September 11th, 2001 - Where were you that morning?
As in, "What were you doing and how did you find out what had happened?"
I was in bed. Sleeping, well, not exactly, I had been suffering from insomnia for about a month and had finally managed to go to sleep that morning instead of trying to stay up through the night and the following day, as usual, in an attempt to wear myself out and get on a "normal" schedule.
I wake up around 11:15 am EST. Very late by my standards. Usually up around 6:30 most days when I'm not sleepless the night before. Anyway, my eyes open, I look at the clock on the cable box on top of my TV and the sunlight streaming in the windows. It's a nice, wonderful morning, and I've finally managed to have a good nights sleep for the first time in a long time.
I remark to myself what a beautiful day it is, then I look over at my phone - it rings at once.
I wonder who would be calling me at such an early hour. Everyone I know is either at work, school or sleeping like me!
I pick it up, it's my Mom. Hmmmm...she's usually unable to get near a phone during most days, much less call me, so I realize the moment I hear her voice that there is something important she has to tell me, and it has nothing to do with what she will be bringing home for dinner.
She asked me a question like "How are you?" and I replied that I was fine, and it dawned on her that I simply didn't know.
Mom: "Two planes were hijacked out of Logan this morning, they were flown into the World Trade Center."
Me: "Oh, My God....But they're designed to withstand the impact of a commercial aircraft!" (this is something I had picked up from a WTC documentary earlier in the year)
Mom: "They've collapsed"
(I repeat "Oh my God" like 50 times after this and my Mom mentions the Pentagon).
I quickly say goodbye and run to the living room, where I turn on the TV to see Aaron Brown reporting. Apparently 5,000 people died 3 hours from my house in one of the places I loved most in this world and I had managed to sleep through it that day. Any other day and I might still be up from the night before or have awakened at 6:30am, but that morning I had managed to sleep through it all. The WTC had become nothing but a pile of rubble hours before I even opened my eyes.
*sigh*
I was in bed. Sleeping, well, not exactly, I had been suffering from insomnia for about a month and had finally managed to go to sleep that morning instead of trying to stay up through the night and the following day, as usual, in an attempt to wear myself out and get on a "normal" schedule.
I wake up around 11:15 am EST. Very late by my standards. Usually up around 6:30 most days when I'm not sleepless the night before. Anyway, my eyes open, I look at the clock on the cable box on top of my TV and the sunlight streaming in the windows. It's a nice, wonderful morning, and I've finally managed to have a good nights sleep for the first time in a long time.
I remark to myself what a beautiful day it is, then I look over at my phone - it rings at once.
I wonder who would be calling me at such an early hour. Everyone I know is either at work, school or sleeping like me!
I pick it up, it's my Mom. Hmmmm...she's usually unable to get near a phone during most days, much less call me, so I realize the moment I hear her voice that there is something important she has to tell me, and it has nothing to do with what she will be bringing home for dinner.
She asked me a question like "How are you?" and I replied that I was fine, and it dawned on her that I simply didn't know.
Mom: "Two planes were hijacked out of Logan this morning, they were flown into the World Trade Center."
Me: "Oh, My God....But they're designed to withstand the impact of a commercial aircraft!" (this is something I had picked up from a WTC documentary earlier in the year)
Mom: "They've collapsed"
(I repeat "Oh my God" like 50 times after this and my Mom mentions the Pentagon).
I quickly say goodbye and run to the living room, where I turn on the TV to see Aaron Brown reporting. Apparently 5,000 people died 3 hours from my house in one of the places I loved most in this world and I had managed to sleep through it that day. Any other day and I might still be up from the night before or have awakened at 6:30am, but that morning I had managed to sleep through it all. The WTC had become nothing but a pile of rubble hours before I even opened my eyes.
*sigh*
Comments
After we heard of the tragedy (a call from parents) the party soon became more something of a funeral.
Anyway, I turned on my computer and saw that the WTC was on fire. Turned on the TV- saw that. Just as I heard Tom Brokaw or whoever say that all planes had been grounded, we saw a plane flying off the normal approach into National - normally, they come over top of my building and follow the river, this one was in the wrong spot. We then saw the smoke billow up from the Pentagon
Needless to say, my room was disaster watch central- there must have been about 30 people in here for most of the day.
On my way home from class, the unversity became a strange place. It's rare for everyone to be thinking about the same thing at once.
The first thing I did when I got to my suite was turn on CNN, where those horrifying video clips were replayed again and again...
The rest of my day was spent on the couch in front of my TV.
We got a bunch of wire out of the networking closet and built a receiver and finally got CNN.
I left work early to go be with my wife instead of going to school.
Mac Guru
we were pretty much glued to the TV at work. i called my dad an hour before i left. He said, " i hope you don't need gas, because its $2.40."
I about went nuts. because i did need gas. Well by the time i got off at 5 it was down to $1.99. But still i needed gas. So i put whatever 20 bucks could get me. I refuse to pay more than 20 bucks for gas at one time.
I flipped on CNN just in time to see thousands more people die as the second plane hit.
The campus was eerie, it really is weird (like said above) to know that your campus of 50,000+ is talking about the same thing. Normal social interaction is entirely superseded as you ask the nearest person if there's anything new. I walked into class while the Pentagon story broke and we watched it on the in-class television for about an hour and then left.
A somber day, to be sure, the only smile I got was earlier, before I had turned on CNN and while I still assumed it was an accident of some kind, rather, the severity had not hit me. A poster at Ars said something to the effect of, "I had been playing Tribes 2 and then found out I wasn't the only one getting base raped."
This will be the thing you tell your children about. Like my father being in gym class doing sit-ups when they announced over the PA system that JFK had been shot.
Another friend had left a couple of messages on the answering machine - if I was awake I needed to turn on the TV. "There's some awful, crazy stuff that's happening." He didn't know it then but maybe he already suspected it: his cousin was in one of the towers. He was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald.
I was on my way to the bathroom and my roommate told me that we had lost the World Trade Towers. It sounded crazy. I thought he was exagerating. The TV was on...
After a little while I went outside. It was such a beautiful september day. I felt guilty because everything seemed so normal to me. I live on a busy street. Cars were going past. I wondered if there was even one of them didn't have the radio turned to the terrible news...
Strange how much the world can change while one dreams.
I had picked that day to dress in all black.
It took a long time to sink in. The office was much more subdued that day than it normally is.
roger_ramjet did you freak out as much as I did a few days later when you saw the transformer explosion at the Civic Center?<hr></blockquote>
Not really. It was certainly a fairly big deal and I was concerned about the extent of the damage but it didn't seem like a likely terrorist target. I have a friend who is a paralegal in an office downtown and he described the amount of smoke from the fire. It surprised me. If I had seen that cloud of smoke on TV or in person wafting above CityPlace it probably would have freaked me but I first heard about it on WTIC radio and they were pretty much on top of the story. Also, I don't live that far away so later on I was able to see it for myself. It helps a lot when you have good information. If it had been in CityPlace however, I think that would have been really scary.
[ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: br0ck ]</p>
And in reply I thought that they were joking.
As I transfered to my next class spanish (yuck again), I realised the unthinkable.
At the end of that period our principal made an announcement explaining that the US had been attacked. It was a very quiet lunch hour, most people went home or to friend's houses to watch CNN. I tried the school computers but all news sits were down, CNN was displaying a simple page explaining events.
The strangest thign was standing out side at lunch. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. It amazed me how calm everything seemed. A very erie calm. After school i went right home and turned on CNN