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Mr. President
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The leaves that are green turn to brown
Jul 2001
time: 15:22
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Night, September 10, 2001. I went to bed earlyish and slept like a log. It had been a normal spring day in Melbourne and I was looking forward to another normal spring day in the morning.
7:00 AM, September 11, 2001. My mother entered my room to wake me up for class, as is the pattern in my house. But something was different; there was something in her tone, something more urgent when she told me to get up.
I stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen. Before I was even fully awake, my mother said to me, "Someone hijacked four planes, and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The World Trade Center fell down, there's nothing left."
It's not the most pleasant way to wake up. I hurried into the living room where Fox News was on, showing footage of the planes slamming into the towers. I was numb. I wandered about the house in a daze. I almost got in an accident driving to school. My math lecturer never turned up to class, which was just as well seeing as I was in no mood to hear about complex numbers.
Instead I sat on the grass with a couple of friends, facing up to the unfaceable. I almost could not believe that it was real, that the sun shone on Australia while half a world away chaos was being visited on my home city.
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:22
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I think I've got everyone beat for sheer surrealism of the initial news. I was grocery shopping in a giant store here that also sells electronics (this would be 4-5 pm in Turkey, which is 9-10 am EST). Upon entering the store, the first thing I'm greeted with is a wall of televisions, all of them tuned live to the events in NYC, all of them in Turkish. Most of the stores shoppers have gathered in front of the Wall and are talking excitedly in hushed tones -- and I can't understand anything! The images are riviting, but there's no telling if I'm looking at an accident, an attack, or what.
I grab my groceries and rush home, where I find my daughter crouched in front of our newly-purchased TV, tuned to CNN-Turk; she's turned the sound all the way up in the hopes of hearing the English original text underneath the Turkish over-dub. My wife is also there, but our satellite system was just installed a few days earlier and I'm the only one who knows anything about it. I find the BBC and spend the next 7 hours watching TV non-stop, as various tv-less neighbors come and go and my wife frantically e-mails back and forth with her sister in Manhattan.
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Bereta_Eder
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I was at home. When I saw the first plane hit I thought thius could be a freak accident. When the second hit I was almost sure it was deliberate.
Then I waited for more? because noone really knew what was going on, how well this thing was organizzed, what would follow (if anything).
At a certain point at that day I was taken by surpise by a distinct feeling (which I was sure it was true at that time) that the US is no longer in this world. Meaning that its presence had for a split second there withdrawn to itself.
I felt that my region was less safer and I believed that if *anyone* wanted to take advantage of the situation and start a mayhem in these troubled parts now would be the time. Fortunately noone did.
Even though I was thousands of kilometers away from NYC and the tragedy I still felt a need to call my family and see that everyone is OK and how they were doing.
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Adagio
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I just got home from school, turned on the computer (as usual), started ICQ. As soon as I got online, a friend of mine told me that two planes has hit WTC, and they believed it was OBL's work. I haven't heard that name before, so I thought he was just making some joke, and included some random name. It just sounded to unrealistic... He told me to turn on the tv, to see it myself... I was a little sceptical, but as I turned on the tv, I was schocked (If I'm not mistaking, the Pentagon just got hit, a few minutes later)... I went back to the computer, and told some other friend about it, and then I left the computer for quite a while, to see the news... Later, I went to McD with the friend who told me about it, and we kept talking about it...
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MrFun
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of Iowa
Nov 2000
time: 23:22
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It was over a month since I found out about my ex-boyfriend's suicide, and only a little over a week since I have been back home from Ecuador.
I was still in grief over my ex-boyfriend's suicide, readjusting being back home in the states after living in Ecuador for three months, getting used to living on campus after moving out of the apartment my ex and I lived in, and finally had recovered from a combo of diahrea, vomitting, headache, and strep throat on Sept. 11.
That morning, I was eating breakfast in the cafeteria and there are four mounted televisions in our cafeteria. A professor turned the channel to CNN, and there I was, watching the news about the first plane crash into one of the towers, but I had no real reaction at that time--maybe just shock.
Never saw the crashes themselves live, but days later, would watch a recording of the crashes themselves.
That was a day that all the people in the area of Ground Zero had their race hidden -- they were all grey, covered in ash/dust.
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Bereta_Eder
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quote:
Originally posted by SlowwHand
let outrage and grief be expressed in their forums.
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I remember it.
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orange
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It doesn't matter what your name is!
Feb 2000
time: 00:22
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I had just finished my 8:00 class and went back to the dorms to visit my girlfriend at the time, when she said "you better come have a look at this"
So I came in and she told me about how the first plane hit, and how shortly after the second plane had hit live. I stayed there and watched for a little bit, backpack still on, standing.....
I eventually went to my 11:00 class, at which point all classes were cancelled so I came home and continued to watch the television, both in the Trabant University Centre halfway between classes and my dorm, and then at home. Such a crowd formed in the TUC to watch this...it was incredible...everyone sort of oozed through the place at a slow speed, staying with one television until it was out of sight, and eventually jumping to the next television as they made their way through the building.
That's when I heard about the plane in Washington and the one in Pennsylvania and became worried for my own family, at least, until I knew where in PA the plane was headed.
I remember thinking the whole time that OBL was somehow behind it...and I said some pretty awful things regarding what we should do to him...
Then around 7 PM (?) I remember watching arial footage from Kabul, the attacks by the Northern Alliance...and that's when I realized just how large a conflict this could turn into, and hoped that our leaders would make the right choices.
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Captain Antilles
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I was right where I am now, 8 blocks south of the WTC site. I was coming up from the cafeteria, and one of my co-workers told me a plane had crashed into the WTC. And I said "No it didn't, I was just there 10 minutes ago and it was fine!" So we went to the other side of our building and looked out, and the first tower was topped off in smoke. But until the 2nd tower was hit, I wasn't even concerned, with all the smoke I couldn't see how big the hole was.
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reismark
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Paragon of Virtue
Jan 1970
time: 00:22
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I left for school at 8:00 in the morning - forty-five minutes before the world went to hell. Part of me knew something, *something* was wrong, because traffic seemed to be at a complete and total standstill that morning - buses took extra long to come, moved at a snail's pace - and I didn't get to school until just before class was scheduled to begin (when I normally arrive an hour beforehand).
When I got to the classroom, it was almost entirely empty. The few that were in there said everyone else - including the instructor - were upstairs watching the fire. "What fire?" I thought to myself, and I headed to the (cue ominous music) thirteenth floor, the highest point in the building, to find out what the hell was going on.
When I got up there, everyone was standing around looking out from the windowed promenande. Off in the distance, the towers were smoking like chimneys. My first thought was how surreal it was; how much like a plot in a disaster movie this was. But it quickly proved to be real... not one minute after I arrived upstairs, the South Tower crumpled to the ground.
There were audible gasps and exclamations around the room, and at that point, most people left and went back downstairs. I stayed upstairs (knowing there was no way class was going to go on) and that's when the gravity of the situation began to sink in: This is real. There are real people dying over there. Some group of heartless bastards has cruelly attacked us.
I didn't care who was responsible at the time - all I wanted to do was get home and be with my family. My father was in South Dakota on a business trip and was scheduled to fly home the next day - he ended up having to wait until Friday and drive half the way. I called my mom at work, and (not surprisingly) she was already sprinting over to get me.
I head outside, and find her on the sidewalk - she'd been running up and down the block looking for me for fifteen minutes. We head back to the car, only to find (cue ominous music again) that it won't start - dead battery. We end up waiting two hours for a tow truck guy to come and jump-start the car so we can get home. My brother and sister were safe in school until the afternoon, and my sister was kept largely oblivious to the situation. I don't think I ever hugged them harder when they came home that afternoon.
Here's the thing, folks: Treasure the day, not because of the bad memories that come with it, but use it to give thanks for everything that you have in your life, and I mean *everything* - especially the little things that you take for granted. It can all be taken away from you in a heartbeat...
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DarthVeda
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My avatar! My precious!
Jan 1970
time: 00:22
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I had just come back from Calc2 lab at about 8:30 in the morning. I sat down at my computer and my mother messaged me on ICQ that a plane had hit the WTC. I tuned in about a minute before the second plane hit. I can remember seeing the debris and smoke fly and the camera readjusting to the opposite tower.
When that happened I said to my mother over ICQ something to the effect that this is not an accident anymore and that only one man could be to blame: OBL.
Later I almost **** myself when the first tower fell. I noticed all this white crumbly stuff falling off the building and was thinking something was not right. Then it fell and I shot out of my computer seat in disbelief. I can remember thinking oh my god, nobody could have survived that... the tower is gone!
I can clearly recall praying after the first tower that the second would remain standing, but alas, no.
At about 1 in the afternoon I went to GEO lab and we had a little moment of silence before talking about rock formations. Before class, I can remember everybody fixated on a single TV in the hallway tuned to CNN. Nobody ever watches these because they have useless university information. But that day, every person in the hall was silent, watching in an almost trance-like state. It was the Taliban leader claiming zero responsibility for the WTC attack, and I can remember thinking that the day before nobody would have cared who this guy was, but today, he could have been the biggest celebrity in all of the World the way people were watching him.
In my liberal propaganda class (also known as University Course 2001, some lame effective presentations class), we spent the day talking about what this meant for all of us and for the country. Many students talked about how they would gladly give up personal freedoms for a sense of security... I was mortified.
After dinner we were given little American flags to place hanging from our doors (the kind with the wooden stick). From that point on, I've had a flag on my room's door frame (well, aside from the summer, I put it back when I got back up here), and it's still flying there today, in remembrance.
That night most of my hall gathered in a common area to watch Bush's speech and then retire to our rooms. I can remember playing "Proud to be an American" for the first time in a long time that day. I certainly was proud.
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11-09-2002 15:37
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