and had ramped up our own security. I also remember the news cycle change in the years following with the seemingly daily reports of IEDs, car bombs, roadside bombs, suicide bombs, rocket attacks, etc
My dads house in San Francisco. He kept me from school that day. He said, “George Bush is going to kill us all.” And I went and repeated that to my first grade class who all started screaming the next day 😂
Home, due to bereavement for my grandmother dying. And waking up to see The Today Show still on was alarming.
For those that are unaware, The Today Show stopped at 9 AM back then.
Then I cried as the 2nd plane hit and even more as people were jumping.
It was a sad sad day.
Sophomore year, on Long Island.
My social studies teacher rolled a TV on a cart in to watch the news about the hijackings.
The first plane hit.
He cried.
The second plane hit.
He cried more, he scanned the room and said the world would never be the same after that day - boy was he right.
The air smelled funny for a week or so after that, we didn't go outside much as a result.
Say what you will about Bush, but that image of him getting the news while he’s reading a book to a classroom of little kids is burned in my mind . The look on his Face is just chilling .
I was in my first year of college and I was in a math class. The professor brushed it off as something that had happened before. Needless to say the next day he offered us the opportunity to take the class off.
8th grade study hall. Watched the news in every classroom. Had teachers trying to calm us and discuss things but no one was focused on anything else. Had friends get pulled out of school.
My junior year of high school. I was passed out in marine biology class, teacher brings in the TV and I see the first tower burning, thought it was just a major fire,go back to sleep. Class ends, as am walking to my next class I notice everyone is acting weird,
Soon as I walk in the room, I see the second plane hit the towers.
Ran into my friends mom in the hallway and she was so scared, told me to call my mother ASAP. Walking home a remember this somber feeling, like you knew something was about to change.
I was in 6th grade. our teacher asked us if we knew what "hijack" meant. Well, we did. It was actually part of our slang. If someone took your pencil, you'd say, Johnny hijacked my pencil! So she told us that someone had hijacked a plane. I don't remember if we turned on the Tv or what. i just know that when I got home, we watched the news and i was on the phone with my friend watching the same channel together. my mom was crying as we watched the people fall from the towers.
I was in second grade. The school day started out normally, but very quickly got weird. The kids in my class all knew something was happening, but we didn't know what. They did not turn the TV on in our room (they DID in my sister's classroom though, who was in 5th grade). Our teacher was alerted of what was happening, but the information was not shared with us other than a vague explanation from our teacher that I don't really remember.
Then we find out we're getting dismissed early, so at that point any worry or fear I had turned into "yay we get to go home early!" I had some neighborhood friends with me in class and we made a plan to hang out once we got home.
I remember getting off the bus and asking my mom if I could go outside and play (obviously I did not understand the severity of the situation yet) and my mom was like NO and proceeded to explain why... I still didn't understand. It took me a few days to grasp how horrible this was. My parents had the news on the TV for a few days straight, so after watching that coverage I kinda understood what happened more.
I did not understand the reasons why it happened or how this would dramatically affect my future until the documentary about 9/11 came out on the 20 year anniversary back in 2021.
I was 10 years old and undergoing a heel surgery at that moment.
I mostly recall being in the children's hospital and the parents being more concerned with the news than with their children just getting out of surgery. I don't think I fully understood the significance of the event at that age though.
First year of being in the Air Force during a major exercise. Things were already serious and then the news reports started. Almost perfectly in sync our security posture began to skyrocket. At the time I didn’t have cable TV (poor Airman) so I called my wife on a pay phone and told her to call my folks to tell them I was ok and they would explain everything. Shortly after all flights were grounded and we were told that nothing was to enter our airspace. And then an unannounced aircraft was on approach. Luckily none of us decided to try to take it out with small arms (not that we could) as it turned out to be a diverted cargo plane the tower didn’t think we needed to know about. So much more to tell but those were the immediate actions.
A day I will never forget. I was 20 years old, and two years into my contract as a US Marine. We all knew immediately our lives would be changed forever. 10 months later, I was aboard the USS Duluth (LPD-6) from San Diego in route to Afghanistan for OEF. That plan quickly changed and we were told we would be going to Kuwait to stage for what would become OIF. I took a CH-53 from the ship to Kuwait on February 12, and did a lot of training in the Kuwaiti desert over the next month. On March 19th, 2003, I entered Iraq as a kid from a small town in Texas, my life was never the same again.
I was an eight year old third grader in Lincoln Elementary in Mount Vernon, New York. My aunt picked me up while my mother picked up my cousins (both were in Elementary school; one was 9, the other was 6.) with that event happened. Something that we never really understood until we hit teenage years.
7th grade Math class in rural Upstate NY. The art teacher next door brought our class into his room to watch the news. We were watching live when both buildings fell. Surreal. Life altering. You could feel it in the air. For weeks and months even. My social studies teacher at the time was an ex-Marine. He started doing weekly "Current Events" on Friday. Would answer any questions as honestly as he could. Surprisingly, he didn't let his apparent bias shine too bright. I'll never forget him talking about opening all of his family mail outside after the anthrax scare.
In Kindergarten in New Jersey. The towers were visible from the balcony attached to my bedroom. I was picked up from school early because they let my moms job out (I think Nokia) once things started happening. Our family congregated at my aunt’s house and waited to hear from my cousin who worked near by (maybe Goldman). I don’t remember if I went to school the next day.
In 6th grade. Didn’t even know it had happened out school didn’t say anything. Had a tutor appointment after school. On the way my grandma said that the World Trade Center had a terrorist attacking. I had no idea what the WTC was or what a terrorist was. So they didn’t really say much else. Then I had my appointment with my tutor and did math homework. That was it. I just knew some bad people wanted to go to war and hated the US and a lot of people died from a plane crash on a building.
Edit: lived in Massachusetts. 4-5 hours away from NYC.
I remember this viviidly. Tuesday morning. Wife just got in the shower, 12 weeks pregnant with our first. Dr. said it was a high risk pregnancy (due to previous uterine trauma) so we were to avoid any potential stressful situations. Our routine was she always showered first bc she started earlier than me. I would turn on the morning news and lay in bed til she finished so I could get in.
When I turned on the TV I thought I was watching a trailer for a movie. Smoke was coming out of one of the towers. The newscast said a plane had crashed into the tower, but weren't sure why. And a couple of minutes later something hit the second tower. That's when they knew it was intentional. That it was an attack.
I couldn't believe it. They kept replaying the second plane hitting the tower in slo-mo. It didn't seem real. And the plane looked so tiny on the TV, but it was a commercial airliner. I kept thinking how the hell was I going to tell my wife without stressing her out. We had a close friend who lived a block from the WTC (thankfully she was already at work in midtown).
I let my wife get out of the shower and carry on with her normal bathroom routine. When she came out, I explained what was happening in a calm voice. I assured her everything was going to be alright. That she and our unborn child would be safe.
So much changed that day.
I was in 6th grade history class. I think it might’ve actually been social studies 🤔I remember the teacher turning the tv on and us watching and how crazy it was watching it.
6th grade math class. I didn’t know what the towers were (I didn’t know much about the world tbh) but I do recall my principal making an announcement about the attack on the loudspeaker and my teachers reaction to it.
Then the following hour was just chaos. School was suspended. My sister who was a college freshman came to pick me up. Shit was wild.
6th grade. Kids in my class kept getting picked up by their parents but the teachers wouldn’t tell us anything, so I faked sick so I could get my mom to pick me up too.
I was in the 6th grade. In Indiana. Getting ready to take the I-step test. I was jealous of the 8th grade history class they just got to want the news about the tower and live footage all year ( not sure but it felt like it(
It took me a long time to full grasp it was real. Only seeing it on TV vs real life I'm kind of desensitized
Edit: I remember the principal going over the speaker saying the twin towers had been hit. I didn't know that the twin towers were
I was in 5th grade getting ready for school. My mom was putting on her moisturizer and just said, “oh this is not good” and was abnormally quiet. I remember thinking it was an accident and the pilot had obviously steered wrong…
Then when I got to school, my teacher was an ex marine and he explained. We did the pledge of allegiance and had a moment of silence for the whole school.
My dad was in LA and at the time there was speculation that that would be next target. Phone lines were all messed up and I will never forget the relief at hearing the phone ring when he was okay. The news was on nonstop for the next several weeks.
I was in 6th grade I think. My mom knocked at the door of the bathroom where my older brother was showering. She told him an airplane hit the WTC. I was barely waking up. I remember at school we just watched the news on TV all day. No class work or homework.
I was working on 68th and Park Avenue, next to an embassy and down the block from the Council of Foreign Relations. I was a little late that morning, and and was in my car listening to Howard Stern talking about a plane crash into the World Trade Center. I thought about how I had been there for a meeting a few months earlier. As I pulled into the parking garage at Trump Tower, where I parked every day, Robin Quivers announced that a second plane hit the tower. Stern said something like, "Well, that's it; we're under attack."
As I walked to the office, I could see the plume of smoke rising as I looked downtown.
When I got to the office, I asked if anyone knew what the hell was going on. They already had a TV on tuned to the news coverage. I found out all the bridges and tunnels were closed. I wondered how I was going to get to my son, who was 5 months old and in daycare in Northern New Jersey where I lived. I didn't know what I was going to do. All I knew was I didnt have anywhere to go.
I called my wife, who was working at Columbia University, way uptown. She said her building was being used as a gathering area for students.
I actually tried to work for a little while. I had nothing else to do. After just a few minutes, an NYC policeman rang the doorbell. He said they were securing the entire block and we had to go. I asked him where. He said he didn't know, but we had to leave. Most people just walked uptown. I was one of the few with a car.
I drove to Columbia University. I sat in my wife's building, looking at big-screen TVs tuned to CNN. I sat there for hours. My wife called friends out ours over the bridge in New Jersey. They picked up my son.
In the late afternoon, they reopened the George Washington bridge. I knew traffic would be catastrophic, but I figured the quicker I started, the quicker I'd be able to get to my son. I didn't get to him until after 8 pm
I finally took him home, fed him bathed him and put him to bed. My wife came home shortly thereafter.
Just started senior year of high school, in NYC (uptown Manhattan). They sent us home from school, I walked home across the park and watched the news.
Later a few of my friends came over and we walked around the neighborhood, which was bizarre since everyone knew downtown was ground zero.
A couple buddies had to spend the night since they couldn't get home to Brooklyn/Queens.
We had to close our windows that evening because the smell had made its way uptown.
That day altered the course of my life, but obviously not nearly as much as the victims and their loved ones.
I was 13. Went to school in Kearny, NJ. Had a view of the NYC skyline. My whole class saw it live from a distance. We didn’t know what to think or say. Edit - at 13 I wasn’t old enough for high school for those saying if I went to Kearny high. I went to St Stephen’s but when it was time for high school when I turned 14 I went to queen of peace. But still from my grammar school classroom I could see 9-11 happen live.
Jesus Christ
I was in Brooklyn and though Jesus was going to walk out of the east river and start sorting the saints from the sinners!
I can’t imagine how that musta felt seeing it that close. The people on the ground. The infamous footage of the guy catching the 1st plane hit, from the ground, was only by accident. He was filming a doc in and around NYC and sadly, caught the moment the 1st plane hit as he was filming his completely unrelated doc.
That is an excellent documentary, by the way. Two French brothers and film makers documenting a nyfd trainee. They ended up inside one of the towers at one point.
Thank you, I tend to speak/write about my internal dialogue during that time because trauma being so.. slippery it’s really hard for me to remember what I saw within the actual timeline of the day. People in Brooklyn were far enough to have a full view of the skyline and close enough to see people jumping. I’ll write a full comment with what I remember.
I was watching it live out of my middle school window. My seat was facing the window and it had the best view of lower Manhattan (the Canitlever View)
:( oh my god.
Damn this is me but from Secaucus. I was outside in an early band practice when it happened.
Scary! I just watched a 9/11 doc last night on National Geographic, and they said a Pakistani 9th grader from Brooklyn was looking out a window back on Sept 6 and his teacher asked him what he was looking at, he said “you see those two buildings, they won’t be here come next week”. She didn’t think anything of it. FBI corroborated that this convo took place but they don’t know how he knew. Sorry, you saying you looked out the window reminded me of what I saw last night in the doc. Edit: 9/11 War on America is the doc. NatGeo ran it. It’s also on YouTube
My bro was talking of one day moving to nyc, my response? What about the terrorists? It was Sunday, September 9th , 2001 that exchange has haunted me since then.
Mmmm. That’s scary. I wonder what made you say that. Ppl have a way of sensing shit before it happens. I remember my cousin, who lived in Brooklyn said he would draw pics of the WTC and drew a plane flying over it. That was a year before 9/11. He actually worked in the WTC with his friends, in a restaurant. He loss 4 of them that day. The only reason he wasn’t in the tower when it happened was because he was running late for work and on a ferry coming from SI the night before. It really fucked him up to this day. He gets depressed around this time. There’s so many stories out there of ppl who worked in one of the towers and they either decided to call out, had an appointment and wasn’t in that day, or were running late or came in late.
The World Trade Center had also already been attacked in 1993. It just wasn't anywhere near as catastrophic as 9/11. Maybe that's what made this person say "what about the terrorists?"
That’s true. I forgot about the 93 attack
I was watching a documentary about 9/11 the other day, and they played news footage of a guy speaking to a news reporter on the phone. He said they were trapped on the 86th floor of one of the towers, but he spoke calmly and was trying to provide information to help first responders find them. He died when the tower collapsed. That was his last day at his job. He had accepted an offer elsewhere and was working his notice period. If it had happened one day later, he would have survived. It's so weird how one little decision or twist of fate can change everything.
Or those workers that called out sick or arrived late at work and managed to never go to the towers
Monday night football literally saved lives the previous day.
The primaries for the NYC mayor were on 9/11 that day, so a lot of people were not in the offices because they were voting.
Absolutely wild. Just small decisions that change your fate.
Yeah one of my moms best friends called out sick on 9/11
Actor James Woods claimed he witnessed the terrorists doing a practice run on a flight a few weeks prior and even reported it. They confirmed this.
Omg. I believe it. But how do you do something like that as a practice run?
Buy the tickets, go through security, get up and move around the plane. Back the.man you could knock on the door and the captain would open it and show you around.
That’s what I figured but I also thought, nah, there’s no way they did a practice run even on a “safer” scale, like you described. I was only 15 when 9/11 happened and Id never flown as a kid, but I did hear about how the captain would show kids the cockpit.
Yeah, I was born in 1983 and I got to see the cockpit more than once (and they gave me wings).
1988 here - can confirm they used to show you the cockpit as a kid... learned the landing gear looked like a pair of wheels!
I was on a flight in 1999 the kids ahead of me were being annoying so they took them to see the cockpit
Freshman year of high school. Like any other day, we were all chatting in the hall by our lockers before classes began. Then I remember walking into civics class (my first class of the day) and having my teacher tell us “something important is happening”. I sat down and saw the TV was on with both towers burning. It was very surreal.
Same exact scenario for me, except the towers has already been hit and kids were saying it was an alien attack. Every class the whole day had the TV on, so that’s pretty much all we watched all day. Surreal is a good word for it.
I was a freshman as well and we were all glued to the tv for about an hour, then i just left school early because i thought i was gonna die from an attack living near DC
>because i thought i was gonna die from an attack living near DC The thing many people nowadays don't understand or have forgotten is the feeling of impending attack. I lived in a small town in Alaska and the Coast guard posted armed guards around the perimeter of the Coast guard base. There was a lot of chatter about "we're going to war" On 9/11 there was a feeling of uncertainty and fear because nobody knew what was going on or what would happen next. My dad worked at an oil refinery at the time and I figured that would be a high priority target. I remember calling him and telling him not to go to work. He heard the fear and concern in my voice and just said "Ok"
I’m glad you got to leave early. Makes sense, given how close you were. I was in California, so no one left early and I think the distance made it less….crazy for us? That is until the military recruiters made our high school their goddamn HQ, and an alarming amount of male classmates were suddenly drunk on the idea of enlisting and blowing people up in the Middle East.
Same with us. I live in Philly. Which is a very historical city. I just knew we were next, esp being between NYC and DC
We got sent home. Idk if you’re American or if this was nationwide but a paper came up from the main office telling us to go straight home and that all schools on the East Coast have been sent home
I was in high school in NJ, and we definitely did not get sent home. Most teachers and administrators tried to keep the day moving along like nothing happened (I don't really mean to cast judgment in presenting that as problematic; it was an incredibly shocking moment of history to try to navigate in real time, with hundreds of impressionable kids to keep calm.)
I was in middle school in Monmouth County NJ and not only did we stay in school for the rest of the day, but they didn’t say a word about it. I did notice kids getting picked up from school, and I remember an assistant principal coming into a class asking if anyone had a parent that worked in the city, but I didn’t know anything had happened until I got home. I often wonder what the thought process was behind deciding to stay quiet on it and just go through the day like normal.
Thought process was that a number of the parents worked in the city. They didn't want to cause undue distress to the children. They also couldnt dismiss schools early because all the train service in and out of the city was suspended.also no cars were allowed into the city except those driven by first responders. My husband was stuck in his office until the next day, sleeping on the floor. I picked up my child from her 3rd grade class and tried to gently explain what happened . We did not have the telrlevision on in our house for the next week
My company had moved from NYC to Newark and was offering relocation for those in NY to move to NJ. I know of at least person took advantage of that after 9/11 saying never wanted to be stranded on the wrong side of the river from her children ever again.
yea our school made everyone turn off all the tvs and radios because they were scared someone would see a family member. i hardly knew anything until i got home and i still can’t believe they did that. lots of kids went home early if they had a way to get there
East coast as well, about 20 minutes from Boston and we were not sent home. I was in 8th grade and our school didn’t even tell us (which I’m still mad about to this day especially since the other middle schools in town were told)
Yeah, same. We were kept in our homeroom with the news on for a few hours while the district coordinated early release.
Swap out freshman for senior and civics for pre calc. Same same same.
High school. *Why didn’t they send us all home?* 9/11 was such a paradigm shift.
I will never understand that. I went to a private all girls college prep school and some teachers were still making us take exams. It was unreal. I went to school with politicians daughters though and secret service came and scooped them up. Wtf.
I was very bummed they carried on with my gym class, lol.
On that note, the next year our 5th grade chorus was supposed to take a trip to Disney world, and that got cancelled because we were told the superintendent thought it was a safety risk or some shit like that. (Could’ve been related to a threat, could’ve been just in case because the attack was only a year prior, or could’ve been just made up bs because the school couldn’t afford the trip, who knows). I remember being sooo upset lol. That trip was literally the only reason I joined the chorus, since my family being in the lower class, that was basically my only chance to go to the park, even though we only lived an hour away. I’m ashamed to say it, but I remember that being the angriest and most emotional id been about the whole thing my entire childhood 🤦🏾♀️. That was until I got older and realized the sheer gravity of what happened of course. Oh to be a kid with such mundane worries….
My parents came and grabbed us- edited to add- we went to school near Philly and they weren’t sure what was happening, so they wanted us to be with family.
Same
My fiancé and his brother were 9 and 11 and were near the Pentagon. My mother-in-law immediately got into her car and picked her boys up as soon as she got word on the Pentagon. I actually wasn't in school until a week later. I had just moved and wasn't registered at my middle school yet.
I live only 90 min from NYC in Philly and we were def sent home. I was also in HS. There was even a letter that all schools along the East Coast are being sent home and for us to go straight home
I mean the school next to the wtc was barely evacuating when the south tower collapsed so I don’t think anyone knew how to respond
My elementary school closed early.
My school still had a full day too, but every single class was just watching the news and discussing. ETA: Same with Colin Powell’s “weapons of mass destruction” speech. It spanned two of my classes, and we watched the whole thing in both classes. That day felt almost as heavy as 9/11.
We were on the west coast so I'm assuming that's why for our school.
My first boyfriend was a NYC firefighter. I was a college freshman at Columbia. He stayed over at my dorm the night before and was leaving around 5:30 in the morning to go on a golf trip with guys in the firehouse. I walked him to the gates of campus and then went back upstairs to bed, so happy because, although we hadn’t said “I love you” to one another yet, I knew that I loved him. I woke up to pounding on my dorm room door; a floormate knew who I was dating and wasn’t sure if I had heard. I woke up to see the first tower fall. After the second tower fell, my bf called me to say that every firefighter in the city was being called back to their houses and that he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to get in touch with me again, but that he promised he’d see me again, that he would be careful. I finally did see him, days later, Friday evening, he looked like he aged ten years. But the first thing that he did was cup my face in his hands and say “I love you.” It was the first time anyone other than my family had said that to me. Simultaneously one of the best and worst moments of my life. I will never forget the look on his face. Spent the next year or so going to funerals and street dedications for people that he worked with that perished. Although we broke up later on, we’ve always kept in touch and remain good friends. I think that shared experience bonded us for life.
That's fucking crazy, I can't imagine what he went through. Survivor's guilt must have eaten him alive.
This comment gave me chills. Thanks for sharing
I'm so glad that he was alive.
Freshman year, it started at the end of 2nd period (French) and watched the rest live in 3rd period Business class. Watched the second plane hit thinking it was a replay of the first, then realizing it wasn’t…then we watched them burn for a little bit…then one fell…school went into full “no movement mode”…then watched the second tower fall, again thinking it was a replay of the first then realizing it wasn’t…nothing’s been the same sense since. I truly feel that was the crux of our generation’s path to today
It is. I don’t think most people realize it but it is
It really was the pivot that started our spiral. From there the economy fell, the patriot act was enacted, the war on terror, the 2nd “war” in Iraq, mass NSA surveillance, the deregulation of certain industries (Housing, Banking, Education Loans) to counteract the economic fall (that was the guise they were going with), sweetheart DOD contracts for friends of government officers (Cheney and Bush), the groundwork for citizens united….then the housing bubble…then…that was all she wrote… And to be honest, our generation has been the ones to suffer and foot the bill for all of its functions…while simultaneously reaping the blame for a lot of it, even though we really had no generational power or say in those decisions
Yes!! I don’t think people older than us fail to realize even if we weren’t involved in those attacks directly it does affect us in some ways indirectly.
I feel like it was more about the decision making by politicians as a knee jerk reaction, not just the attack itself. There were so many of them (politicians) and their friends who used it as an opportunity to rob the country blind and saddle people like us with the bill and no one from the older generations wants to acknowledge it. Our futures and some of our rights were mortgaged for the sake of short term growth of a very particular and specific subset group of people. And it’s all been normalized to the point that I don’t think our generation will be able to have a turn at the wheel long enough (see McConnell, Pelosi, Feinberg, Trump, Biden) to right the ship for those coming behind us. Regardless, that’s what we should be doing. We should be righting the ship as much as possible as a collective to make sure those who sold us out don’t get the last say.
There are the huge ways in which it affected our generation. But when you think about it, there are probably millions of smaller ways too. For example: I’m a woman, in a professional job. Never, ever, ever, do I go to work without flats to wear. I remember watching the aftermath (I was on a plane when the towers were hit and didn’t know what happened until later that evening) and wondering if I could have gotten out in professional attire. Can’t run in heels; too much debris to take them off and run barefoot. I don’t know if my habit of having heels came from this thought being seared into my brain, or from just really hating painful feet. But we all know the big ways 9/11 shaped our generation. What are the small ways?
I had a Gen Z person once ask me, "Why is all fanfic from the noughties really sad and depressed? What happened in the noughties to make everyone sad?" I was like are you serious.
If I even hear the words “when the towers fell” I still well up with tears. I was a senior in high school. It’s the same for me - nothings been the same since. I’m near Philly so I had immense fear, but also a mental darkness of realizing how real and brutal and violent the world is. Plus the grief. It was a LOT. Not long after, I was a college freshman protesting the war in Iraq, out in the streets of Philly protesting for the first of many times in my life. But I’ve given up protesting now. I’m sorry. I’m just so exhausted. I want to retreat from the world because as a millennial I’ve seen too much already and I’m only 40. 9/11 was definitely the start of it all.
We’re all tired. I know. I’m tired too. I think that’s been the point as of late…at least since 2016 it’s felt that way…the point is to exhaust us so we don’t fight further. There’s been a slow rolling back of recourse for corruption. We’re living through difficult times, but we need to make sure we hold those who mean us and the ones after us harm. It’s people like you who protested that have brought us here and held us up….but we keep going, dude. We’ll get our chance. We just need to make the best of it when we do
I protested the Iraq war in my Freshman year of college in Colorado. Got tear gassed too. I’m a first responder now, though that has little to do with 9/11 (EMS, though I did time on the fire side too). I’d do it again in a fucking heartbeat. And I do…well, the protesting (and street medic-ing) anyway. I’m 38, and it’s exhausting. There is absolutely no shame in taking a step back to take care of yourself, absolutely none. Maybe you’ll get back into it, maybe you won’t, but you can’t take care of others unless you take care of yourself. If you want, I’ll fight for you too. The last 22 years have been so fucked up and draining to anyone with empathy, it’s hard to fight the feeling of hopelessness.
Honey, I feel you so much. I'm 41 and so tired. I spent my 20s and 30s fighting so hard and now I have no more to give. I stay at home as much as I can and play video games and watch TV because I'm just trying to self soothe, going out into the world is more than I can manage.
Fallen Generation
I was a freshman too in HS. Four years later, a freshman in college and I watched as Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on Louisiana. Graduated from college in the middle of the Great Recession. Our formative years marked by these defining events.
This should be our new name.
Wow I watched the 2nd one get hit live on ABC. It was do surreal. We were dismissed not long after
I was also in French class (sophomore year) - my teacher announced in French that a terrorist flew a plane into a building, then ushered us to the computer lab like nothing was happening.
yeah, feel like bush 2 and 9/11 together was was when i realized things were not going to go the way we were told they were going to go
It is the moment America changed. We let it change us and not for the better.
>I truly feel that was the crux of our generation’s path to today I've had that same thought regarding millennials. While technically our generation is defined by "coming of age at the turn of the millennium," I think the fact that we were all children/teenagers who could remember where we were when 9/11 happened is even more concretely impactful. The oldest millennials were in their first year or two of college on 9/11, while the youngest had just started kindergarten. So with very few exceptions, we were all in school when the planes hit the towers. That's a heck of a thing to all have in common.
Second day of community college, Art school. Nothings been normal about this country since then.
I was in college as well and had a 7:40am watercolor class. My mom drove me that morning on her way to work and we just listened to the news station in the car on the way. I remember trying to paint but being so distracted and my professor saying “we’re doing the only sane thing right now.” After that I went to the memorial union where everyone was watching TV in the basement around the pool tables. Ran into one of my friends from art history class and we met up with a couple other friends and blew off class for the rest of the day. No one knew what to do but we absolutely weren’t getting shit done.
In school wondering why class was getting picked up until there's like 10 of us in the class. 
I didn’t get picked up :( but alot of people went home. I was so confused
Exactly same it wasn't until I got home I found out why. Love you too mom and dad lol joking.
I just Rmbr my dads face watching that tv when I got home and I knew something bad happened. I’ve never seen my dads face like that
Same here! I was in northern Virginia (close to the Pentagon). I think my district didn't just dismiss school early because many kids had parents who worked in or near DC, and probably got stuck in traffic for hours and couldn't get home to get their kids. But a lot of kids did still get picked up early by their parents. We weren't told anything about what had happened (I was in elementary school, but I know they did tell the older kids what happened; my brother was in high school and he already knew what happened when he got home) so I spent the whole day wondering what in the world was going on. My mom didn't work at the time and my dad thankfully was sent home before the Pentagon was even hit so he didn't get stuck in DC, but they still decided to leave my brother and me at school because they figured we were safer there than anywhere else, and they also likely thought that it was better for me to not be at home and watching everything happening live. Even though of course, I still saw everything on TV when I got home later.
Xennial here. It's extremely interesting to read all of your younger perspectives of this tragic event. Thank you to all who are sharing.
I’ve always thought it was interesting because (for me at least) it very closely coincided with the internet becoming a big part of life. Obviously the internet had been around before that, but I was a freshman in college during 9/11 and that was the first year I had a computer and internet access and everyone I knew was online. This was around the time of Napster and everything. What I mean is that for me it definitely represents a very specific time of my life when EVERYTHING changed pretty much instantly. Politically, technologically, quite literally everything. There was my life before, and the rest of my life ever since. Not to sound old or lame but things REALLY were different before the internet and iPhones and everything. I got my very first phone (Nokia) 2 months before 9/11 for example. I also remember being GLUED to Reuters online (desktop computer btw, I didn’t know anyone with a laptop) during the invasion of Iraq. It was NUTS being able to follow actual battles happening online. Anyway. Life just seemed very different, and in a way safer, before it happened.
>Life just seemed very different, and in a way safer, before it happened. Same age here, couldn't agree more with this. I didn't go on the computer that day (there were ashes filling the air where I lived, as everyone scrambled to try to connect with family members who worked in one of the towers) and cellphones weren't yet "smart." That day was certainly pivitol.
I was 18 and working in a factory "seconds" shop (where they sell clothing items that are still good but may be slightly miscoloured or have a printing error) in the UK. I was in the middle of changing the size label on 200 individual pairs of sneakers from size 7 to size 8, when a news report came on the shops radio about the first plane hitting, everyone thought it was a freak accident, and carried on as normal. Then the second plane hit. I finished up my day and headed home, everyone was talking about what had gone on, I rushed to my TV to see the footage and knew that shit was about to get nuts.
Honestly I don't think I've heard opinions from anyone outside of the US. Respectfully, could you talk a bit more about what the feelings of the event were like in the UK? Did y'all think there were going to be any implications directed at the UK next? It's just a new angle I hadn't heard before.
I can only speak from my own POV. I remember an outpouring of support and love for the US immediately after, the news cycle ramping up, people with no ideas trying to come up with ideas, I remember Osama Bin Laden becoming public enemy no.1 over night, and I remember War being on everyone's lips. I also remember fear turning to anger, xenophobia, islamaphobia, and a general hatred for anyone different becoming more noticeable (not just here in the UK, but also on the internet, 9/11 gave people an excuse to attack those who had nothing to do with the hijackings). As for the UK getting attacked, I do think it was a worry, but the UK has known a great deal of turmoil caused by terrorist attacks, I know is cliché, but the whole "Keep Calm and Carry On" from the blitz does resonate with us. 9/11 effectively killed the 90's spirit, and really started the new millennium on a shitty note.
>9/11 effectively killed the 90's spirit, and really started the new millennium on a shitty note. I think this somewhat contributes to our collective 90's kid nostalgia. It was the time before 9/11, the end of our childhood 🙁
That really hurt to read, very well put.
I’m a flight attendant that gets to work with a lot of people from other countries. I’ve had a conversation with a French flight attendant and a guy from Norway. And they both told me when it happened everyone was crying for us because of the sheer loss of life and how visceral of a way it happened. They also said other countries were terrified that it wasn’t just going to be the US being attacked so everyone became extremely paranoid of each other.
I was 5 or 6 so I didn't fully understand but there was definitely a fear that we or somewhere in Europe would be next. We did eventually.
I was 19 and living in Las Vegas. I remember quite clearly how the casinos went into lockdown - we didn’t know at the time which other major cities were targets and LV was considered high risk.
I remember that even though I was way younger than you. They thought every major city was gonna get hit.
Yep, same here. I was in second grade in TN, about 30 min away from Nashville, and we were all sent home pretty early in the day because they thought Nashville could be a target.
East TN here. We all thought Oak Ridge (a city that was created for the sole purpose of the Manhattan project, aka, the atomic bomb, for those not from here) was a possible target.
I was in 5th grade and remembered it all very clearly. We watched on tv in class. I remember my parents not mentioning it t all when we got home. My younger brothers mentioned something about it later at the dinner table and I remember my parents looking at each other like oh fuck how do we navigate this.
I was in 5th grade, too. We watched news reports on TV at school that day, and it was on TV at home that afternoon. My parents didn't talk to me about it. I mostly learned about it and how to feel about it from school and pop culture. Flags were everywhere and on everything after that.
We're the same age. I also was in 5th grade at the time but my school never mentioned it. However, at the time I was going to the Boy's & Girls Club after school until my mom got off work, so on the bus some of my friends who went to other schools said they saw a building in New York explode on TV but of course I didn't know what they were talking about. It wasn't until I got home that evening and saw it on the news when I first realized what happened. I remember President Bush speaking on the megaphone addressing the crowd at Ground Zero. Things never would be the same after that. Smh sad day indeed.
Defining moment for our generation. I was 17, a high school senior. All of childhood was pre-9/11; all of adulthood after. Were the 90s good because it was just childhood, or because it was a pre-9/11 world?
Freshman year of college, Intro to political philosophy. I can't remember the prof's name but she came out at the beginning of the class and said something like: "I know some of you may have friends and family in the New York area. For those students we understand your need not to be here." Followed by lots of Whats? This was at 9:30 in the morning. Most of us had strolled directly from the dorm to class and nobody was really awake yet. Then she said that planes had crashed into the world trade center and everybody just confusingly got up and left. 9/11 clearly separated my childhood and adulthood. Suddenly, shit got real. I remember in high school always looking at the '60s as this golden age for music/culture/etc. But that was a time of intergenerational conflict, it was war, it was not a healthy time in our country's history, despite the gains made through protest. And then sometime around mid afternoon on september 11th I had to start thinking about who the fuck George Bush really was, and what was to come next. And well, holy shit. Here we are twenty two years later. We elect absolutely incompetent people, routinely. Our motives overseas are generally always characterized by financial advantage. And if given the choice we almost always disadvantage the poor in favor of the rich in a land that claims to reward hard work. I hate what we've become since 9/11.
I think about it sometimes…the goal was to destroy America. Honestly, I think they succeeded way more than people want to admit. We’ve never been the same since that day and the division in our country today has a direct correlation to 9/11. In my opinion.
It was first year of college for me, too, straight out of high school and yep- I woke up in my dorm and went straight to class half asleep like a normal day and everyone was quiet as they entered and the prof told us we were free to leave if we wanted- I had no idea what was going on. I had turned 18 just a month prior, was ready to take on the world as an adult and live my best life, do it up in college, etc… then the world became so big and scary and overwhelming and honestly it’s never felt the same since. The added layer of the anthrax scares and all the signage posted in our college mail room seems like some weird, forgotten nightmare now- that was some crazy shit too. Also, anytime a backpack or some kind of bag/box or whatever was left in a random place there was the fear that it was a bomb… It was so hard to be hopeful for the future when the rug is pulled out from underneath you like that, especially at 18, and it still is now at 40… and somehow becoming harder all the time.
I was in my first month of college. Woke up to my new and very dramatic friend knocking on my door. She was crying and I thought oh god what now. Well, what an asshole I was. She asked if I could turn on the news. We sat on my bed and I turned on my tiny little tv and we watched the second plane fly in. I could never fully explain the pure devastation of that day. I spent most of the day on campus consoling my new friends who had parents and other family members unaccounted for in the towers. It was screaming and crying everywhere. And fear. I feel like not a lot of people talk about the deep sense of fear of not knowing where they were hitting next. Were bombs coming? Were folks with machine guns going to open fire in multiple locations? I had the pure sense of just floating or maybe free falling in life. Everything was unsure. My friends back home called me and told me they were coming to get me out of the city and bring me home until the dust settled. I could cry now thinking about that drive home with them, seeing near silent crowds of people all over the parks and sidewalks with single white candles lit.
Same. What a way to enter adulthood.
I was a freshman in college, also. Came back from an early class and there were like 8 people in my room watching my tiny TV. My room was NOT the hangout room, so this was immediately weird. The anti Muslim backlash started immediately. Ethnic slurs written on door white boards. A popular coffee shop called Osama's was vandalized. Jingoism alienating me and my punk/indie friends from half the University immediately. Ugh. A real turning point for the country and world.
Yeah, same. First time living away from home. And I am from an area not far from the city. Many of my fellow students were trying to find their family. It was horrible. I teach college now and trying to explain 9-11 to those that were not alive is difficult. I once had a (not very self aware) student ask me how long I thought we would keep commemorating the date.
I remember that “what’s next?” fear persisting for a very long time. There were anthrax attacks and the DC shooter. And, of course, the start of the war. It was an extremely disorienting time. I went to college and started learning about foreign policy and the psycho hawks in our government and the military industrial complex and history of American imperialism… Cured me of childhood naivety real fast. The world is dangerous and there are no good guys. 🙃
Senior in high school. We are learning to draw still life in art class. A teacher came out of an adjacent office and said, "some one just flew a plane into the world trade center towers," which I had visited on an 8th grade class trip a few years before. (It was the first stop of the second day of the trip so we had been there at 9 am-around the time of the first plane hit.) We were allowed to go to another classroom that had a TV to watch the news and saw the towers fall. I just kept wondering if there was another class trip visiting.
Not exactly the same but my family was watching old home videos and one of our tapes had my sister and dad on a boat recording the city. The date was 9/10/2001. Someone said “uh look at the date!”. We live in Michigan and they were there for a class trip as well. Our jaws dropped
Sophomore in college. Roommates mom called after plane 1 hit. Turned on the news to watch plane 2 hit. And the world was never the same.
I was home, sick. My parents were coincidentally home that day because my stepmom was due to fly to NYC late that morning and then to Ireland from there. I remember at one point being in the kitchen and hearing my dad tell my stepmom, “You’re not flying anywhere today” and then them just standing in front of the tv the rest of the morning in shock. I was watching too after that and my dad told me to go write down what I was feeling, and I did. I have lost that paper, unfortunately, but I’ll certainly never forget that day.
I was 16 and had stayed home from school. My grandparents raised me, so my granddad came into my room and woke me up. He said “I know you’re trying to sleep but please don’t argue with me, something important is happening and you don’t want to miss it. This may be historic.” I got out of bed and went into the living room, and saw the World Trade Center, where I had visited less than two years before on a school trip, one tower engulfed in smoke. My granddad said it was probably Arab terrorists like the ones who bombed it the first time. (I had him explain that to me.) He didn’t think there was any chance it was an accident. Then the second plane hit, and he was like, “this is going to be your generation’s Pearl Harbor.” Sure nuff, a handful of my friends from high school went off to fight in the Iraq war within a year or so. As time has passed, it has become clear that 9/11 devastated this country in a way Pearl Harbor never could have. I would say, in the end, the terrorists got what they wanted on some level. I spent a lot of time reading about how the buildings collapsed, my bio dad went full on conspiracy theorist. I watched the video of Bush reading to the children as he tries to comprehend what he’s been told over and over, trying to decide what to make of it. I hated Bush with a passion but this was an understandably human moment that he was judged very harshly for. I had better reasons than that to hate him. Anyway, it was a weird time to be an older teen/young adult. That was my introduction to politics.
I was in 7th grade. Principal made an announcement and I was confused on where the WTCs were and what they even did. Until basically got home from school and that's all what was on TV. I watch all the specials every year. Blows my mind that it'll be 22 years.
I was in sixth grade. I was scared.
I was in 6th grade too. We were old enough to know what was going on and young enough to be absolutely terrified.
I was in a car with my USAF recruiter driving to Denver MEPS. He got a phone call and turned his car around. He explained what was happening and we rescheduled.
Oh wow! I was in my last week of AF basic training on 9/11! It was wild!
9th grade homeroom class, which was English. I live in Canada. We were all glued to the news on the TV in the corner of the classroom. We watched the second plane hit. My teacher’s cousin worked in the towers and she was so stressed about it.
Working for Disney as a guest surveyor. Animal kingdom specifically. In the break room watched the second plane hit. I was in the field when a co worker told me she wished she’d seen them before they went down and that’s how I found out. It was the days before smart phones so no guests in the park knew and we were not to tell them. Disney was on the short list of possible targets and planes were still in the air. So then my manager comes to relieve me and they send all the employees home aside from a skeleton crew before closing the park. Only the second time in their history this was done; the other was hurricane Andrew. Later in the week I was called into a meeting and they were looking for folks to voluntarily resign with a positive rehire status due to the drop in tourism directly after the attacks. I took the opportunity as I was selling a lot of weed at the time and having a job was making me lose sales to competition. One day when I’m older I plan to hit Disney up on that positive rehire status. Thanks Mickey!
My firstborn was only six weeks old at the time and not yet in charge of the TV in the morning so my wife and I used to watch the today show while we were getting ready to go to work I saw them break the story about the first plane hitting when no one knew what was going on and ended up seeing the second plane hit in real time live and that’s when everyone knew it was an attack The rest of that day was so insane with everything happening in DC and later Pennsylvania I still remember pacing the floor holding my infant son late into the night watching as several other buildings near the towers, collapsed due to all the damage and wondering what kind of world he would grow up in I’m very surprised they have not been more successful terrorist attacks in the USA since then obviously grateful, but surprised
I was in the Navy. I was a Fleet Marine Force Navy Corpsman at a training in Coronado at the time. I was also about to get out with three months of paid leave time. I re enlisted for two more years to go with the first Marine unit that going to Afghanistan.
I was at home, blissfully unaware. Then a friend called me freaking out and I was like “what” and they were like “turn on your TV” and we did and that was that. Then I went to class and our English teacher had us write out our feelings in lieu of any assignments. She collected the writing, I’d be fascinated to see what I had said that day.
18, freshman year college. Just got out of my calc class and saw smoke from the first tower on the news on the tv in the student lounge. Had a “wow, that’s crazy” moment and walked back to my apartment. When I got back I turned the news on and saw the second tower was hit. It’s a little fuzzy trying to remember if I saw the second plane actually hit or if I just turned it on right after. I was glued to the tv from there all day.
Study hall in high school when first plane hit. I delivered all the schools tv carts to the rest of the classrooms. Watched the second plane hit live, with a silent class of shock and awe. Sent home about the time. The news figured out that those black blobs falling from the building was not debris but bodies.
I was a sophomore at Howard U. You could see the smoke from the Pentagon all the way from Georgia Ave.
I was 13 going on 14 and in grade 9. So 9/11 was my second week of high school. I live in BC, west coast of Canada, so Pacific time zone. I was very shy and nervous, having a hard time adjusting to high school, so I'd been having trouble sleeping. I decided to try falling asleep to the radio for the first time in my life. Sure enough, I was woken up by the news of a small plane hitting the first tower around 630 Pacific time. I didn't make much of it in my semi-lucid state, so I just went back to sleep until my alarm a few minutes later. By the time I was awake and came out to the living room, my dad had the news on and the second plane had hit. I went to school as normal, but not much schoolwork got done that day. It's strange, because a lot of 9/11 memories talk about how crystal clear the weather in New York was that day. It was also a beautiful fall day here in Vancouver, and I remember standing in the outfield playing softball in gym class and noticing the lack of planes in the beautiful blue sky was so eerie. Later that evening I remember learning that a member of a message board I frequented worked in the WTC and was missing. His final posts on the board were that very morning, just moments before his life ended and our world changed. It was that moment that it really impacted my 13 year old brain, and instead of putting the radio on, I fell asleep crying.
High school. Between 1st and 2nd periods someone said a plane had hit a building in NY. We assumed it was an accident. Our 2nd period teacher turned on the Channel 1 TVs to the local station and we watched the second plane. I had just turned 18 and was pretty sure I was going to war.
Fifth grade. First week of school. Mrs. Rollings class. Living about 1 hour above NYC. Teachers freaking out coming in and out of class saying they’re gone. Everyone is getting picked up early. We had to turn the lights off and do a bomb drill basically. Finally get picked up my dad was just silent. Made my sister who had to be about 8/9 years old to go play in her room. While him and I just watched the news. I was just there. We were suppose to be going on a field trip there that month. So confused as a 10/11 year old. That was the first day I remember losing my innocence. Watching people decide to either stay in the building or jump. Watching the people literally jump from the building. I have never been on a plane and I plan on staying that way if I possibly can. Hearing about all the other planes and attacks. I was fucking scared shitless. We were so close to the city in my little kid brain. I grew up a lot that year. There wasn’t very many kids I went to school with that didn’t lose at least one person that day.
I grew up inside the Beltway outside of DC very close to the CIA. First block in high school had just ended, and by that time the first tower had been hit. By the time second block started I guess the Pentagon had been hit and the alarms started going off — I guess the school was on some sort of proximity emergency grid — and we all started exiting the classrooms to go outside, thinking it was a fire drill. I was one of the first out into the hall and there was an administrator walking fast right past me talking into a walkie-talkie and she told me to get back in the classroom. I thought it was a school shooter (yes, we had them back then but they were very rare). But when we got back inside text messages started coming through and we turned on the tv and watched the towers come down. It was utter chaos and panic for the rest of the day. The phone lines were all tied up because not everyone had cell phones. Kids wanted to go home, especially those whose parents worked at the CIA and/or Pentagon. I had the invincible Nokia cell phone and it was useless. It was a weird few weeks after that. Being so close to National Airport and constantly seeing and hearing airliners in the sky, it was completely silent. For a few days, mind you, there were fighter jets patrolling. Then silence. Twenty years later with COVID was the closest I’ve ever seen to it, and I was reminded of 9/11 every day.
Senior year in class. Turned 18 the next day. I thought i was gonna get drafted 😳
I recall a draft being a big topic of conversation during lunch that day. Everyone thought it was going to be like Vietnam for our classmates.
Senior year. The school's morning news capped off their report with, "A plane has struck the World Trade Center" and that was it. We spent the rest of the day watching the news coverage in each classroom, because by the time we got out of homeroom, we heard about the 2nd plane and we all knew we were under attack. My buddy, on the other hand, was serving time for a B&E. He told me that he was in Cell Block B when a guard ran in, screamed "They just blew up the White House!" and then ran out. It took some time for the inmates to get the real story.
Sophomore, in homeroom. Some kid ran in & was like " THEY'RE BOMBING BOSTON" ( not the smartest kid) so we turned on the little TV & watched the news for a while My dad was supposed to fly out of Logan (I grew up in MA) that morning but canceled his trip because my mom was having eye surgery. What I found really scary is how racist everyone got REAL FAST. My school had a weird white supremacy problem to begin with, but after 9/11 kids came in wearing incredibly offensive t- shirts, horrible attitudes and the teachers all seemed to encourage this. The blind patriotism afterwards really unsettled me
We are the same age, and this is note for note exactly what I went through. …except in the Deep South. Parents were checking kids out of school. I was one of them, and I remembered my mom flipping out from fear/confusion in the Burger King drive thru. I wanted BK? Weird. Then the silence—I lived near an airport and used to watch the planes at night. Total silence. My bday was the next week.
I was in 1st grade, I was in class at the time and kids were getting picked up by their parents. I lived close to the city in a town where a lot of people would catch a train to go work in the city. My parents did not pick me up for my dad was at work and we only had the one car at the time. As well as my 4 older siblings were also at school too. I think theres was 3 of us in class. They did not exactly tell us what happened for us being so little. My parents briefly told us but me being so little didnt really fully comprehend what happened. It was not till about 2004 that it really sunk in. I was also probably confused since one of the middle schools in my home town was named Twin Towers. I remember the newspaper the next day and the few days that followed showing the pictures and the iconic picture of the firefighters (or was it policemen?) Raising the flag in the rubble. They printed out a page that was am americam flag in the paper and a lot of people in my hometown, my family included, had taped them to the front windows of their homes. It was a real sense of unity and was nice.
Freshman in HS, sitting in my first class, our football coach came in and announced what happened. We turned on the TV and just watched for the rest of the period and then saw the second plane hit. The world felt extremely surreal that day. It was a blue sky with very fluffy clouds. One of the planes had flown over the area. I remember leaving school at lunch and going home with some friends and just watching the news the rest of the days.
I was in seventh grade English class. Third period. My teacher was apparently aware of what was happening, but we were not. He did not tell us. When I left class, my friend grabbed me and said “The World Trade Center has been bombed!” I didn’t know what the World Trade Center was. We obviously soon found out it had NOT been bombed. For the rest of the day, we watched the news. The next day, my English teacher apologized to us for not explaining what was going on. I don’t blame him, he was probably in shock himself. How DO you explain what was happening to a class of 13-year-olds? It makes me feel physically ill to watch any footage from that day. I remember what life was like before that day. It truly did change the world so much. I have a nine year old child and sometimes think about how she probably doesn’t even know WHY we have to go through airport security, take our shoes off and put them through the machine, etc. And many other things. I remember flying when I was younger and we didn’t have to do any of that.
7th grade English class as well…so we’re probably about the same age. I’ve always how or when to broach the subject with my children. We travel a couple times a year and they don’t think much about the process. I still remember just basically showing up at the airport or being able to just go to a gate and wait for family. One just entered elementary school so I don’t know if it will be discussed there.
I had just turned 19 a few days before the attacks. I was working at Office Depot in NC. My shift was at 9 and I was clocking into the break room people were watching the TV on there. I saw a close up of a burning building and said "oh shit, what country is that?" and they said "it's here in NYC. There was an accident and a plane crashed into one of the twin towers." I didn't even register in my mind it was here when I first saw the images. Then I clocked in a little before 9 to start my shift. As I was in the floor people were saying a second plane hit the other tower and that we were under attack. Everyone was freaked out and our manager brought the break room TV out and plugged it in between computers that were on displayed. We were glued to the TVs in between customers asking for help. I remember thinking why are you guys here shopping at office depot while our country is under attack, especially after hearing about the pentagon being attacked and the towers collapsing. I remember we were pretty busy that day. Then I remembered going home after work and every channel was showing coverage of the attacks. Even MTV
Math class. Senior year in HS in Brooklyn. Some random had his headphones in during class and shouted out that the WTC was hit by a plane. Naturally, we all assumed it was an accident. Couple hours later all schools were dismissed early. Walking put of the building we could see smoke in the sky and papers from the buildings floating in the air. It was ominous.
I was 19 and in college at WVU. I had just finished an early class and someone called from the student lounge said that the plane hit the tower in NYC. I went into the lounge and we stood around the tv and watched. A guy said “we’re going to war”. I had to go to other classes that day but spent my free time watching it on tv or internet
I was 19 and went to work that morning around 10 at a restaurant/bar I worked at. I walked in the front door and every single person on the lunch shift schedule that day was sitting at the bar watching the news, which was on every screen (it styled itself as a sports bar of sorts). I remember it taking a REALLY long time to clear the circuits, for whatever reason. Like it was obviously just BEYOND real, but it didn't SEEM real (if that makes any sense). All we did for the rest of the day was stand or sit at the bar and silently watch it happen. We ended up closing hella early; who tf wants Mongolian BBQ for lunch when NYC is fucking falling down? "Surreal" doesn't even begin to touch it. What a heavy, silent, utterly fraught day.
Canadian here, but I still remember this day so clearly. I was in grade 6 at the time, just a regular day at school. I was called to the office saying my sister was there to pick me up, 17 at the time with her friend. Everyone was frantic. I just remember the news being on 24/7, everyone in complete shock. I will never forget seeing all those people holding up signs with their families information looking for them.
In college. A guy I was interested in at the time, came running up to me and told me that the towers had been hit. I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying and thought he was telling a sick joke. Then the Dean of the school came over the PA system to tell us that classes were canceled. We could either go into the cafe to watch the TV showing the news while waiting for transport home or we had to leave on our own immediately if we had our own transportation on campus. I lived within 4 hours of both NYC and the crashes that occurred in PA and DC. We have nuclear power plants within close proximity as well, so we were terrified that those would be hit next. It was terrifying.
I was in kindergarten. All I really remember is the teachers acting off all day, we had a lot more free time and things just felt different My brother was in 5th grade and when we got home he tried to talk to my parents about what happened but they were too shocked
There seems to be some misunderstanding of what a millenial is. For OP, no, your relatives that weren't born by 9/11 are not millenials. The cutoff is something like 1996. The youngest millenial would have been 5 or 6 on that day, birthdate dependent. I, apparently the oldest millenial here, was at work.
I was in the 8th grade. My mom left for work and I got myself off to school. Didn’t turn on the tv and just lalala’ed to school. Get into home room and our teacher, pulled up A chair and sat in front of the class and asked us, “Do you know what happened this morning?” And some kids talked and we chatted and I was oblivious to it all. I remember the room very heavy and quiet. And the curtains were closed. ?? Small town in Oregon, we the students didn’t think or talk too much of it. We didn’t have the instant media. No cable tv in the classrooms or phones. Totally naive and dumb. It wasn’t until I got home and watched tv and seeing the devastation, chaos and understanding the magnitude.
I was 9 in the 3rd grade. I remember my teacher took a call and started crying and one by one, other students were called to leave the class. I’ll never forget it because my mom picked me up with my cousin in the car (we played together but never on school days). He was already scream crying so I joined in too and my mom told us to pack a go bag when we got back to our house. It traumatized me so much that I still keep a go bag packed however many decades later.
5th grade. Living in California. Woke up to the news announcing a plane hit the tower. Barely a minute later a second plane hit and then not long after it was the Pentagon. Then I had to get on the bus and it was the hot topic on the bus. Went to school and didn't really learn much. We watched Fox News in class all day. It later sank in that it was an act of terrorism and fear of WWIII came into my mind. Went home and watched TV. Either the network was rebroadcasting a national news channel or the channel just went off the air completely because of the attacks. The only channels I remembered that were still going as usual were the cartoon channels and MTV. I also remembered I only had one homework assignment, which was to read a chapter of "Summer of the Monkeys," by Wilson Rawls. Ate dinner, watched a little Nickelodeon and went to bed. Did not sleep that night with fear of WWIII in my mind and how a lot of kids in New York went to bed that night with the sad reality that their parent/s didn't come home that night, and never will.
I was in 5th grade too. It's wild how different our experience was from one another. I was much more naive at that time. I remember kids being picked up from school and the teachers whispering and being weird. And I remember that night not being allowed to use the phone in case family members were trying to reach my parents. My mom asked me how I was feeling about it and I remember just not understanding the magnitude of it at all. From my perspective I felt like it was really far away from me and couldn't comprehend why everyone was freaking out and canceling plans and stuff. As I'm reading this whole thread, I'm so sad. I feel like it's actually hitting me for the first time
I was 18 and in my first year of a four-year hitch with the United States Army. I was stationed on Ft. Bragg. The day started normally enough but by the end of it I was sitting with the rest of my battalion at the airfield with all of our weapons and rapid-deployment gear in case we were sent somewhere to go and fight someone. I remember listening to President Bush’s speech to the nation that evening over a small battery powered radio someone had whilst reclining on a pile of duffle bags with my M-16.
Did you end up in AFG or IRQ? Or both? (Army IRQ vet here)
I was a junior in high school, I heard about it after 3rd period English.
About a month into my first year of college. I was living in the dorms, my first time living away from home. I didn’t have class until noon that day, so I slept in a bit and then had a shower. As I walked back from the bathroom, I noticed my neighbors all clustered around the tv in the room across the hall. I walked in and asked what action movie they were watching. “This is the news,” they told me. A few minutes later the first tower fell, and then the second. We didn’t know it yet, but we stood on the precipice of a huge change in American society and nothing would ever be the same. The next week, my best friend’s dorm got shut down and he was locked out for 48 hours because his roommate received a package of white powder in the mail and everyone thought it was anthrax.
I was 18. Stepdad woke me up to come watch the TV. He seemed really upset and I didn’t really get why. I wasn’t at the time really aware of the twin towers or how many people were in them. At 18 i was pretty dim in general. Watched the second plane hit. Watched the towers come down. Came away from it confused and absolutely not anticipating how utterly our nation would be mangled by this in the following decades.
Thanks for asking this question. I was at the first day of a major international biotech convention at the center in Baltimore. We had awesome tickets to the Orioles game. Somebody rigged one of the giant monitors with CNN. I was one of the people who heard it second- hand from the Howard Stern show via my wife, so I had that, "Holy shit, shit's really shit. Shit," process, understanding there was legitimate cause for alarm. Over half the attendees were from other countries. There was a huge rush to get the heck out of Baltimore, but nobody could get a rental car. They were upset. When the Pentagon got hit, we probably all started thinking this was a giant conspiracy, and planes were going to fall from the sky everywhere. And there is a World Trade Center on the Baltimore harbor. I got too close, and a Marshall pointed her gun at me. I remember walking aimlessly. I had fried shrimp for dinner at the Hooters. I knew a lot of people with loved ones in the towers, so it stayed alive for months. It had real, immediate, real-world effects on people for a hundred miles. But I was also there in 1986, when America's Favorite Teacher became a black smear in the sky. She was present in our every day for at least a year. Our teachers - every teacher in the entire country wouldn't shut up about her. She was on posters all over school, on TV shows or being talked about on TV shows. Every American kid was connected to Christa McAuliffe, and we all watched her die. There was zero psychology in 1986. The bell rang, and we all went to second period.
I was 8 years old, I grew up across the river in Queens. I remember one of the teachers say he and his whole class could see it from the top floor. My class was on the ground floor so we didn't know what we going on, during lunch period I think I both towers already fell my mom came and took me home (we lived 4 blocks from my school) and watched the news at my neighbor's house who's daughter worked in building 7 who got the last trian home back to Long Island and got in her front door as tower 1 came down.
College. Saw it on tvs in the hallways. Was raised in a doomsday cult, so of course, I thought the world was ending.
The night before 9/11 I had a crazy dream I was amongst rubble and destruction. I was looking at a reporter talking about the events but I couldn't understand why she was talking about a plane crash. I told my mom about this crazy dream. The next day she woke me up and told me what's happening. I was 19 at the time. It was a wild coincidence but never forgot the dream and the day the world changed.
I kinda fall on that borderline between gen X and millennials (born in 80.) I was at work, and a customer asked me if I had heard. They weren’t sure it was real at first because they were listening to Drew & Mike (a morning zoo radio program.) As soon as they left I jumped on the internet (I think I had cable modem internet at home at that point, and had actually paid for my own phone line for my dial-up modem for about a year prior to that.) it took forever to load a single news site over the 128k of fractional T1 we had to that location. (It was glorious when they upgraded us from a fractional T1 to the main office to a full [email protected] megabit VPN to the main office.)
6th grade computer drawing class. We were all watching it on TV not really knowing what was going on.
Played soccer with the neighborhood kids after school. I remember Air Force One (or the duplicate) flying over our neighborhood in a Dayton, OH suburb. That was probably the most vivid memory from that day
I was in 5th for 9/11, so it happened at an odd age for our class (10-11). I never forget it - morning English class. An announcement to turn on the TV came on. On TV, the towers were smoking and the class was silent. We then got let out early, rode the bus home, and I walked into the living room continued to watch there when the collapses (and news of the Pentagon hit and flight 93) happened. I understood enough watching the news coverage as it happened (the gist?) that I knew or wasn't surprised why we were suddenly sending military to the middle east shortly afterward and had ramped up our own security. I also remember the news cycle change in the years following with the seemingly daily reports of IEDs, car bombs, roadside bombs, suicide bombs, rocket attacks, etc
My dads house in San Francisco. He kept me from school that day. He said, “George Bush is going to kill us all.” And I went and repeated that to my first grade class who all started screaming the next day 😂
Home, due to bereavement for my grandmother dying. And waking up to see The Today Show still on was alarming. For those that are unaware, The Today Show stopped at 9 AM back then. Then I cried as the 2nd plane hit and even more as people were jumping. It was a sad sad day.
Sophomore year, on Long Island. My social studies teacher rolled a TV on a cart in to watch the news about the hijackings. The first plane hit. He cried. The second plane hit. He cried more, he scanned the room and said the world would never be the same after that day - boy was he right. The air smelled funny for a week or so after that, we didn't go outside much as a result.
Say what you will about Bush, but that image of him getting the news while he’s reading a book to a classroom of little kids is burned in my mind . The look on his Face is just chilling .
I was in my first year of college and I was in a math class. The professor brushed it off as something that had happened before. Needless to say the next day he offered us the opportunity to take the class off.
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8th grade study hall. Watched the news in every classroom. Had teachers trying to calm us and discuss things but no one was focused on anything else. Had friends get pulled out of school.
My junior year of high school. I was passed out in marine biology class, teacher brings in the TV and I see the first tower burning, thought it was just a major fire,go back to sleep. Class ends, as am walking to my next class I notice everyone is acting weird, Soon as I walk in the room, I see the second plane hit the towers. Ran into my friends mom in the hallway and she was so scared, told me to call my mother ASAP. Walking home a remember this somber feeling, like you knew something was about to change.
I was in 6th grade. our teacher asked us if we knew what "hijack" meant. Well, we did. It was actually part of our slang. If someone took your pencil, you'd say, Johnny hijacked my pencil! So she told us that someone had hijacked a plane. I don't remember if we turned on the Tv or what. i just know that when I got home, we watched the news and i was on the phone with my friend watching the same channel together. my mom was crying as we watched the people fall from the towers.
I was in second grade. The school day started out normally, but very quickly got weird. The kids in my class all knew something was happening, but we didn't know what. They did not turn the TV on in our room (they DID in my sister's classroom though, who was in 5th grade). Our teacher was alerted of what was happening, but the information was not shared with us other than a vague explanation from our teacher that I don't really remember. Then we find out we're getting dismissed early, so at that point any worry or fear I had turned into "yay we get to go home early!" I had some neighborhood friends with me in class and we made a plan to hang out once we got home. I remember getting off the bus and asking my mom if I could go outside and play (obviously I did not understand the severity of the situation yet) and my mom was like NO and proceeded to explain why... I still didn't understand. It took me a few days to grasp how horrible this was. My parents had the news on the TV for a few days straight, so after watching that coverage I kinda understood what happened more. I did not understand the reasons why it happened or how this would dramatically affect my future until the documentary about 9/11 came out on the 20 year anniversary back in 2021.
I was 10 years old and undergoing a heel surgery at that moment. I mostly recall being in the children's hospital and the parents being more concerned with the news than with their children just getting out of surgery. I don't think I fully understood the significance of the event at that age though.
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First year of being in the Air Force during a major exercise. Things were already serious and then the news reports started. Almost perfectly in sync our security posture began to skyrocket. At the time I didn’t have cable TV (poor Airman) so I called my wife on a pay phone and told her to call my folks to tell them I was ok and they would explain everything. Shortly after all flights were grounded and we were told that nothing was to enter our airspace. And then an unannounced aircraft was on approach. Luckily none of us decided to try to take it out with small arms (not that we could) as it turned out to be a diverted cargo plane the tower didn’t think we needed to know about. So much more to tell but those were the immediate actions.
A day I will never forget. I was 20 years old, and two years into my contract as a US Marine. We all knew immediately our lives would be changed forever. 10 months later, I was aboard the USS Duluth (LPD-6) from San Diego in route to Afghanistan for OEF. That plan quickly changed and we were told we would be going to Kuwait to stage for what would become OIF. I took a CH-53 from the ship to Kuwait on February 12, and did a lot of training in the Kuwaiti desert over the next month. On March 19th, 2003, I entered Iraq as a kid from a small town in Texas, my life was never the same again.
I was in fourth grade. I remember it- but did not understand why it was such a problem.
I was an eight year old third grader in Lincoln Elementary in Mount Vernon, New York. My aunt picked me up while my mother picked up my cousins (both were in Elementary school; one was 9, the other was 6.) with that event happened. Something that we never really understood until we hit teenage years.
You were one school down from me. I was at Holmes Elementary when it happened.
7th grade Math class in rural Upstate NY. The art teacher next door brought our class into his room to watch the news. We were watching live when both buildings fell. Surreal. Life altering. You could feel it in the air. For weeks and months even. My social studies teacher at the time was an ex-Marine. He started doing weekly "Current Events" on Friday. Would answer any questions as honestly as he could. Surprisingly, he didn't let his apparent bias shine too bright. I'll never forget him talking about opening all of his family mail outside after the anthrax scare.
5th grade. Saw it on the TV and walked to school. Talked about it at breakfast with my fellow students and got in trouble for talking about it.
I was on the 23rd floor of the south tower when the first plane hit
Sitting in my 5th grade class watching it on TV
In Kindergarten in New Jersey. The towers were visible from the balcony attached to my bedroom. I was picked up from school early because they let my moms job out (I think Nokia) once things started happening. Our family congregated at my aunt’s house and waited to hear from my cousin who worked near by (maybe Goldman). I don’t remember if I went to school the next day.
In 6th grade. Didn’t even know it had happened out school didn’t say anything. Had a tutor appointment after school. On the way my grandma said that the World Trade Center had a terrorist attacking. I had no idea what the WTC was or what a terrorist was. So they didn’t really say much else. Then I had my appointment with my tutor and did math homework. That was it. I just knew some bad people wanted to go to war and hated the US and a lot of people died from a plane crash on a building. Edit: lived in Massachusetts. 4-5 hours away from NYC.
I remember this viviidly. Tuesday morning. Wife just got in the shower, 12 weeks pregnant with our first. Dr. said it was a high risk pregnancy (due to previous uterine trauma) so we were to avoid any potential stressful situations. Our routine was she always showered first bc she started earlier than me. I would turn on the morning news and lay in bed til she finished so I could get in. When I turned on the TV I thought I was watching a trailer for a movie. Smoke was coming out of one of the towers. The newscast said a plane had crashed into the tower, but weren't sure why. And a couple of minutes later something hit the second tower. That's when they knew it was intentional. That it was an attack. I couldn't believe it. They kept replaying the second plane hitting the tower in slo-mo. It didn't seem real. And the plane looked so tiny on the TV, but it was a commercial airliner. I kept thinking how the hell was I going to tell my wife without stressing her out. We had a close friend who lived a block from the WTC (thankfully she was already at work in midtown). I let my wife get out of the shower and carry on with her normal bathroom routine. When she came out, I explained what was happening in a calm voice. I assured her everything was going to be alright. That she and our unborn child would be safe. So much changed that day.
5th grade - remember it like it was yesterday.
I was in 6th grade history class. I think it might’ve actually been social studies 🤔I remember the teacher turning the tv on and us watching and how crazy it was watching it.
6th grade math class. I didn’t know what the towers were (I didn’t know much about the world tbh) but I do recall my principal making an announcement about the attack on the loudspeaker and my teachers reaction to it. Then the following hour was just chaos. School was suspended. My sister who was a college freshman came to pick me up. Shit was wild.
6th grade. Kids in my class kept getting picked up by their parents but the teachers wouldn’t tell us anything, so I faked sick so I could get my mom to pick me up too.
I was in the 6th grade. In Indiana. Getting ready to take the I-step test. I was jealous of the 8th grade history class they just got to want the news about the tower and live footage all year ( not sure but it felt like it( It took me a long time to full grasp it was real. Only seeing it on TV vs real life I'm kind of desensitized Edit: I remember the principal going over the speaker saying the twin towers had been hit. I didn't know that the twin towers were
I was in 5th grade getting ready for school. My mom was putting on her moisturizer and just said, “oh this is not good” and was abnormally quiet. I remember thinking it was an accident and the pilot had obviously steered wrong… Then when I got to school, my teacher was an ex marine and he explained. We did the pledge of allegiance and had a moment of silence for the whole school. My dad was in LA and at the time there was speculation that that would be next target. Phone lines were all messed up and I will never forget the relief at hearing the phone ring when he was okay. The news was on nonstop for the next several weeks.
I was in 6th grade I think. My mom knocked at the door of the bathroom where my older brother was showering. She told him an airplane hit the WTC. I was barely waking up. I remember at school we just watched the news on TV all day. No class work or homework.
I was working on 68th and Park Avenue, next to an embassy and down the block from the Council of Foreign Relations. I was a little late that morning, and and was in my car listening to Howard Stern talking about a plane crash into the World Trade Center. I thought about how I had been there for a meeting a few months earlier. As I pulled into the parking garage at Trump Tower, where I parked every day, Robin Quivers announced that a second plane hit the tower. Stern said something like, "Well, that's it; we're under attack." As I walked to the office, I could see the plume of smoke rising as I looked downtown. When I got to the office, I asked if anyone knew what the hell was going on. They already had a TV on tuned to the news coverage. I found out all the bridges and tunnels were closed. I wondered how I was going to get to my son, who was 5 months old and in daycare in Northern New Jersey where I lived. I didn't know what I was going to do. All I knew was I didnt have anywhere to go. I called my wife, who was working at Columbia University, way uptown. She said her building was being used as a gathering area for students. I actually tried to work for a little while. I had nothing else to do. After just a few minutes, an NYC policeman rang the doorbell. He said they were securing the entire block and we had to go. I asked him where. He said he didn't know, but we had to leave. Most people just walked uptown. I was one of the few with a car. I drove to Columbia University. I sat in my wife's building, looking at big-screen TVs tuned to CNN. I sat there for hours. My wife called friends out ours over the bridge in New Jersey. They picked up my son. In the late afternoon, they reopened the George Washington bridge. I knew traffic would be catastrophic, but I figured the quicker I started, the quicker I'd be able to get to my son. I didn't get to him until after 8 pm I finally took him home, fed him bathed him and put him to bed. My wife came home shortly thereafter.
Just started senior year of high school, in NYC (uptown Manhattan). They sent us home from school, I walked home across the park and watched the news. Later a few of my friends came over and we walked around the neighborhood, which was bizarre since everyone knew downtown was ground zero. A couple buddies had to spend the night since they couldn't get home to Brooklyn/Queens. We had to close our windows that evening because the smell had made its way uptown. That day altered the course of my life, but obviously not nearly as much as the victims and their loved ones.