9/11:Remembering that day ten years ago

Good lord you all are young. I was 19 soon to be 20.

Older than you, son...if you caught my post that is.

You're just an old man.

I was young enough not to comprehend the full repercussions of the event, but old enough to know it was very bad.

Give or take a few years, it would have been vehement anger and disbelief instead of confused incomprehension...

@DS: You were 22, not 20. I was 13.

edited 2nd Sep '11 8:47:40 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

@DG: I was 21. We're both wrong.l

I was in second grade, so all I remember was writing a bunch of letters to the NYPD and NYFD wishing them the best of luck with rescue efforts.

I was 11 years old when that happened.

They took off The Simpsons from broadcast that day. In Australia, there were certainties a child could rely on. Pokemon would always be played in the mornings, The Simpsons always at 6pm on Channel 10 WITHOUT FAIL. When 9/11 happened... they took the cartoons away... I wasn't so much more pissed that they took our cartoons away because I was selfish, but because I just wanted to watch something else... ANYTHING ELSE... other than this grim footage that will probably stick in my mind forever, worse even than the Photomedia war photographs I'm subjected to at University now. I'll remember the 9/11 news footage more because I was a child and had seen nothing like it.

And this is the part where I have to tell the truth even if it pisses some people off. Remember, not only was I a child, but an AUSTRALIAN child with no concept of such a massive tragedy on a personal level outside of a fucking Die Hard movie... so when my Dad told me that a plane had run into the World Trade Centers... I told him, "Whoa, AWESOME!" - but my Dad... he just looked at me and put his hands on my shoulders. "It's pretty bad, son." he said. He didn't say "son", he used my real name, of course. I just put that there in place of my real name for anonymity issues.

But he explained to me why this event wasn't nearly as awesome as a childhood of Dragon Ball Z explosions and action movies on TV I was admittedly way too young to watch had led me to believe it was. It was the day I learned a valuable lesson. That lesson was this, outside of the movies, explosions don't tend to be as awesome as you think they are. Because they tend to hurt people. They tend to KILL people. They tear lives apart as much as they tear architecture and civic property apart.

That's why it wasn't okay for me to think it was awesome, and my Dad helped me understand why even if it occurred miles away across the Pacific, it still was NOT COOL to think it was awesome in any way. I was 11 years old, and until that point even some episodes of DBZ like the one where Piccolo gets his arm ripped off were a bit too brutal for me. I didn't know any better.

It just wasn't something anywhere near close to home, but over the decade to come we Aussies learned that America kind of needed us once again to fight for their cause, whether we were enlisted or not. It's something that lingers in your mind.

When I see those "What will YOU do to remember 9/11?" ads on Blip.tv's advertising before I get to watch my TGWTG content... I just don't know how to feel. It just reminds me of how awful and selfish I was as a child to even IMAGINE that the Twin Towers blowing up was awesome at all... it reminds me that America is still hurting from that, and it doesn't need people from across the ocean to pour some salty ocean water into the wound on the way over there if I visit again.

I seem to remember my mom was stuck in Halifax.

Freshman at college, and it was Chem I at 8 in the morning. I'm not a morning person, so, with time differences, the first tower got hit about fifteen minutes before classes started with me waking up about five minutes before classes started and running my ass off without paying attention to anything.

I didn't think about it 'til later, but I distinctly remember my professor saying that he was proud that we had still shown up to class and he was expecting us to pay attention to his lecture despite what had happened. Given that this was an 8 in the morning class I think most everyone else in the hall had no idea what he was talking about either. I got back to my dorm room just in time to see the South Tower fall. Still had no idea what the hell was going on, but my roommate filled me in. There was a girl in our hall sobbing her heart out because her father worked at the WTC and she had no idea if he was in there.

edited 2nd Sep '11 9:56:30 PM by Bur

I was 42, sitting at work at the cleaning company, wiping soot of of someone's books. The guys in the electronics department had just finished putting a couple of tvs back together after cleaning them, and turned them on to check that they worked right. They wound up bringing one out into the main work room so everyone could watch the coverage while we worked.

We were discussing how much of our gear we could load into the vans if we took all of them...

Do you know what happened to her dad?

I don't follow; to help at Ground Zero?

^ To do anything we could. We cleaned up messes. That was our job. We wanted so badly to do something and that was all we could think of.

By the way:

READ THIS. Have Kleenex handy.

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:14:05 PM by Madrugada

No. I was incredibly closed off from other people at the time (through both my own faults as a hermit and the efforts of a stalker), so it never occurred to me to even comfort her, never mind follow up on her family.

Were you there, then?

Oh. That's rather sad. I hope it turned out for her and her dad, then...

No. We were in Wisconsin...

Yeah, me too. Nothing was ever mentioned in the hall again as far as I remember, so I like to think that meant he was okay. Maybe in a different building, maybe hadn't turned up for work yet...

@Maddie That definitely needed a few kleenex.

Fellow Wisconsinite! 0_o

Oh, that sucks. I would have loved to help. I remember wanting to go help. I wanted to go with the Boy... no, I think I was still in the Cub Scouts at that point... and go fix the fallen buildings. God, was I young...

Edit: link. Same site as the one Mad posted. Excellent article. This made me feel really good...

edited 2nd Sep '11 10:45:14 PM by USAF713

I was in second grade. I think we were in the middle of a spelling test or something when the principal's voice said something over the intercom and we were let out early. I don't remember much, just that we were all confused because it wasn't scheduled to be a half day or anything that day.

I learned about what happened from my mom after I got home.

I was 5 years old and I don't remember a thing.

@Mad 42? You're older than I thought.

edited 2nd Sep '11 11:18:38 PM by lolacat

Repeats "HOLY CRAP YOU ALL ARE YOUNG" comment.

I was a Freshman in college in Houston eating an early breakfast, and I remember feeling how surreal the entire event was when we watched it on TV. Most people my age remembered some earlier attacks from our Middle School/High School days (earlier WTC attack and Oklahoma city bombing), so nobody could appreciate the true scope of the destruction. We sure as Hell didn't know who Al Qaeda or Bin Laden were.

edited 2nd Sep '11 11:38:05 PM by ForlornDreamer

@Maddie

this made me get kinda prickly-limbed, and I'm not sure why.

I know. That whole thing just leaves me numb every time I read it. And I read it each year.

But for me there are two parts that, as you put it, leave me prickly-limbed:

and

And at the same time, "Nameless Extras Run Screaming" would be a great name for that trope, wouldn't it?

edited 2nd Sep '11 11:56:35 PM by Madrugada

I was 12 when it happened. I remember coming back home and switching on the tv and seeing the explosions.

Its not all that clear though. I remember the death of Princess Diana more clearly as she interrupted my saturday morning cartoons.

I was 24, and sleeping off what must have been a late night, because Mom beat on my door about 10 AM or so and said "WE'RE BEING ATTACKED!" just like the Orcs in Warcraft II did. I flipped on the TV and...wow. It was like the Challenger accident all over again.

I didn't go to work that day. My office was (and still is) about 2 miles from The Pentagon, so it would have been a supremely bad idea.

I was 17. Due to construction at my high school, my senior year wouldn't be beginning for another month or so, so I was still at home that day. I heard about the first plane while listening to The Howard Stern Show, then caught the rest live on TV. The experience was quite like watching an especially long disaster movie, except it never got exhausting or dull or cliche. It was exciting watching everyone, even the newspeople, freaking out over the event. I watched all day, and was addicted to 24 hour news networks for the rest of the year. I suspect this experience is a large part of why Mockumentary and Apocalyptic Log are now among my favorite tropes. Only they come close to replicating the authenticity of watching live news coverage of a disaster unfolding.

edited 3rd Sep '11 1:51:10 AM by Tongpu