Ask Lemmy

Having very strange dreams. I fell asleep with the tv on the night before. Never really did that before or since. Woke up between the two impacts.

Sitting at home, other side of the planet, chatting to friends on IRC - somewhere around midnight local time.

Someone suddenly said "A PLANE JUST HIT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER THE PICTURES ARE HORRIBLE" - turned on the TV, a few minutes later the news started filtering in.

I had work in the morning, so I had to go to bed within a couple of hours. My overall thoughts on the night:

• Fuck.
• Gotta admit, that was clever.
• Hoooo boy there's going to be trouble over this
• Fuck.

I was up all night studying in college. I went bed at like 4am to get maybe 5 hours of sleep before a big exam. Woke up at at like 7 am to my roommate and his friends being loud as fuck. I was pissed because I really needed sleep. Walked out to living room to tell them to stfu. They looked at me with wide eyes, and pointed at the tv.

A few minutes later the second plane hit. Jfc. What a moment.

I knew then that exam wasn’t happening, and that the world had changed. I was angry about the attack. That this people were robbed of their lives, and their families were suffering.

And I was angry because I knew it meant more endless wars. More bush. More government spy programs. And more flag waving by a mob of riled up idiots. I hated myself for being cynical. Hoping I was wrong.

On about the 48th floor of 101 California in San Francisco a Deutsche Bank floor and the scene of a notorious mass murder previously. We got right the fuck out of there.

Eighteen and a senior in HS. I had just turned in my draft card a few days earlier so I was shitting my pants that I was going to be shipped off to the desert and ordered to kill brown people.

Was holidaying in Queenstown, NZ and walked into the restaurant of the hotel to eat breakfast, hungover as.all get out, not believing what I was seeing

My production studio in plano, tx mixing a live jazz project - interrupted…

I was in school when the first plane hit, came home, turned on the TV and they say second plane hit, called a friend (via landline off course) and said it's beginning of III WW

Sitting on my sofa reading the paper with the TV on mute before I had to go to work. Looked up and thought huh that's a weird film to be on daytime TV. Realised it was breaking news and put the sound on. I think both planes had crashed at that point.

Left to get the bus to go do my shift in the pub I worked in. I remember there was a guy on the bus on his phone (still not ubiquitous at this point) saying "I'm not kidding man one of the fucking towers has completely collapsed". I got to work, it was about 5pm at this point so the pub was starting to get a bit busier with some of our regulars already in, I tried telling them what had happened but I don't think they really understand the enormity of it. There was no TV in the pub, and people didn't have the internet on their phones, they all just went 'huh' and went back to their pints and conversations. It was only the next day after everyone had been home and seen the footage themselves that it was the only topic of conversation.

I knew at the time that it was the start of a war, and that everything was about to change, for the worse. I marched against the war with 1 to 2 million other people in London, because we knew it was wrong. All the politicians who still took us there were either liars, or dangerous idiots, or both. Tony Blair should be in prison.

I was in like 3rd grade, the word was passed on to us in real time but I didn't really understand what had happened until later.

Also this is a clever way to get a feel for the distribution of ages of Lemmy users... I like it.

At home watching on live TV

I was at the Conversation Corps in the Day room with my then GF as soon as the second plane hit I thought I was watching a show. I went and got other people and we just watched. Saw people jumping to there deaths

I was 9 years old performing violin at the United Nations when it happened. I’ve never seen the streets and subways that crowded before or since.

I was in the fourth grade. I never did enjoy the art class so I was able to go to the library and help with instead. Anyways, I was walking in and the librarian had the TV on (which was odd) but I got there just in time to see the second plane hit.

I didn't understand it at the time but I had just witnessed history that a child shouldn't ever have to see.

I saw it live on the news before school.

I was in preschool, probably eating glue or something

I was alone at home in France, working on my second year exam in History of Architecture, because I failed it in July.

My best friend was in Turkey at the time and I was worried the event could trigger a World scaled retaliation against Muslims countries so I called my best friend parents to check if he was okay.

My dumbass didn’t know Turkey was a (very) laic country back then. Nor any knowledge about Muslim culture really.

I had another friend in New York too at this time, but I couldn’t reach him, neither his parents who just moved from their house, so I had to wait a whole week to hear about him.

I can still visualize the room, the colors, the furnitures.

Personally I was in 8th grade. We were about to watch a movie and turned on the TV only to see what had happened. I grew up in southern CT. We could see the smoke from my town. I now live in NYC and know several people who were in the area when the first plane hit. 1 person was working at the same Burger King that the first responders ended up using at a base. Another person was working down on Maiden Lane. He had just immigrated to the US a few weeks prior.

At my birthday party.

at the mechanics getting a work truck repaired.

Everyone remembering exactly what they did, meanwhile I don't have the faintest memory. I do remember we had a minute of silence the next day in school.

At an Ottawa school.

In 9th grade Geometry class. Since our school is near CIA hq, we were locked down and so stayed in Geometry class all day.

In the UK and I was 5, so I would not have known about it that much back then. I only found out about 9/11 years later when I was watching a Discovery documentary on the Shanghai World Financial Center and they were talking about how 9/11 influenced some of the decisions made for that building.

Vaguely heard about it on the radio on the way to high school. First period was “intro to flash animation” taught by a boomer who didn’t know we could access YouTube on our computers. Everyone was watching videos about what happened and ignoring the teacher. One kid was late and she asked “why are you late” and he was like “ there was a national emergency”