9/11. Where were you?

[Charlie]

I was 11 years old and admitedly I hadn't even heard about the Twin Towers at the time.

 

I was home from school early that afternoon and was watching some random crap on the TV when the breaking news came on BBC. I remember watching the second plane go into the tower. I remember hearing the news about United 93 crashing and another plane hitting the Pentagon. Didn't really understand what it meant at the time. I remember being shocked at both towers collapsing. I remember this one news feed, presumably reporter, crouching down behind a car as the massive dust cloud/rubble came rushing towards him after the tower collapsed.

 

The next day everyone was saying how there was going to be a World War 3.

[MoogleViper]

I remember the next day at school, one kid was crying his eyes out for ages because his dad was in the TA, and he thought he would be going to war.

[nightwolf]

But people are going to forget sometime, it's inevitable. It will just become some trivia for future generations in history class.

 

Otherwise we'd still be mourning over the English Civil War, or the Norman invasion.

 

Oh of course, I'm not disputing that. Things change and as people get older and have new generations, its going to be that way.

 

I was more mentioning the shame of that, rather than pointing the finger.

[Frank]

Shame of not remembering 9/11? That honestly seems just a tad ridiculous. Of course it was a major turning point for many things but if we are going to mourn the loss of something let's focus our attention on something much more tragic. In the grand scope of current war -- the body count / lives affected by 9/11 is but a speck. How many have died / been injured / had their lives destroyed by the US army? These are the people we should cry for.

 

If 9/11 happened somewhere remote that wasn't in the US like China or Norway, no one would care.

[Jimbob]

I remember more of this fateful day, remember my late Nan saying the tower wouldn't fall down. But it did, which was something to see indeed. I think i tuned in about 5 or so minutes before the 2nd tower was struck, but i saw the 1st on fire. And a lot more people escaped the 2nd tower due to seeing the 1st being hit, so less loss of life from that one.

[Josh64]

I went straight to my nans from Primary School because my mom didn't finish work 'till 5 so I'd usually go over and watch Jungle Run and whatever else CITV threw at me (Art Attack?). On this day though, my Grandad had what I thought was some crazy film on, until I realised it was the news.

 

I'd never seen anything like it actually happen, I always assumed terrible things like that only ever happened before I was born (in my childhood naivety) so this was really pretty shocking. When the second plane hit and the towers started falling though, man that was crazy. I suppose it was one of my first doses of bitter reality

[Jonnas]

I always remember 9/11 as waking up and seeing my mother glued on the news, after the planes had hit. The likeliest explanation is, I came back from school to see this. I was 10.

 

I remember thinking at the time "Why is everyone acting so serious about this? Disasters happen all the time, why is this one so special?"

 

Now I know why, though I still feel like that thought has some merit.

[Raining_again]

I was 15, in high school. They wheeled a TV into our classroom to watch it.

[Mr_Odwin]

I was on a camping holiday in Wales with my then girlfriend (now wife, woo!), and we knew nothing about it for a few days, as we'd not seen any news, or listened to the radio. After we got home, when we found out, it made sense of some events that had perplexed us:

 

1. We were walking through a Welsh town and an American tourist came over to us with urgency, "Are you Americans!?!?!?" When we told him we weren't he walked off. That was probably the day it happened.
   
2. We were driving back to Newcastle from Wales and all the cars on the motorway pulled over on to the hard shoulder. We carried on driving on a now super quiet motorway. This was probably a minute or two of silence, but we had no idea.
   

 

Learning about it after the event meant that it had less of an effect, and I didn't even see the footage for ages.

[Shorty]

9/11 was a tragedy made memorable by the fact that it was an attack. That's really the only reason that we tie it to a date and remember it year after year.

 

Nobody asks "where were you 12/01?" (I had to google that) in relation to the Haiti earthquake which killed 159,000 people in 2010. Because it wasn't anybody's fault, we move past it much quicker, despite the far higher death toll.

 

Disclaimer: I'm not pitting the two events against each other in any way, it's just an observation.

[CoolFunkMan]

I was at home, I had just finished school (I was 16), and I was actually on my computer playing games at the time (I may have actually visited the forums at some point too.) So somehow, I was completely oblivious to the whole thing. That was, until my Mom came home from work, called up to me to tell me what had happened, and I legged it downstairs to watch it on the news.

 

I'll never forget those shocking images. It all seemed so surreal, as if it were a film, but it wasn't.

 

9/11 was a tragedy made memorable by the fact that it was an attack. That's really the only reason that we tie it to a date and remember it year after year.

 

Nobody asks "where were you 12/01?" (I had to google that) in relation to the Haiti earthquake which killed 159,000 people in 2010. Because it wasn't anybody's fault, we move past it much quicker, despite the far higher death toll.

 

Disclaimer: I'm not pitting the two events against each other in any way, it's just an observation.

 

I can see where you're coming from, it's the difference between humanity and nature.

 

12/01 was a natural disaster, so whilst something could have been done to save more lives in the long run, there wasn't anything that could have been done to stop the earthquake. That's the problem with natural disasters; people can be warned and prepare for them, but there's really no one to blame.

 

9/11 was an orchestrated terrorist attack, with intent to destroy innocent lives. It's these situations that get more of a reaction because there is someone to blame, and there's always extremists out there who want to "spread their message". 9/11 changed the world, because it made everyone realize how vulnerable we truly can be, especially when things fall into the wrong hands.

 

In a lot of ways, humanity is just as unpredictable as nature, and I'm not sure which is more terrifying.

Edited September 13, 2013 by CoolFunkMan

[Goron_3]

I remember coming home from school and walking past one of neighbours. Normally we would speak or he would give me a wave but that day he ignored me completely (and he did for a few days after, actually). It was only until I put the tv on and saw the second tower collapse did I realise what was happening. I remember feeling incredibly sad for those in America, whether they were family members or those in towers themselves. I was also worried for myself; I come from a Sikh family but apparently not everyone knows the difference between Sikhs and Muslims.

 

Our house got egged that night. And the day after.

[Ellmeister]

Whenever I read his thread title it just makes me think of this

 

But I was also on way home from school and had little idea about the gravity of the situation or that it was an attack. I only knew many had lost their lives.

[nightwolf]

Shame of not remembering 9/11? That honestly seems just a tad ridiculous. Of course it was a major turning point for many things but if we are going to mourn the loss of something let's focus our attention on something much more tragic. In the grand scope of current war -- the body count / lives affected by 9/11 is but a speck. How many have died / been injured / had their lives destroyed by the US army? These are the people we should cry for.

 

If 9/11 happened somewhere remote that wasn't in the US like China or Norway, no one would care.

 

That wasn't really my point. But I'm not bothered enough right now to argue with you.

 

I can only say that I agree and that was not my intention to offend.