Where were you?

[mae0111]

I'm feeling very emotional today, having a hard time believing it's been 17 years.  Where were you when you heard the news?

I was sitting at my desk looking out the window - I had a beautiful view of Boston Harbor and Logan Airport.  My coworker lived in NJ, and had stepped out onto his porch to have coffee when he saw the first plane hit.  He called us to tell us what happened.  While he was talking to one person, another coworker called me to say that he heard we were under attack.  I remember panicking, as my dad had mentioned he was heading to NY, but I didn't know where (turned out he was driving upstate).  My good friend and boss at the time was driving me home when we heard on the radio that the towers fell.

I've often thought about how to explain this day to my kids.  I haven't been able to figure that out yet.

So.... where were you?

[twinmomma]

I was in high school. It was school picture day, so people were coming and going in and out of classrooms way more than normal. Someone came back from getting their photo taken and told our class that we were under attack, the White House was being bombed or something. We found a TV and figured out what was really going on.

I vividly remember going home after school and flipping through every single channel and being stunned that every channel was showing the exact same stuff over and over. That's when it really hit me that this was a huge deal. During the school day it had never really sunk in and no one had explained it much to us in real time.

[xctsclrx]

I was in 6th grade history class when I found out. The teachers knew long before they told us and they weren't going to. One of the kids at lunch started a fight and got food all over one of our teachers and the faculty lost it. cancelled lunch for everyone and sent bagged lunches to the classrooms and we were to remain in lock down. I was in my history class and he told us what had happened and turn on the news. I didn't understand the implications until I got home that day and my dad was gone preparing for possible deployment and mom really explained what it meant.

[callmekd]

I was in my first year of law school. Sitting in civil procedure.

[traveltheworld]

I was in undergraduate, sitting in class. My prof's cell phone rang, he excused himself, talked for a few minutes, then said class is dismissed early due to a family emergency and encouraged us to go watch the news. We later found out that his brother was in one of the towers, he was ok.

We spent the rest of the day glued to the TV in the student common areas.

[phdmomma]

I was a freshman in high school. It was a scheduled half day, and the teachers weren't allowed to mention anything about it. Although on the next day in my freshman english class the teacher said to hell with it, and we talked about it. I grew up in an area of the midwest with a very large middle eastern population. I remember the news teams staking out the school the next day, to see if there would be any major clashes, the protestors outside the school, and how more than half the kids were missing from my classes that day. I remember my mom saying that if we let terrorists disrupt our daily lives then they win, and she sent me to school with fifty cents to call home (no cellphone) if something happened and I needed to leave.

[rere]

I was running youth recreational programs for our city at the time. I remember driving to work and how beautiful a day it was, the sky was so blue. I was at my desk and heard my boss go straight to the kitchen and turn on the TV, which was highly unusual. I had a meeting about volleyball of all things first off. I remember sitting in that meeting while one of my coworkers would come update us, it was like he was giving basketball scores or something, we just were not taking it in. Finally after about 15 minutes, we looked at each other and said, forget it, let's find out what is going on. We spent the rest of the day in front of the TV more or less. No work got done that day.

[waverly]

I was in my car driving to my college class. I heard a plane hit, and I thought it was a small plane and an accident. Then I heard another plane and thought shit this isn't an accident. And then once I got to class I heard it had hit the pentagon. So I think it was all happening as I was driving for the most part maybe a little before.

I don't know if we had that first class that day or if we were early release or it was cancelled. I remember making it to the classroom and students and the teacher was there. We just came home and watched the news the rest of the day and all the rest of the classes were cancelled.


I moved to NYC 2 years later, and the stories of the NYers were crazy.   

[mommyatty]

I was in law school, too, and hadn’t yet left for class. I went to law school in Lubbock, Texas, which is approximately 4 hours from any city of any size, so I remember feeling a little lucky that no one in their right mind would ever bother to hit Lubbock. And I remember the speculation. Was it a bomb? Was it an accident (until the second plane hit)? Was it a foreign government? Was it a separatist group like the ones in Texas that believe the US government isn’t legitimate?

I was also personally scared for my family not inubbock. My mom worked for American Airlines at Logan airport. She was a gate agent and helped people who boarded that plane. I’m not sure if it was her flight or not. (My mom has changed her story on that over the years, and she’s not a reliable narrator.) She also had a habit on her days off of just jetting somewhere random, so we didn’t know if she was ON a plane.

Another interesting fact about being in the middle of nowhere that day. We had zero phone service. They basically cut all traffic from our area to use lines for places that needed the overflow capacity. We did have internet and email, so I could email my family to find out if anyone had heard from my mom.

[mustardseed2007]

I was in College. I was on my way to a philosophy class and a landscaper's truck had the radio all the way up and the windows rolled town and a crowd of students standing around in a large circle were listening to the news.

[librarychica]

I was in my junior year of high school. I walked into band class and everyone was clustered around a little TV on a rolling cart. We watched for a while. My best friend was upset because her dad was a pilot and she wasn’t sure exactly where he was (he was in the Bahamas, thankfully). After a while, our band director told us to get out our instruments and we practiced. I remember looking up to see the chorus director crying in the doorway.

It really does feel like life changed that day. It’s hard to explain looking back. I’d never been to a large city of any kind, let alone NYC. All the names and places on the news were vaguely unfamiliar. But 1/3 of my high school joined the military every year and even more did so that year. Within 18 months my high school boyfriend was in Iraq. So many of my classmates had their lives changed or ended by the conflict. The industry I work in was reshaped by the rapid military buildup after 9/11. Every year I look at the date and think “I wonder what the world would be like if it never happened?”

[mellym]

I was in high school math class and the teacher turned the tv on and we watched the news coverage the entire class. I will never forget the look on my teacher's face and how quiet the class was.

[mae0111]

At the time, I lived in an area of the city that was in the flight path for Logan Airport. Every plane that took off and landed went over this little walking path that went along Boston Harbor. It has constant air traffic.

I remember walking down there later that day, and the eerie quiet. It was crowded, but no one was talking. And no planes.

[sunbutter]

I was in graduate school at the time but on vacation in my college town about 2 hours from NYC. I was driving to the Philly airport that morning to drop my boyfriend off and then a friend and I were going to drive into NYC and do some sights. We heard of the tower collapse on the radio and then obviously canceled all the plans, and hunkered down in a friend’s apartment for a few days. My dad was beside himself because my mom was in Ireland and they didn’t know when she would be able to return. And he absolutely did not want me to fly back to school. So we eventually drove all the way back to Texas.

[polecat8]

I was in my junior year of undergrad.
I had just finished an early morning lab and was hanging out on campus until band class. My DH (who was my fiancee at the time) called me on my cell phone and said a plane hit a building in NYC. So I went online to find more information. My impression was that a little plane flew into a building. At 11, I headed to band class where the director told us to go home. Classes were officially cancelled an hour later. I raced home and watched the tv for hours. It was just unfathomable to me.
Then I called my parents who were in SW PA. I was in NW PA, but I was nervous for my parents since I saw the plane that went down in Shanksville. I remember going outside at one point and noticing how quiet it was with no planes in the sky.

[rere]

I remember the no planes in the sky for days. When I run, I usually look up at the sky on a pretty day. Usually there are the trails of the planes crisscrossing the sky. There were no plans, not trails, for several days.

[186momx]

I hadn't started college yet so was still in bed sleeping when my mom woke me up. I didn't really get it until later that day. I agree with rere, I remember the no air traffic more than anything. We live 5 minutes from a small/medium airport so planes are a normal sound. It is so quiet when the planes are grounded.

[freezorburn]

I was just waking up on the west coast. I had left my job about 6 months prior to go back to school. I woke up to my morning radio program and they were trying to assess what had happened at the Pentagon. Watched the rest on TV.

[ilovelucyvv]

I was in high school in AP US History class. We were supposed to take a test that day, but it was cancelled. It was a complete shock but the day has more meaning to me now as an adult.

[waverly]

Dh was in Boston. He was on the phone for an interview with the Patent office which I guess is across the street from the Pentagon, although on the map it looks farther. They were like um... we have to go...

[sdlaura]

In college, in Washington DC.  I was at the gym and randomly realized I got my period like 5 minutes after getting there, so I headed back to my dorm.  My suite-mate had the TV on and we saw the second plane hit.  It was scary to be in DC with all the rumors that there would be more attacks on the capital. 

DH was working in an office building in Arlington, VA, and they went up on the roof and saw the Pentagon burning.

[justcheckingin73]

I was on my way to work when I heard that the first plane hit. Like everyone else I thought some poor guy had a heart attack in his Cessna. Then they said a second plane hit and my heart sank knowing it wasn’t an accident but not knowing exactly what was going on. I ran inside and couldn’t connect to any news site to get updates. We had a large trade show that day at McCormick Place in Chicago. A group of us started driving there (past O’Hare) until they called us back to say it was cancelled. They dragged a tv into our conference room and we watched the news the rest of the day. Why they didn’t just send us home is beyond me.

Like others it was eerie seeing empty skies and not hearing the planes since our office was in the flight path. It was also a bit scary hearing reports of missing planes and not knowing where they were. I wondered for days if something else was going to happen. 

[campermom]

Junior year of college, living with 4 other girls. I had an early class that was across the street from my house that I had decided to skip and sleep in, instead. I heard the phone ring and heard my roommate say “what? A bomb?” And I went out. Her mom had called and we turned on the tv.

I’ll never forget watching the world that day. We watched the 2nd tower get hit and watched the building come down. There were my classmates coming out of class and down the stairs—After I had already been watching the news. I thought, look at them, they don’t know the world has changed yet.

My roommates and I watched tv all day and all night. During the day we would step outside as people walked by. There were fender benders outside our house, people were just...distraught. Later during those days we went outside at night and lit candles. We looked up at the sky and though about how there were no planes flying anywhere.

[supertrooper1]

I was a couple of weeks away from starting my junior year of college. I was asleep and my boyfriend (now DH) called and woke me up and told me I better turn on the TV. We were living in a border town and the border shut down except for US citizens coming back to the US. The line ups were 6+ hours both ways across the border for days because of the searches being done by Customs. Trucks continued to have hours long backups going into Canada for weeks so I would have to find alternative routes home because the roads would be blocked.

Little did I know, I would go to work a couple of years later for an agency created due to 9/11.