Ten years...

[Xjeepguy]

Gawen, that made more sense than anything I have heard on the subject in 10 years. Thank you.

A death is a death. Wether it be in Europe 1945, Hawaii 1941, London 2005 or New York 2001. I'm not going to live waiting and watching the sky for the one that's gonna get me. In the immortal words of Ronnie Van Zant: If it's my time to go, it's my time, Let's go.

[Sweetdeath]

I agree with Gawen (pardon me if I squeeze onto page2.)
I think there is NO PROBLEM with honoring or remembering a loved one.  I dislike that the 9/11 event has become a spectacle of sorts, with the public being forced to listen to it all week, and even today.

I think it's sad to force people who are trying to move on with their lives to listen to the same thing every year.  I was affected too, so i'd rather just stop hearing about it entirely.

Aside from that, the biggest priblem I have is how the gov is spending SO MUCH MONEY on a memorial, but wont help the victims/first responders who got cancer and are fighting for their lives!  That doesnt make sense.  We need to help the living, not the dead.  That's like neglecting a starving dog to buy oranges for a shrine offering.  It just makes no sense, so I find this whole situation really hypocritical...and sad.

[fyv0h]

it's become political posturing. sigh.

On a stark turn of the topic, what was everyone doing that day?

I was in *GULP* basic training. Talk about shock. The Drill Sarg's all laughed and joked, "prepare for war, boys!" We weren't able to see any media coverage. Everything we knew was from speculation. Mail was stopped (anthrax scares), so no words from family. No phone calls. Nothing. I didn't see any footage regarding the towers until sometime in 2003 when a nice lady in Queens NY showed be her collection of recorded news feeds.

[Tank]

I was working in Cape Town, South Africa.

[fyv0h]

I was working in Cape Town, South Africa.

Missionary work? 

[Tank]

I was working in Cape Town, South Africa.

Missionary work? 

Working at Dimension Data, Tygerberg Hills on a multinational marketing analysis database.

[Stevil]

Sleeping, woke up to having my flatmate unusually watching TV first thing in the morning.

[Ihateyoumike]

Wow. Didn't realize I'd start such a hot debate by simply saying I couldn't believe 10 years has already gone by. Hardly dwelling.

Oh well, some people are just hotheads over the most trivial things sometimes, I guess.

[Tank]

Wow. Didn't realize I'd start such a hot debate by simply saying I couldn't believe 10 years has already gone by. Hardly dwelling.

Oh well, some people are just hotheads over the most trivial things sometimes, I guess.

The one thing one can guarantee on forums is miss-communication and miss-interpretation of other people's intent, it's absolutley tied on.

[Xjeepguy]

I was driving back from taking trash to the landfill, heard the news come over the radio and got home just in time to see the 2nd plane hit. I sat and watched tv the rest of the day in complete shock.

[Gawen]

I was driving back from taking trash to the landfill...

Odd that you mention it, I was in trash department at the time and picking up trash. Our truck pulled up to a residence and this guy who looked like a meth-head comes running out. "Didja hear?! Didja hear?!" He told us, we didn't believe him. Got back to the station to offload the trash and heard from others in the department. Saw the towers fall and went back to work.

Back on the job, one of our stops was at a friend's house. She was putting last minute trash out at the curb when we drove up. I asked her if she heard and she said she did. Then she said...every fracking Muslim ought to be nuked. Of course, she didn't say "frackin"....but the F-bomb. And it took me by surprise because I had never heard her use it before. And the "turn the other cheek" and "Love your enemies" Christianity of this Cumberland Presbyterian girl flew right out the window.

[DeterminedJuliet]

I was in highschool, in the middle of a physics class when another teacher interrupted us to tell our teacher what was going on. I remember I wrote down "September 11th" so that I'd remember the date (seems silly that I'd have to do that, now).

[McQ]

I was working at my desk, in my home, when my wife called me downstairs. She had been watching the Today Show already when they broke in with the news. We watched it all unfold, live. It was surreal. I lost one classmate in the towers, and two friends and former Army colleagues in the Pentagon.

[hismikeness]

I was a junior in college. I played football collegiately and our school didn't start until the end of September, but the football season started middle of August. So during the first few weeks of September our daily schedule was team breakfast, meetings/film, walkthrough practice, lifting, break, regular practice, dinner, meetings. It really was the best time of the year for a student-athlete because you didn't have to worry about being a student.

On September 8th we played a road game against New Mexico. It was a late game to avoid the heat, and then our plane had to land in Vegas because it had a flat tire. It turns out that there was no fix-a-flat guy on duty so they had to call someone in to fix it, which took a long time. Incidentally, I found out that I react oppositely from just about everyone else who takes muscle relaxer pills. I get jacked up like I snorted red bull, and everyone else crashed out.

Anyway, I told you that story to tell you this story. Once we got airborn heading back to home, everyone was asleep except me and the flight attendants. This is a chartered jet, mind you, so some of the typical rules don't apply, and they allowed me to spend time upfront in the cockpit. I specifically remember asking them if they were regular flight attendants or if they only did charters and they all were regular. I also asked what, if any, training they got regarding hijackings. They said it was only briefly covered and they were basically told to do exactly what the hijackers said to do.

Weird that I would ask those questions in light of what happened a couple days later.

So the morning ofthe 11th I went in for team breakfast. Usually the tvs in our food hall were all tuned to MTV or BET and there were rap videos blaring. There really was no better way to get guys in and out oft ere than that, but this morning the news was on. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the news ribbon read "America Under Attack". I remember thinking that was just Fox news being sensationalistic again. I grabbed my food, sat down, looked up and saw them cut to a hole in the Pentagon. And then they showed the footage of the towers and the first collapse. I saw the second collapse live, I think.

I didn't really understand the gravity of it until our coach came to the meeting and two things happened I had never before witnessed with him: he was crying and he didnt say one word about football. That's when I knew something bad was going down.

We split into our position groups and my redneck offensive line coach spouted off about nuking the sand niggers back to the stone age (his exact words- lost A LOT of respect for him as a person) and then they cancelled practice. It turns out our head coach was awaiting word from his nephew who worked in one of the towers (he made it out safely).

A bunch of us went back to my house and watched the news all day. It was so surreal. There were a couple of us that if it wasn't for the season we would have road tripped to ground zero to help dig.

Our game the following weekend was cancelled, but we didn't find out for sure until Thursday of that week. The authorities were scared of getting tens of thousands of people in one small area, rightly so.

That's what I remember of that day. 

[DeterminedJuliet]

I was working at my desk, in my home, when my wife called me downstairs. She had been watching the Today Show already when they broke in with the news. We watched it all unfold, live. It was surreal. I lost one classmate in the towers, and two friends and former Army colleagues in the Pentagon.

That is horrible, so sorry