Where were you on 9/11?

[Tank]

I was in South Africa, at Dimension Data's offices in the Tigerburg hills just outside Cape Town. I was in a meeting and somebody came in and said a plane had crashed into the WTC. We all vacated into the restaurant where CNN was on the TV. One of the American ladies had a brother who worked near the WTC. We watched and then saw the second plane hit the second tower. The rest is history.

Where were you on that fateful day?

[pinkocommie]

I had strep throat and a friend of mine was coming over to take me to the doctor.  I remember he told me about planes crashing into buildings and I thought he was either messing with me or I was possibly delirious from fever.

[joeactor]

... working at Verizon corporate hq in Dallas.

Everything stopped.  I think we were all in shock.  We all gathered in the conference rooms to watch the news.
Calls went out to our offices in NYC, and managers checked on anyone who was scheduled to fly.  Those NYC guys were amazing - they worked around the clock in terrible conditions to get communications back up and running.

[Davin]

I was at college trying to sleep in the student lounge between class while watching it on the TV. That semester I had class all day on Tuesdays with a few one or two hour break in between some of them. 7am till 11pm on Tue, Wed and Thu, in order to get a four day weekend.

[KarmaKat]

I was at my office working that morning.  My husband at the time called me to tell me what happened and I didn't believe him until I started checking the news online.

[Whitney]

I was on my way to take a physics exam and caught the news just as we were turning off the tv to go to class...the bitch of a professor still made us take the exam; even people who had family in the area and were worried.

[philosoraptor]

I was a Sophomore in high school, in my second period Spanish class.  A kid came in late and said he'd been in the office and a plane had crashed into the WTC.  We didn't have a TV, so we listened to the news on the radio.

[hismikeness]

It was my junior year of college. We had just returned from playing New Mexico the Sunday before (9-9-01). The game was on Saturday but it was a late game and the airplane got a flat at the El Paso airport so we didn't take off until almost 1am. I was jacked up on muscle relaxers and couldn't sleep so I moseyed around the plane. I made my way up to the front and was asking the flight attendant some questions, just making small talk. I asked what protocol was for a hijacking and she replied company policy was to do exactly as they were told. A little later she asked if I wanted to sit in the cockpit for a while. The pilots were cool with it so I went in. Holy crap there are a lot of buttons and levers In a 757.

Anyway, it was during a time in the football season where football had started but school had not, so our scholarships paid for 3 meals a day, therefore training table provided us breakfast. I would usually walk in to most of the players having the tvs tuned to BET music videos or MTV music videos so usually I ate quick and left, because I really don't like rap all that much. What I dislike more are rap fans in large groups. (I actually witnessed a fistfight between LaDarus Jaxkson and TJ Houshmandzadeh about who has better rappers; LA or Houston)

that Tuesday morning, the tvs were on CNN. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the banner which read "America Under Attack". I remeber vividly thinking "typical liberal hyperbole". It wasn't until I sat down with my cafeteria waffles and saw a hole in the Pentagon that I realized this was the real deal.

But... It really wasn't until Coach Erickson came to our team meeting and didn't say a word about football did I realize that this was the real real deal. Turns out Coach had a nephew in the south tower but he was on vacation that day.

I will never forget that, even after 33 concussions from the aforementioned football.

Hismikeness

[Will]

I was still asleep when it actually happened. Being on the West Coast, the planes struck the towers at 5:46 a.m. and 6:03 a.m., while the third plane hit the Pentagon at 6:37 a.m., maybe 10 minutes before I used to wake up to get to class on time. I saw it on TV, iirc, but decided to head in to class anyway. School was a mess. Some people were crying, some people were angry, but most people were just quiet.

This may sound callous, but I didn't really think it was that big a deal.

[zookie]

I was living in Vancouver in 2001. My husband was on an early start and he called me from work and told me to put the TV on - I did just as the second plane hit the towers. I called my family in the UK... before that, it seems strange to say that my only concern was getting to the music store on time, because the Bob Dylan album 'Love and Theft' was released on 9/11/2001 and we had been waiting for it in great excitement.

I watched the TV footage for as long as I could stand. I am not a person who revels in disaster and with some of the personal tragedies being played out there, it seemed like distasteful voyeurism to be watching the people who were dying before our eyes. I didn't want to see it.

As an afterword, there was a line in the second song on that Dylan album ('Mississippi') that says, '...Sky's full of fire, pain pouring down...' and I remember hearing those lyrics in the days after the attack and feeling that Bob Dylan was onto something...

[Heretical Rants]

I´m so young that I don´t really remember

I was probably getting ready to go to school or something.

[Tom62]

I was in the office at work when my boss came in and told us what happened. My colleagues and I couldn't believe it until we saw the dreadful images on CNN.

[Ellainix]

I was playing with my doggie in Alabama, early in the morning in the front yard. I didn't find out until lunch.

[April]

I was at work.  I didn't even know anything happened until 2 or 3 that afternoon.

[McQ]

Working in my office (which is in my home).