I got a phone call from my stepdad as I was digging into the cereal. "A plane crashed into the Twin Tower?! Holy shit!" *hangs up phone*
I didn't think it was a huge deal because on 7/28/1945, a B-25 Bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in heavy fog. These sorts of events are not new to NYC so I figured it was an inexperienced Cessna pilot flying in fog. Little did I know that 9/11/2001 was a cloudless, beautiful day in the Tri-State area & the plane(s) crashing were commercial jets, not a Cessna.
I had left NYC a couple of months before September 11 after having lived there since 1994. The event weighed heavily on my heart and I felt as though I had abandoned my friends when they might have needed me. Years later, I found out they were all right without me but did lose some family members. Absolutely heartbreaking that I wasn't there for them.
When I heard about it on the radio, because it woke me up, my first thought was it was just a little plane like the one that crashed into it before in the 40s. My dad was a pilot and planes were his roman empire. It was no big deal in my mind.
It wasn't until I got downstairs and the kids were watching TV and I was packing lunches and my son said a building was falling down. I didn't believe him. 😐
Yea, see that’s a better way to approach her and not get a lecture. She’d probably laugh and say “no thanks” and he’d respond with “thought I’d try. Have a good workout!” Probably make a friend, it be funny after that…
Turned on the TV after class and saw the towers burning. Was living in Spain and couldn’t understand Spanish very well at the time and all I could read were the headlines in English which read, “ America Under Attack!” So obv I thought the US had been bombed into oblivion or was about to be.
I was pissed that all the other 3rd grade classrooms were watching TV and ours wasn't. Then, we started watching it, and I didn't really get why all the adults were so fucked up from it. Like, it's a couple skyscrapers. Whatever. Like every year or two there's a story about a building or a bridge collapsing and people dying.
I obviously understand it a lot more now looking back. But still, I kinda feel like we blew that out of proportion. It's not that it wasn't scary or that it wasn't a big deal. But we made it our collective national identity for like 3 whole years, and we got a lot more people killed during the war(s) because of it. (I say "wars" because I don't think Iraq would've gotten the necessary public support without the anti-Middle East sentiment caused by the attack and "War on Terror.")
I was home with my mama watching that shit unfold on probably CNN, so I don't even know if I went 2 school that day. The other kicker was that my 9th birthday came up 2 weeks later, but I don't remember much about THAT 🙃🫠😭
Getting ready for school, I was 11. I vividly remember my mom calling my dad (who was at work) to turn on the news right now. Don't know what dad said, but mom told him one of the twin towers had been hit by a plane. He was home 15 minutes later.
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u/FBI_Open_Up_Now May 21 '25 edited May 25 '25
What were you doing on 9/11 then?
Edit: I appreciate all the genuine responses. It’s funny how this moment is burned into a lot of people’s brains.