“Life continues in the face of disaster, despite the horrors we inflict on one another.”
It was sophomore year in high school and my fifth period class was ending when Coach Duncan had everyone sit down while he read a “very important announcement.” He was an instructor who always had an unique and refreshing way of presenting projects so I figured it was writing assignment when he explained two planes hit the World Trade Center, one at the Pentagon and another crashing in Pennsylvania. I even joked around inquiring, “That’s rather descriptive. When is this paper due?” Normally an easy going guy, Coach D never cracked a smile.
Looking back, it’s commendable how my school managed to keep the students completely ignorant to the events of that day. By the time I walked into my last class – journalism, at that – the TV was on, as were the radio and computers. For all the thoughts that run through my head when hearing the date, the memory of where I was and what I was doing the day America felt as vulnerable as it ever has will probably never be erased from my mental rolodex. R.I.P. to anyone passed away that day and prayers to anyone who lost a loved one.
Where were you and what were you doing when the news broke?
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HS freshman in music class. Still remember the smell.
I worked at Ticketmaster and we received an influx of calls from NY asking if the Broadway shows were still taking place because a plane had hit one of the towers. Shortly thereafter calls came in with people cancelling due to the other tower being hit and a sick kind of feeling came over us when it became apparent that it wasn’t an accident and we watched them fall. I remember it was quiet outside that day ager work everyone was just in a state of shock and disbelief. We also became nervous because that day it seemed like anything could happen and we didn’t know if one of our bases were next. Hard to believe its already been 10 years already.
In 9th grade? It was a social studies type class
I was getting ready for work.
Just before i left I saw that a plane had hit the first tower.
It took me about 40 minutes to get to the school I was working at. When I got there they told me the whole story. Parents picked up their kids and we closed early. I called everyone in my phonebook just to make sure they where ok.
In Philly, I was asleep until my roommate burst in the room yelling “We gotta GTFOH!!” I lived in Center City, right on Broad & Chestnut, where all the tallest buildings in the city were. We broke out. Plus, randomly there was a fire at a parking lot and police and fire trunks were out. It was pandemonium!
who gives a fuck where y’all where at
And there it is, the first “no one gives a fuck” comment from our neighborhood “Angry Man.”
^ lol. yep, so uncalled for.
I can’t remember where I was honestly. I wish I could.
I was a freshmen in college and I didn’t go to class cause I wanted to mess with this girl. While I was getting head I watch as the world went in turmoil. never will forget that day
9th grade, math class. Our class was split with lunch, so we started with math, went to lunch, and came back to math. Walked back into class to with the ‘itis’. TV was on, so I knew something was right.
I remember seeing the 2nd plane hit while everybody else was talking. I was taken back. I didn’t know how to react. It was such a bad class for this to be happening during… We had already gone thru a 1st year teacher, and a couple substitute teachers at this point – early in the school year. I remember the teacher had asked if any one had parents that worked in the towers. None of us did. But I cleary remember the pill popping white girl, who always looked strung out, answered loudly with “MY MOM!!!!” then cooly saying “just kidding hahahaha”. The teacher struck her down so fast and strong, that I don’t remember her talking much after that.
Needless to say, the class I was in, and the attacks alone, affected me greatly. I was scared to get on the bus. I was worried about my parents, with the plane crashing in PA, it really struck a cord with me.
I will never forget that day.
Having been to NYC last week for Rock The Bells, I didn’t realize where I was until I got home. Had the towers been standing, there would have been no mistake of just how close I was. I was right there walking past Freedom Tower. Battery Park.
Sorry for the long write, but so much flashes in my mind when 9/11 comes up.
RIP all those who lost their lives.
(T.R.O.Y. plays as I finish this…. eerie)
I was in the 9th grade and I just got to school for my first class which was art and i saw on the tv in class the first plane hitting the first tower and then it blew my mind when i saw the second plane hitting the other tower.it was like I couldn’t believe what I was watching.a day I will never forget.
*knew something was WRONG
10th grade. I called my dad in the morning to get him to watch the Today Show cuz they’d just broken the news that Jordan was probably coming back to the NBA. My mom took me to school and in the Burger King line, my dad called her and I just heard her talking about a plane crash. I rolled my eyes and thought they were just late on the Aaliyah thing like all old people are. She got off the phone and told me what happened. I got to school and took a test first period. Got out of school and bought Blueprint and listened while I watched the news all night.
Gotty, how you not gonna be able to remember that, dog? Haaaaaaaahahahahaha
I was in my dorm and getting ready for class when the first one hit. I turned on Sportscenter and saw Stuart Scott acting way more serious than normal, and wondered what was going on. Still though, it didn’t register until I got to my biology class.
My teacher, Mr. Vance, was devastated. Still, I didn’t realize the magnitude of what happened. He tried to teach anyway, but he couldn’t. He was so distraught that he let us leave super-early, and he NEVER did anything like that (I had him my freshman year also and this dude would talk about anything just to keep us there the entire time.)
I walked back to the dorm, saw people huddled together, some quiet, some hysterical, and when I finally heard about the second plane, and saw it with my own eyes, it officially hit me.
11th grade, 1st-period creative writing class. This kid who lived across the street from the school and was always late burst in late again saying some shit about a plane hitting the WTC. Teacher turned on his radio and we listened until the class switched. I was walking into my 2nd period AP history and the teacher had the tv cart in the room, I walked in, sat down, and within 45 seconds I saw the 2nd plane hit live. I remember everyone just leaving school midday.
Gotty, how you not gonna be able to remember that, dog?
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Well…I was partying very heavily (understatement) during that time period so my memory is hazy as fuck.
[espn.go.com]
I read that in print and it came off a little stronger. Still a good read. Hearing athletes and faces we know now talk about being high school freshman and reflecting kind of adds a different layer to things. Shows how everyone was affected by the events even if they didn’t live near them. As a nation, I think our outlook changed completely.
Sophomore in college I remember waking up late as fuck for class (Bong hits are a muthfu%ka)turned on the tube to check the weather and saw the towers collapsing very eerie.
I was in 10th grade class. Can’t remember which one but I remember my teacher down playing the whole thing so we could finish our test.
Now that I think about it… she had the same reaction as Bush.
Cell et. al – In most school systems, teachers are trained to keep their students unaware in those situations. It sounds odd but you have to think – 100+ kids during the day and just one may have a relative that’s part of whatever tragedy is happening. If Kid A’s dad just flew to NYC for a meeting at the Towers, the teacher is essentially the first person Kid A “hey, your dad may have just been killed.” Not appropriate.
So they don’t turn on the TV and they try to downlplay it out of necessity to avoid causing a panic in that kid or any others.
I was watching the lunch time news (it was about 2 pm around here) They showed live image of the first tower in smoke, and while that was going on, the second plane came and hit the other one. I didn’t know what to think. Everyone here was just kinda in disbelief, and ‘wth does this mean?”. NYC is like the capital of the world for us europeans. 10 years, damn. RIP to those lost.
8th grade homeroom
I remember waking up and going to Circuit City because Jay-Z’s The Blueprint was out today. And when I got there the parking lot was empty, doors locked. I’m like wtf is this bullshit. Came back home to watch a replay of the 2nd plane and watch the first tower fall. Then I realized how damn silly it was to be upset that I couldn’t get a cd. Watched the TV nearly 30 hours straight while trying to get in contact with this girl to see if she alive, which took 3 days. I don’t, as I’m sure others don’t, want to live through something else like that again
I was in 7th grade. All day kids were getting picked up early but we had no idea why. Then in 5th period they told us there had been an “event” and a plane had crashed into a building in New York. Bus took us home like normal, what happened didn’t hit me until I turned on the TV.
40 blocks uptown on the 16th floor at my NYU dorm. The girls across the hall had a view to the towers and saw the 2nd plane hit. Freshman year. I had been in NY for like two weeks and this happened. To be honest, I was so naive that I thought it wasn’t that serious because this type of thing happened all the time. All I really knew about NY at that point was the other attack on the WTC way way way back in the day. (1993 car bombing)
I was in the U.S. Marine Corps standing duty at my squadron, when my Gunny ran in and said a tower got hit. I had no ideal what he was talking about until. The commanding officer called and emergency meeting and locked down the base. my heart stopped and everything moved in slow motion, crazy stuff that day.
I was on the west coast so the first and the second plane hit the towers before I even made it to class. Of course, I’m in the 8th grade, so I didn’t watch the damn news before school. I didn’t watch shit. I don’t think none of us did. I remember being in the lunch room waiting for the doors to open and some rumors going around about some shit going down but I remember being clueless. It was 8th grade, first period, English class. The teacher turned on the TV and we watched the news. I remember vividly watching the part when the second plane hit one of the towers. Most of us were shocked. There was one girl who started crying and threw up because, as she told us, she had family in NYC. It was my first time ever seeing someone throw up from a situation like that. Up until that point, there were two reasons people threw up. One, they were sick. Two, they drank too much.
But anyway, as a 11 year old kid, two years in the states, a transplant from Serbia, I was very anti-american so I skipped all that shit other people felt. It was only much later that I started grasping the situation for what it was.
not 11, i was 14.
I’m about to sound soooooooooooooo young right now lol.
I was 10 sittin in Language Arts, and we weren’t even doing anything in class that day. Next thing you know one of the other teachers came running in the room and turned on the news and we all just watched in awe–that was when the first Tower got hit–cause we were clearly too young to grasp what was goin on. When that second tower got hit(and subsequently collapsed) we started to get scared. But the most chilling part for me was watching the people jump out of the building to die together…that shit is still hard to think about, yo.
I remember we got to go home early from school that day and I was excited cause it was a nice day and we could play basketball all day. Another thing I remember is that we had to write a letter to the President as part of an English assignment and tell him how we felt about the situation. I was a little bitch then so I just followed everyone else and acted like I gave a shit. If I had the balls then that I do now, I’d have gone on an anti-American, anti-Nato rant about how many damn innocent civilians the US killed in the world.
HAHA @Cell and the Bush comparison
@ Willie P nice to know I’m not the youngest…
but I was in 6th grade when my Social Studies teacher stopped what he was doing and walked out of class for like 10 minutes to talk to another teacher. I didn’t really know what was going on until I got home that day and watched the news with my mom…
Im feeling really young reading the c-section because i was only in the 5th grade when it had happened. Almost all the teachers had left there classrooms and when they came back they were all crying or with tears in there eyes and they told us what had happened. I had no idea how big this was until I got home and i saw the footage of the buildings collapsing.
Words will never do this story justice.
[www.youtube.com]
Peace to families of all the victims
Sophomore year at Old Dominion University… Marketing class. My roomate and I heard folks talking about a plane crash, but we obviously didn’t pay too much attention to it. After class we had already planned to go to the record store to cop Jay-Z’s “Blueprint” and Fabolous’ debut LP. We did so, and when we got back to the crib our other two roomates were screaming “We gettin’ bombed yo! It’s WAR now!”… I’ve paid attention to what people around me talk about everyday since then. This is the event that made me so nosey. lol
Word, everybody sounds so old talking about being in high school & college ten years ago lol.. Anyway, I was in 5th grade in the Bronx tryna get my Latin homework done, then like 15 people got called to the office (some from my class and other classes) I thought nothing of it then another 20 kids got called then another 20… Until it got to the point that I was in the class with just 3 other kids. We got send home by ourselves (absolutely ridiculous smh) and I got home just in time to see the 2nd tower fall. I still remember the smell of that smoke. RIP to the 9/11 victims.
And there it is, the first “no one gives a fuck” comment from our neighborhood “Angry Man.”
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lemme tell you why I’m mad tho. I made 6 albums yo, and I aint made a dime yet!
High school. It had to have been 11th grade. The only thing I remember is some dumb broad crying cuz she had family that lived in Ithica and she couldnt get through to him. Its sad to say… but my most vivid emotion on that day was wanting to join the slapaho tribe…
Rest in peace to the victims of September 11th and their families.
Also rest in peace to the soldiers and civilians who have lost their lives in the Middle East since then. It’s all so pointless.
So they don’t turn on the TV and they try to downlplay it out of necessity to avoid causing a panic in that kid or any others.
——
Yeah, I can’t argue with the logic. Kids were talking about it at lunch but I just remember not really knowing the magnitude of what was going on til I got home and could see the news.
In bed with a hot CRAXY ass chick, my older brother came running into the room telling me to wake up. She didn’t budge. I explained that this was history, you would talk about this with your kids, she said she didn’t care. Didn;t realize anything was wrong til she went to get gas. LOL
Damn ya’ll were all in HS huh? I’m old lol.
I was a sophomore in college, sleeping off a hangover. My roommates were watching the TV loud as shxt and I came out to tell them to turn that shit down…they tried to tell me some shit was happening but I was hazy as fxck, basically still asleep, so I politely (maybe) asked them to tell me about it later. Went back to bed, something didn’t feel quite right, got back up and walked into the living room just in time to see the second plane hit…
I explained that this was history, you would talk about this with your kids,
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i’m sorry but….LMAO
i dont know if it should call it my sophmore or junior year at Fort Valley State…it was that grey 3rd year area that only my fellow 5 year graduates can relate too. You know, that year that gets tacked on because you treated freshman year like 13th grade.
but yeah, it was my 3rd year in college, i was in photography class and we were all downstairs in the dark room developing pictures. then the building’s secretary came down and started banging on the door like “oh lawd…child some fool done flew the plane into WTC”…we was like what the hell?
so we go up stairs to look at the TV and see what happened and right when we got the TV the second plane hit and we was like WHAT THE FUCK!
At that point we aint know what was going on, we was scared like, we thought this shit was about to go down everywhere. I didn’t have any family or friends in NYC at the time but I did feel compelled to call the record label folks that i was cool with at the time, thankfully they were all fine.
Shit was crazy. I don’t think they cancelled class that day, but my economics teacher was from Kuwait and my marketing teacher was from Jordan and both of them switched up their steez that day to tell us one, that they “werent down with the terrorist shit” and two really schooled us on what was really up as far as relations between USA and the arab world. that one day in class told me more truth than anything the news has said to this day.
Sophomore HS, woke up and walked in he living room, turned my head and saw the first plane fly into the tower.. Still just waking up I though it was a trailer/game .. Didn’t realize until I got on the bus it was real.
Second period. 5th grade Social Studies class. Teach let us watch it on TV, which I actually respect a lot. If kids couldn’t handle it, they didn’t have to watch. She attempted to contact each one of our parents too.
Downtown Chicago got evacuated so we were all back at the crib by 10:30.
I was in college about to get up and get ready ready for class. My best friend called and said turn on the news…..I didnt move from in front of the TV for about 8 hours.
Damm I was in 3rd Grade, I didn’t know anything about the incident until I went home and all of the news channels were talking about it. Very sad day, New York would never be the same…
I was knocked the fuck out. I was a Corporal in the Marines at the time too. My squadron had just gotten back from a deployment that morning, like 1 or 2 in the morning. So we had the rest of the day off. Then, when the first plane hit the Duty NCO for the barracks wakes me up, talkin ’bout don’t unpack shit and get your Marines back to your shop you’re going to NYC. I was like what the fuck, I aint going nowhere. I got the day off. Then he tells me to turn on the TV. It was crazy. I finally get back to my shop with all my Marines. All of our stuff was still packed from our deployment. So we had a gear inspection and were told to stand by for further instruction. We didn’t end up going to NYC, but we were ready at the drop of a dime to go. They already had enough people helping out. I remember standing duty at one of the gates on base, not letting anyone in or out. That shit was boring as fuck. We were strapped too. I had my M-16 locked and loaded too. That shit went on for a few days.
I had been just laid off from Dell. I was home and I had some job interviews in Manhattan to go to later on in the day. (Not near the WTC) My Father wakes me up to tell me they just blew up one of the Towers. As I turn on the TV the 2nd plane hit.
dissapointed in rap for generally not talking abotu this shit.. there was a couple…..
Sept 11, 2001, when the first plane hit the north tower I was sitting in highschool homeroom in Mr. Rayer’s class next to my homie An’Drey Peace. By the the time the second plane hit my brother and I were walking out the back door. We cut school and went to sounds of Upper Darby to get Jay-Z’s new album, “The Blueprint” and Fabolous’ “Ghetto Fabulous.” Rest in Peace to the people who lost their lives.
I was sleep when the first tower hit. I had already graduated high school and it was exactly two weeks before I had to report to basic training. My sister (who I just asked why she was @ home, she said she was suspended from school) gave me the phone and it was my boy yelling in my ear that I’m about to go to war. I roll out of bed and turn on the TV like just after the 2nd one hit. Confused and dazed, I didn’t even know exactly what I was looking at.
The rest of the day was very Twilight Zone.
My job at the mall called and told me work was cancelled so I just sat and watched the news. Then my friend came over so we could run to Media Play and get The Blueprint. (We had been riding around to it for about two weeks but seeing that blue case made it official).
When got there, he was banging on the door like crazy cuz the muthafuckin’ DEA was lined up at the top of the street to go bust my next door neighbor. We watched as like 9 of them ran up to the house with platinum 9′s and went to back and caught him as he ran through the front door, slamming him into the grass and cuffing him with platinum cuffs. All the shit they had was shiny as hell.
We went on to Media Play but had to loop around a side street because there was LITERALLY a two mile long line for the gas station, guessing everybody figured the price of gas was going to skyrocket the next day.
I bought The Blueprint and Ghetto Fabolous and for some reason, my friend bought that 41st Side compilation thinking it was gonna pick up where H.N.I.C. left off. I lived a half of mile from Media Play and that CD didn’t make it to the crib. He tossed it lol.
When I got home, the sky was a color I’ve never seen before and still haven’t to this day. Hard to put into words but it was a very surreal experience and I wasn’t even in NYC.
I worked at RadioShack at the time getting ready to open the store and we had it on all the TVs i just shocked not beliveving what I was seeing
i was in 7th grade..teacher cried as we all watched it on tv..but i remember not caring at all..It is a tragedy but honestly over 25 million ppl in the past 500 years have been killed b/c of genocide which created this young country THE United States of america. Im patriotic but over 80 % of the American Population are downright fucking morons that dont have clue whats going on besides what the bullshit media feeds them.. sorry about rambling but I’m stoned and thought I’d talk some shit bc TSS is Legit
I was in 7th grade and our school was less than a mile away from the pentagon. A bunch of people’s parents worked there and kids were dropping out of school left and right. None of us knew what was going on all day just had been hearing rumblings about a terrorist attack or bomb going off. Then after lunch they finally told us what was going on and showed us the video in 6th period, but our teacher told us we weren’t allowed to tell anyone else what was going on. Definitely one of the craziest/ most surreal days of my life.
I was in 7th grade. My mom woke me up & told me to come into her room to watch the news because something happened in NY… So i walk in her room & i’m watching them talk about how a plane ran into a building. & they got the video watching the fumes come up.. My mom walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth & do her hair… Two minutes later, a little dot comes into the screen & immediately i see the impact of the second plane. I yelled “Mom! Another one hit!” I had no idea the impact of what just happened.
But when i got to school, everything about life felt different. Solemn was the mood & everybody seemed to be walking around waiting for the day to be over, unsure what the future would hold. It really felt like WW3 was about to go down because at that point, none of our generation really witnessed a serious threat to the USA. Before 9/11 we felt like America was untouchable.. I still can feel the feeling i felt that day when i reminisce. Scary.
No non-US comments yet?
We were walking home from doing a radio show just before midnight. We were all talking about the US and conspiracy theories.
I got woken up the next morning by a text saying “America is being attacked!! Turn on your TV”. I thought my mate was just playing around so I went back to sleep.
Then my father was banging on my door crazy telling me to watch the TV. I woke up bleary eyed and watched the first tower smoking away. Then just as I sat down I saw the second plane fly in to the tower. Absolutely crazy. It looked like a trailer for the next Die Hard movie or something.
They were saying there were hijacked planes flying to London and other parts of Europe to do the same and I was shitting myself cause my brother was in London for work. I remember texting him and not being able to get hold of him because it was night time there.
I remember feeling incredibly sorry for the Americans who didn’t know WHY they were being attacked.
Watching the people jump out of the building is something I will never, ever forget.
Watching the people jump out of the building is something I will never, ever forget.
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Now THAT was crazy.
I was a sophomore in high school in Northeast NJ. I remember hearing coverage on the radio about it in art class that morning. A lot of classes after that got shut down except for Chemistry. One of my classmates said something like “history is happening right now” in protest and the teacher just kept going. People still ducked out to watch the live footage in the auditorium.
The school was about an hour away with traffic from the WTC but not close enough to see the damage from a distance. Still, watching it unfold on TV was wild. The Twin Towers were one of my favorite sky scrapers growing up so to see something so massive crumble to the ground in about two hours took time to comprehend. One guy walking on the Brooklyn Bridge that day told the news correspondent it was “surreal, like something out of a movie” and that pretty much sums it up. That whole day was weird. RIP to the victims and families affected.
I was just waking up for school… moms had the news on. I remember just stopping and looking. I thought that shit was for a movie or a video game or something. The second plane hit, and I straight lost it.
8th grade natural science class…so dumb in young…heard a kid say that they would probably bomb somewhere in Dallas next…smh
I was working as a hospital orderly, on guard duty (makin sure a patient doesn’t pull their lines out or do a runner). I was flicked on little TV above the bed as the patient was out for the night (It was graveyard shift 8PM start here in Australia). I saw the plane hit and the scroller along the bottom mentioning the pentagon under attack. I distinctly remember thinking it was some B-grade action film and changed the channel… only to come to the dreadful realization when it was the same CNN feed on the third channel that this shit was real….. it was so surreal, I was in shock watching those towers come down. I remember turnin my phone on to see 17 missed calls and a bunch of messages about WWIII starting.
8th grade, I was walking in to 5th period science class. My teacher had the tv on and I saw the first tower already smoking. At this point we all thought it was an accident, then the second plane hit. School was eerily quiet the rest of the day.
3rd grade i could see the smoke from my elementary school and im out on Long Island
Yeah I think Im one of the older dudes here too…
I remember that I came into work early that day, as i’d just gotten new job at this brokerage firm here in Toronto (22 yrs old at the time). Usually the office would be buzzing a bit, but not even the receptionist was at the entrance. My first thing to do each day was deliver the mail to the traders, many of whom spoke with the people in the towers & NYSE on a daily basis. I remember walking down the hallways but seeing absolutely no one anywhere.
I got to my desk, sorted the mail and walked over to the other wing, by the trading desk. As I turned the corner all I could hear was the 15-20 tv’s on blast. The room was loud yet eerily silent. I remember people calling others frantically on the phone, and the other half just standing there and staring at the TV’s. Looking back it was happening in slow motion!
I asked what happened and someone told me a plane crashed into one of the towers. I thought ok, it was a small plane, (thats stupid) and why it be flying over the city anyways?
Then as I stood there watching CNN the story unfolded by each second. A terrorist attack? Cmon… Then I saw the second tower got hit… I was shook but it didnt seem real at the same time! We all stood there in disbelief. It wasnt til I saw grown men fall to their knees and break down that it hit me. Many had friends and family there, so watching the towers collapse soon after was beyond a nightmare.
I learned soon after that we had an office in one of the Tower that had just moved out days before this went down.
Toronto was on a lockdown too as our major transportation hub Union Station stopped operating temporarily. There was an uneasiness about the CN Tower. I remember thinking would it crumble or fall sideways if something hit it, and how far would that reach north?
To make a long story short, 9/11 has changed me. I was glued to the shows last nite, and decided to reach out to my old co-workers today. RIP to everyone that has lost their lives in the attack and since…
@ Gotti how could you not remember its a pretty major deal. Its like saying I dont remember losing my virginity
I was 11 years old when it happend. I woke up around 8:30(in Seattle) and was about to watch Arthur before I went to school, but when I woke up I saw my mom and my brother sitting in front of the TV not saying a word. I remember my brother staying home from school and saying “it was those damn terrorists.” I was 11 and didn’t now what terrorists were and assumed he said tourists, so the rest of the day I kept telling my 5th grade peers that it was the damn tourists.