9 years ago on September 11th what were you doing?

Today is a my friend's birthday, my parents anniversary and a day when tragedy struck. There have been somber moments all over the internet today from an old Budweiser commercial on YouTube that had aired only once to people donating their Facebook statuses to remember those whose lives were lost.

When the news broke about 9/11 I was awoken by a neighbor's call. She said, "turn on the t.v. - we're under attack." I couldn't even quite comprehend those words at 6am. I got dressed and went into work, at a software company in Silicon Valley. A place that was always loud with the hustle and bustle of the engineers and had TV's going all over the place. But that day there was just one big screen projector on with the CNN news being broadcast of the attacks. People were still at home trying to reach their loved ones on the phone, but the lines were jammed. It was quiet and somber. It was unforgettable.
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StephSF 2yrs+
Whew, crazy question. I remember exactly where I was (and am ready to date myself here). I had just finished first period and we were called down for an all-school assembly, where our headmaster announced that two planes had been crashed into the World Trade Center (that was all we knew at the time). I remember asking if they were commercial jets, and he answered that he did not have any more information.

We watched the news all day, and I actually remember walking to the computer lab with a few of my friends to learn more, where I couldn't help but say, "pretty soon, we will be saying 'remember where we were on September 11th?' And we will refer to this..." They were a little freaked out by that prospect, but, to this day, I am still referencing that moment.

Given that I was in Connecticut, many of my friends had family in New York or D.C., and much of the day was spent checking up on them. I knew of one person, the sister of a former coworker, who was in the Twin Towers, and many others who had close calls. The memory is still chilling but it keeps me human, year after year. My heart goes out to all my friends and family on the East Coast on this day.
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I only found out about it when I turned on NPR and they had weird music on and were talking about a tower being hit. Turned on the TV in time to see the first tower fall.

For me that day, I was teaching a community college critical thinking class and I had planned to discuss a topic that went something like: "Do You Think America is Headed in a Good Direction?" Needless to say that question was suddenly much less answerable on that day. It was only my second year teaching and I really didn't know what I was doing back then. I remembered, of course, going to the Twin Towers when I was a kid and getting up real close to the edge of one of the buildings and staring up, and up, and up until you almost lost your balance and fell backwards. It was a strange feeling for days after the attacks.
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FlowerGirl 2yrs+
I was in college at Cal, had spent the whole night reading James Joyce and walked all the way to my class, past shell-shocked people staring at TV's in stores, some of them crying without noticing a thing. I had my ear buds in and was listening to my usual playlist, so when I got into class and the instructor said, "You have all probably heard about the events that happened earlier today," I had no idea what he was talking about.

Truthfully, I really had no idea what to make of it.
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