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"ImmoralMinority" (araimondo) 09/10/2019 at 20:05 • Filed to: None

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Chariotoflove > ImmoralMinority 09/10/2019 at 20:13

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Our parents’s generation all say everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot.  9/11 is that moment for our generation.  I remember exactly what I was doing when I saw the report.

Jayvincent > ImmoralMinority 09/10/2019 at 20:18

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T hanks for the dignified reminder. I -almost- lost a loved one that day, by a matter of minutes and yards: they survived but didn’t come away unscathed. Just a coincidence, but I’ll be flying tomorrow and I’ll say goodbye to those closest to me the same way I always do, fully expecting I ’ll see them again in a few days, until that day when I don’t.

MM54 > ImmoralMinority 09/10/2019 at 20:21

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Hard to believe it’s been eighteen years

Cash Rewards > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 20:31

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Same. I know exactly the conversation I had

CB > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 20:34

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I was in second grade, and a kid told me on the playground at lunch. I thought a plane had flown between the buildings and clipped both wings on each side. That night, my parents wouldn’t let me into the family room, as they sat watching TV. I remember seeing the rubble.

It’s odd how much of that I still remember.

Chariotoflove > CB 09/10/2019 at 20:38

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It seemed like something that could only happen in a movie, not in real life in America. That’s why it stuck.

Cash Rewards > CB 09/10/2019 at 20:53

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It always amazes me the range we have here. I was a sophomore in college, and I know there are some that are older than me by a good bit. It also amazes me that people who were kids  who have no real memory of this are adults now. It's been that long. 

facw > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 20:59

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I was a sophomore in college. I had slept through my AI class (this is what happens when professors schedule classes for 7:15AM), but then went in to my job at the library. On the way across the street I heard some students talking about a bunch of majo r websites being down, which I took to a sign a major DoS attack had happened (I guess there wasn’t an attack but the practical effect was the same). I went in and started working on a systems inventory project that the summer guys hadn’t finished. When my boss got in his first words were “Did you hear we’re at war?” I spent the rest of the morning reading news (most major sites were unreachable but I was able to find good coverage on Arstechnica and a few other places where people wouldn’t think to look for terrorist attack news). At one point I went over to the main library building to deliver some ethernet cables and they had set up a TV in the entrance lounge area, so I watched about the Pentagon attack there some. Around midday they announced the university was closing (my boss had previously told me I could leave, but I didn’t have anywhere to be, so I hung around a bit), so I went back to the dorms and spent the rest of the day watching CNN in a friend’s room.

Cash Rewards > facw 09/10/2019 at 21:11

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I was a sophomore, too. My suitemates and my schedule was that I was the third one up to shower, so I was awake but not out of bed. First one up came running in saying the world was ending, and turned on the TV. The first tower had just fallen, but I didn't believe it. I grew up an hour north of NYC, so I remember the first time they were bombed. I remember saying"they're twin towers, you just can't see one behind the other from where the camera is". Then the camera switched, and I realized my suitemates might be right. We had a world trade center in new Orleans, too, so they scrambled the Jets over the city.

Brickman > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 21:12

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I was just about to head to school in 5th grade. Saw the tv and thought the morning news was just showing a clip of some new action movie, but it kept going on and then saw the 2nd plane strike the tower. Something big must of happened, the school day was a bit laid back and teachers were quiet.

Two months or so later we learned where Afghanistan was.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 21:18

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Indeed. I was a junior in high school, and I first heard about it on the radio as I was driving to school with my best friend in the integra (what is now my racecar). I thought it was initially a joke or some kind of a morning DJ gag, and changed the station because it sounded preposterous to me . Once we got to school, teachers had TV’s turned on... The second plane hit the south tower at 7:03AM Albuquerque time, right as we were driving to school for 7:20AM first period classes. Most of the day we watched coverage of it in classes, including as the towers fell live.

nFamousCJ - Keeper of Stringbean, Gengars and a Deezul > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 21:41

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Algebra class in highschool someone was talking about the P entagon being hit. Didn't comprehend or think anything of it. Next class was photography and our teacher rolled in the giant ass out dated crt tv tuned in to the news and that's when we saw the towers. The room was silent. The first tower collapsed and the reactions were those of fright and disbelief from teenagers that never knew of such a thing occuring in their timeline beyond what they've read in books. 

Chariotoflove > Brickman 09/10/2019 at 22:13

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I’ve been reading a novel written during WWI. Rural characters that hardly knew geography learned where all the towns in Europe were before it was half over because they were sending their sons there to fight. 

Chariotoflove > Cash Rewards 09/10/2019 at 22:15

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I had just started my post doc the year before. It’s funny to think I could have been a father to a bunch of the folks here. 

Chariotoflove > facw 09/10/2019 at 22:17

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I went to work after, but everything was in a holding pattern that day. The whole country seemed in a daze. 

Chariotoflove > Cash Rewards 09/10/2019 at 22:20

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There is a World Trade Center in Dallas too. An ugly brown building. People stepped up security,  but terrorists weren’t gonna give a shit about a building on north bound Stemmons freeway. 

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > ImmoralMinority 09/10/2019 at 22:54

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I wish these statistics would start including all of the people who have died from lung and other health issues directly due to the collapse of the buildings. I also still found it wild that a month or two later on a school field trip that year I remember seeing the smoke across the water from the cleanup effort still going on. It would have been insane had this happened while I was in college since my school was right across the water. I did have a front row seat to the construction of the freedom tower though since it took so long to complete. 

Cash Rewards > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 23:01

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Yeah, in retrospect, but remember no one had any fucking clue what was happening

Chariotoflove > Cash Rewards 09/10/2019 at 23:19

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Every one was freaking out. Once the unthinkable happened, it seemed like anything could happen. 

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > Chariotoflove 09/10/2019 at 23:32

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i was refurbishing computers in a rickety old shed for minimum wage and thought it was a joke when i heard it on the radio... was a little surprised to be seeing it on the telly when i got home

also back then i still had long midnight blue hair a face full of piercings and a lovely leather trenchcoat wich i still have...and will probably last longer than i do

(over here it didnt take very long for the focus to shift from how terrible it was to how badly the us of a was over re acting tho..wich well..never really stopped)

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > Chariotoflove 09/11/2019 at 06:26

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I was impressively impaired by alcoholic beverages after the first day and night of a two day work conference in Lightning Ridge, an opal mining town in western NSW, Australia.

I was watching as the second plane smacked the tower live on TV...that was bizarre. Then the first tower went down...

...and the pub had shut by then. So I went to bed.

Without wanting to seem like I’m being too insensitive...most of us at the time treated it in much the same vein as ‘just another mass shooting in America’. Appalling. Interesting. Stupid. Over there....

We were a tiny bit wrong in hindsight...

Cash Rewards > Chariotoflove 09/11/2019 at 09:04

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Exactly, well put

Pickup_man > Brickman 09/11/2019 at 09:27

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I was about the same age, in middle school. I remember that several classes all went into a room where a few teachers had the big tv on those rolling metal stands at the front of the room and were gathered around watching the news . I remember the plane hitting the second tower, and the first tower collapse for sure. I don’t know how long we were all in that room or if they took us out, but I do know that it was very quiet the rest of the day and we didn’t do much for school work.

I didn’t really comprehend what had  happened at the time, it almost felt like an action movie, or one of those controlled building explosions.  I could tell by the people around me that it wasn’t good, but it didn’t really sink in for a while what had all happened.

Hamtractor > ImmoralMinority 09/11/2019 at 10:42

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I was a fireman in a Denver suburb on September 11th, 2001. I had been to conferences and trainings in various other cities where members of FDNY were instructors. I befriended many of them, and every fireman I knew looked up to FDNY as the elite, the Navy Seals of firefighting...

I was watching TV that morning, watched the planes hit, watched the towers fall, and headed to my firehouse that afternoon as we got recalled to staff up in case the attacks weren’t over. Got released the next morning, went home. I couldn’t stop watching TV. I probably watched the coverage almost non-stop for 48 hours. Fucked me up.

I remember when the first tower went down, thinking “Holy shit, that’s hundreds of dead firemen...”. Then the second tower went. While I had no idea how many civilians were still in those towers, I knew that the FDNY had hundreds of guys in there, because they would NEVER back down from a rescue. I was crushed.

I remain angry to this day. I remember Captain Paddy Brown, who I met in passing at a conference in San Diego, and was the most decorated fireman of all time in the FDNY. I remember the guys from Rescue 1, some of whom taught me some amazing tricks to forcible entry on the fireground. I remember the entire crew at Engine 23, the Lion’s Den, who lost six that day and hosted myself and my fire department friends when we went to support them a month after... To this day, even though I am no longer a fireman, when I hear the sound of a Scott SCBA alarm going off, it gives me a terrible knot in my gut.  I hate today.

Chariotoflove > SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media 09/11/2019 at 10:56

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It was a  far worse blow than something like the Oklahoma City bombing because it was an attack from outside. It put America in something of a wartime frame of mind. It was stirring a hornets nest. Our generation’s Pearl Harbor.