What is your "when I found out about 9/11" story?

Senior in highschool, they rolled the TV cart out and we watched, nearly all day. I think it was after the second plane hit but before they fell, but I specifically remember watching the second tower fall. One teacher couldn't handle watching the news so we just sat around and played cards or something for that class period, cell phones were Nokia bricks so there was no other way to get news.

I have a specific memory I've never been able to confirm of some org, (maybe a Palestinian one?), briefly claiming responsibility for the initial attack, in that way where ideological groups would claim responsibility for attacks that they didn't do or that weren't even attacks to gain notoriety back then. Shortly after, a clear statement was made that that group denied any responsibility. I had always had a sense that it was either a) a mistake/bad source or b) the leadership of the group realized how big this was and that they didn't want that smoke. I have never been able to confirm that memory.

And then I remember we went mad as a country. Sikhs and others were being attacked and killed for wearing a turban, being brown, having an accent. Muslims were harassed and seen as unAmerican, with heroes un-honored due to their heritage and faith. And we donated blood and rallied for the victims. And we sang Tobey Keith and we went to war. We were united in a dangerous way. And it's led us to accept so much in the name of safety.

Guess I'm the baby here. I was in third grade, around 8 years old. We didn't have a tv in the room but the teacher was upset and kept leaving and it was very clear that something was up. I knew it was bad because my mom picked me up from school which NEVER happened (she worked about 90min away - we always rode the bus). I can't quiet remember how she explained it during the car ride, but she told me that something very bad had happened and that planes had hit the towers. I saw the actual video later on the news at my grandparent's house, and learned about the attack. I just remember everyone being extremely subdued and upset.

I don't remember much about the immediately aftermath except that we were suddenly way more patriotic at school.

I grew up in the northern part of NJ about 20 miles from Manhattan. I was in school at the time, and we watched the second plane hit on TV like some other folks here. Pretty immediately kids were getting calls and taken out of school. Something like 25 people I knew had parents who either worked in the WTC directly or in the immediate area, and at the time there was quite a bit of confusion and concern as you may imagine. I distinctly remember the Star Ledger headline from the next day TERROR BEYOND BELIEF in huge font over a picture of the burning towers. We later learned of flight 93 that crashed in PA and the one that hit the Pentagon. It was pretty formative for my political beliefs to watch what America chose to do afterwards, both in the hopeful sense (all of the volunteers streaming in, all of the stories of people helping those who lost) and in the terrible sense (so much racism, xenophobia, and the rampant militarism of the next decade).

8th grade, 1st period in homeroom. Teacher suddenly gets pulled out of class. We're quiet for the first few minutes, but then start chatting. After awhile our teacher comes back in. She could be serious and a little strict, but not mean. She starts talking in a tone we knew was serious, "They don't want us to tell you this, but i think you deserve to know...". She then proceeds to tell us the Twin Towers were destroyed by plane crashes.

Now I don't live in NY and didn't know what the Twin Towers were, but I knew this was a big deal. The rest of the class was noticeably shocked by the news. After a little while, it was decided that school was let out early. This may have been because of the attack on D.C. My school was in VA. Not close to D.C., but they take these things seriously.

On the bus, all the kids were talking about it. Some had said they heard it was a terrorist attack. Some speculated other things. I just listened and absorbed.

I got home early. Was a bit surprised to find my dad awake. He worked the graveyard shift, so he'd normally be asleep. I immediately told my dad what I heard and why we were let out early. He said he knew and was watching the news. I sat on the end of his bed and we watched the news together.

I don't remember anything from that day after that. It was an interesting turning point because I just turned 13. So this kind of marked when my childhood was over. Looking back I appreciate the tragedy a lot more than I could back then. I can also empathize more with what older generations may have gone through with big events during their time.

I was in high school.

Even though we were thousands of miles away, we went on lockdown. There was so much uncertainty at the time.

Eventually they let us change classes and go back to our normal schedule. None of my teachers attempted to teach anything that day. Some explicitly said they were NOT turning on the TV and just let us talk and play games. Some did turn on the news, and we all just kind of silently watched it for the period. As a teacher now, I’m not sure which choice was the “right” one (if any).

I got home and my parents had the news on and left it playing through the afternoon. This was completely unlike them — they were pretty big on limiting TV time, especially the news, because they didn’t want us kids exposed to dark headliners like murders, assaults, etc.

I remember asking my mom if we could turn it off.

She said no, we needed to keep it on so we could know what was happening.

I then distinctly remember saying “they don’t have to keep showing the people jumping though.” The TV stations had been looping the footage.

She said I was right and turned it off.

The images of people falling are seared into me. They’re my reflexive mental association for the event, moreso than the planes or smoke or towers or their collapse.

A few years later I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the ending absolutely devastated me. Even thinking about it right now gets me crying.

If anyone ever has the opportunity to go to the 9/11 Memorial in NYC, it is genuinely excellent. My favorite part (if you can even call it that) was a display from an artist who asked people to paint the color of the sky that day. Each one is on a square, and they collected one per person who died that day. The squares are on display on a big wall, creating a simple yet devastating composite. It is humbling to stand in front of.

There is also a wing of artwork from children who lost family members. It was genuinely hard for me to get through because I found it so affecting. I literally could not breathe for parts of it.

Also, I cannot recommend the documentary 102 Minutes That Changed America enough. It is entirely primary source footage in chronological order — no talking heads, no commentary.

I remember that day quite vividly. I was 13 years old at the time, and that day I was let out of school early. I was playing Diablo online on the family computer in the living room. My mother was watching TV while peeling potatoes when an extra news broadcast came on.

Both towers had already been hit when the news came on (around 15:30 Dutch time), but we did see the towers collapse. It was horrible. I remember that people already started making sick jokes about it in the battle.net chatroom.

The concept of terrorist attacks was new to me, so it was a real eye-opener. The world felt different after that.

I was a sophomore in highschool, in my JROTC class. I may have even been wearing a uniform at the time. I had no desire to join the military at the time, it was just a class my parents made me take for some reason.

I don't remember much about the day to be honest, just where I was when Id heard the news. We must've watched the broadcast on TV in the classroom, but I don't remember if we went home early, or if classes were suspended or anything like that. I do know that I did end up joining the military a few years later though, and the US military post 9/11 was so different than it was before 9/11 that its almost like talking ahout two completely different organizations when I talked to people who were in back then.

I was in culinary school after burning out on IT work with all the Y2K craziness. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I had a breakfast service course, which meant a few hours of making omelets to order in the school's cafeteria. My station faced one of the TVs in the room, so I had the surreal experience of trying to cook eggs while seeing CNN's footage of planes hitting buildings and then the tower collapses, played over and over again. I do recall that one of my first coherent thoughts was, "Oh, shit, who are we going to start bombing?"

To complicate matters, my brother was in New York that week for job interviews near the Twin Towers, and my spouse's favorite cousin worked in the Federal court location in the Twin Towers complex. Given the chaos and jammed up phone lines, it wasn't until late that day we were able to confirm their safety. Turned out the cousin was off work because she'd been thrown while horseback riding; she lost most of her colleagues.

I was 14yo. A freshman in high school. My family was living in the suburbs of Salt Lake City at the time. I remember being dropped off at school, going to my first period class, which was Band. As I walked into the band room, I looked up at the TV. Band director always had news on in the morning before class started. So I casually glanced at it and just saw smoke being shown. I remember asking a classmate, "What's going on on TV? Another forest fire?" And he said something like,"No, a plane crashed into a building in New York." And I was like "What??" The news was showing a split screen. One was one of the Twin Towers burning, the other was either the Pentagon burning or the plane that crashed in Shanksville, PA.

Throughout most of the day, we obviously had TVs on. TVs were wheeled into the lunch room so students and faculty could stay informed during the lunch periods. Though I did have one class where the teacher was like "Yeah something terrible has happened, but we have Biology to study." I think that was the only class that day where the TV wasn't on. In homeroom, which was after first period band class, our teacher had no clue what was going on. When we demanded she turn on the TV she was like "Uhh, why?" So we told her and she thought we were just pranking her. So she went next door to ask another teacher. And when she came back, she was practically in tears.

Obviously being so far from the East Coast, there weren't many immediate direct effects. Though I did hear that one student at school did have a relative who died in the attacks that day. My dad is a federal employee, so he was home already when I got back from school, because his agency just sent everyone home early.

9/11 and the ensuing GWoT, was what caused me to get interested in politics, both domestic and international. The way the nation processed 9/11 over the ensuing years into my young adulthood definitely shaped my political beliefs. And these days, I too am a federal employee. For a department that, rightfully or wrongfully (probably the latter), only exists because of 9/11 (though my agency existed before 9/11).

Was on the way to school with my dad, and he had the radio on for the news (I always hated having the radio on for the news). Only the first tower had been hit when they started talking about it, and I was so, so, so sure that it was an accident. Found out about the second tower at school when they told us why we couldn't have indoor recess. Mostly I just remember being so sure it was an accident, because how could it have happened deliberately?

We were in the the office when the news broke about the plane striking the first tower. Online news was hard to come by then, we couldn't get feeds from CNN, BBC, ITN, all the usual big places.

Eventually we found Ananova had a live feed (remember them!) and everyone was shocked such an accident could happen.

Then the second aircraft came in, and it became clear it was no accident. I still think over this event on the anniversary.

This, Challenger, and Chernobyl have been my most impactful news events I think. 9/11 certainly as it changed the world.

I had just worked two 8+ shifts back to back and fell asleep when my coworker called me and woke me up telling me to turn on the TV. I was so mad at him. I turned it on and saw a plane had hit a building in NYC, obviously very tragic, but not worth waking me up. About 45 seconds after I turned it on the second plan hit live, and I was like "oh shit, yeah, thanks I'll get back to you".

I was still living and going to university in Canada at the time. I remember my dad had the news on TV that morning and seeing the image of the first tower on fire before heading out. That day TVs were rolled out all around campus and I believe a majority of students didn't bother going to classes (in fact it's possible that classes had been canceled). We all just sat around those TVs and watched the horror unfold.

I was in 5th grade and for some reason I was militantly convinced that it was the Empire State building that had been attacked. I was correcting teachers and everyone. I don't think I'd have ever seen, noticed, or heard of the world trade centers.

I was 11 years old, in 6th grade. My teachers visibly knew, but the school administration made the decision to not tell the students, I didn't find out til I got home and my parents told me. I remember writing a letter to myself about my thoughts and feelings that day, though I have no idea what happened to it.

What I find interesting though, is that the day certainly held meaning to me: I was an impressionable 11 year old kid when it happened, and I later went on to spend a decade in public safety as a firefighter, a profession that holds special remembrance for the day. But when I think of "attack on our country level tragedies" in my lifetime, J6 comes to mind before 9/11, perhaps because it was much more recent.

I was off that day and driving early in the morning to play a round of golf. I first heard the news on the radio, and when I stopped by the pro shop of the golf course, everyone was watching events on the tv. One conversation I remember was where we discussed the possiblity of shooting down a hijacked plane before it could reach its target. Of course, the folks on Flight 93 rushed the cockpit, and it crashed before that choice had to be made.

I don't remember a lot about the day itself, but I do remember the morning. It was about 6:45am here in Denver and I'm pretty sure I was still in bed, not ready to get up for school. I was 17 and had just recently began my Junior year in High School.

Suddenly my Mom is calling me in to her room, she's got the TV on as she always does when she gets up and starts getting ready in the morning, so she can watch the early shows (Possibly Regis and Kelly at the time?). She calls me in, I groggily get up and see one of the towers smoking, where my Mom explains that a plane has crashed into it. We're talking about it as such a weird accident, how could a plane be flying so low in New York City that they'd hit a skyskraper?

A short fifteen minutes later, while the cameras are still rolling on the WTC, the other plane comes in at full speed and crashes into the other tower. At that point, everything just went kind of surreal and I don't remember the rest of the day. My Mom took me to school--can't remember if I rode the bus or she dropped me off--and I recall little bits, talking about it in class, possibly having TVs on in a handful of classrooms to watch what was happening (it was a newer high school) and that's about all I remember. Don't recall if we went home early or what happened after I got there. I can really only vividly recall that early morning wake-up and watching things go down on Live TV.

It's weird to feel a little bit of anxiety and PTSD just writing it down here. It didn't directly affect me in anyway, but it certainly was an inflection point in our American history and is likely a big reason why we are where we are today. It's hard to believe it's been 25 years and now I'm 42 years old.

I was in the rec room on my college campus watching it on the big TV that was mostly used for Smash Brothers. I don't recall if I had any classes I missed for it, I just sat and watched. I don't know that I really understood what it would do to the American psyche. Mych as it was a time of loss of innocence for me as a person, so too was it a change for the country. I don't know how to untangle adulthood from post-9/11 America.

I happened to be watching the news already that day when the first plane hit. After the 2nd plane hit we knew it wasn't accidental and I remember thinking true supervillains are no longer just fiction or ancient history.

The strangest thing was going outside to work later that day and being hit with the deafening silence from the lack of air traffic. Before that day I had no idea that constant sound was always in the background.

I was in first grade, but honestly don't remember it. I lived in my own little world back then. From what mom was told, the youngest kids like me were told there was a plane crash and people would be very sad... And also that we may not be able to watch our favorite shows because it would be on the news. We had Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel though, and those channels obviously didn't have news interruptions.

So for me, it was mostly a normal Tuesday other than my mom getting me from school herself rather than my babysitter (and early). At most, I vaguely recall a plane crash maybe coming up in carpool.

To this day, not sure if that bit of ignorance on the day itself is a blessing or not.

I went to a Catholic K-8 school, and my mom said she and a ton of other parents just sat in the church and said the rosary before getting their kids.

8th Grade I think, someone had broken into the library early in the A.M. which was kind of eventful for our school. Throughout the morning the loudspeaker would begin calling students names to report to the principals office constantly. Our guitar teacher grinned at us and said she thinks she knows what it was about (She didn't, I don't know what else she was thinking it could be), walking the halls we heard people saying a plane crashed into the world trade center or the twin towers (I didn't know they were the same thing). Eventually the teachers had given up trying to really teach and turned on the tv in the classroom, or wheeled one out on those carts and we watched the news.

We went home as scheduled on our bus (Not sure why people were pulling kids out other than just a general panic), and watched some more news and looked at whatever the hell websites I was on in 2001 for anything else.

Also related, I kind of lumped the DC Sniper attacks the following year in the same way where we had a genuinely scared community, uncertain what would happen.

[West Coast Canada]

I mostly remember thinking that American might draft and go to war, and somehow Canada would also volunteer to help our bestest most special ally, and that I was worried about my dude friends in that hypothetical. I couldn't have guessed that my kid's generation might have to physically defend ourselves against America's invasion, or that Canadians would be in our current economic war.

I was in elementary school, 6th grade, on a 4-letter rotation system, alternating months off to ease classroom load. My group was off, and my older brother was going to middle school. The family car, an old, beaten-up Mercedes from the 80s, had a tendency to drop its muffler, which it did down the street from the middle school.

Probably 6:45 PT, a friend has the part we need to hit the road, my brother's already walked ten minutes to school, and he's ranting: "THEY FUCKING DID IT! THEY HIT THE GODDAMN TOWERS!"

It was a wild day. The day before, somebody had left a PETA magazine at the coffee shop my dad's girlfriend hung out at that had a Burger King parody that was messing with my head, so I was already twitchy and uncomfortable. Then thousands die, and we're three miles from Disneyland, what many considered a significant target if somebody wanted to continue things.

We mostly listened to the radio at the coffee shop. We went next door to a store when a friend was in New York as a band tour bus driver, called in to the station and talked about how things were just outside Manhattan. He, and his client band, were fine.

I remember people being legitimately scared everywhere. Nobody knew how to feel about, and this weird sort of helplessness seemed to settle over the country for a week.

I was in third grade, and we were out at recess. We got called in from recess early. I don't remember when our teacher turned the TV on, but I believe it was just before the second plane hit. I had basically no idea what was going on, and didn't understand why recess had ended early for something that had happened all the way in New York. I think school ended early that day, too.

I was in California. I had the day before off (worked fast food, typically slept from 4/6am til whenever, but I do remember having gone to bed early). My mom (who annoyed me) had apparently tried calling a few times when the first plane hit, and since I slept through the calls and answering machine (I may or may not have turned both off?) and her knocking on the door, I woke up around 0730 to her pounding on my apartment bedroom window.
I was finally able to afford a tv since I swapped to an apartment and had a roommate (who was kinda rich [firefighter], compared to me haha), and she told me to turn the tv on. As I did, the news was just breaking that the second tower had fallen. I don't think she stayed long.
I had to work that night, and I'd borrowed the family's 10" b&w tv that had no inputs (so only antenna signal) when I first moved out, because I was seriously poor (couldn't afford a microwave or any furniture except the desk, bed, dresser, and computer I owned. I took a folding chair from my grandma's for the computer). I brought it to work that night and had it replaying the same ol'
(which reminded me of me asking my parents why they kept showing the same stuff in SF when the Loma Prieta hit), and the handful of customers who came in that night stood with us while they waited for their food to go.

My sibs and I had planned a trip to fly into Buffalo, NY on 20 Sept to do an epic totally-winged road trip around the east coast. We were able to continue the trip with the first time not being able to have guests walk us to the gate. We were also the only people on the flight there not in first class.
We drove to Boston, through NYC and stopped at Liberty Park since we couldn't get into the city, and Washington DC, seeing three of the four crash sites. The fourth was nearby as we made our way back though State College PA (where we stayed) before heading back out to end the trip on the 25th in Buffalo.

Having no issues walking into empty hotels, seeing groups of people on overpasses waving flags and holding banners, seeing snipers on the White House, waiting for a lone jogger to run by to take our picture, because no one else was around at 1100 on a Sunday where normally people are crowded to overlook the Easter Egg hunt lawn... it was eerie. I did not get to experience it, I just got the aftermath.

I finally got to visit NYC two years ago.

It was so distant, but still mind blowing seeing the aftermath. I had online friends who lived in the area, I knew someone who worked in the WTC. He was actually scheduled to be at work after the first plane hit and did not end up inside. It was very much like when the Challenger exploded; I wasn't directly affected, but I still was on very many levels. Definitely on a mindfuck sort of way.

I was filling in for my boss for six weeks or so in a university department, which meant I had access to a computer and internet connection. I'm on the other side of the world so everything was a bit dislocated and I think it happened overnight, very early in the morning on the 12th? I didn't catch wind of it until I was on campus but then it was everywhere, replayed ad nauseum on every TV screen. I think I kept up to date largely via Slashdot. Not much work got done.

More broadly there's two things that stick out. The first was that on a fairly lefty university campus on the other side of the world there was an undercurrent not quite of the US deserving the attacks but a significant feeling of we could see something coming and a lack of surprise, in hindsight. The second was the level of goodwill towards the US, incredibly high immediately after, getting pissed up the wall in the medium term. Of course the current whitehouse occupant is still pissing.

I was just shy of five and a half. TV was a pretty constant presence in my family's home growing up, so the first thing I do when I wake up that morning (in the Pacific Time Zone) is turn on the TV. I'm met with some news coverage about a big incident in New York. I remember that our satellite TV service had a few NYC area local channels, so I switch to one of those (looking at YouTube archives, it was almost certainly WPIX). There, I see images of the towers burning, at which point my mom walks in, absolutely shocked at what she's seeing.

Understandably for my age, I did not comprehend at all the significance of what happened until years later. My mom and I had plans that day that I was excited for, but all I could think when she made the call to cancel was "I don't remember any large buildings between here and there, so what's stopping us from going?"

All the news coverage of that day and the weeks after, which my parents were glued to, was my introduction to politics and related topics. My first memories of understanding we have something called a President in America was seeing GW Bush on TV after the attacks and having my dad explain his significance to me. I remember that the news (well, Fox News, that is) became a more significant part of our TV diet after that.

I was in the office at the time.

I remember it was around 3 or 4 p.m. and someone simply asked if internet got broken because everytime he tried to load a page it simply did not work. Everyone in the office tried it out, to understand if it was a problem of his computer but it turned out the guy was right, the internet simply didn't work properly. The intranet pages were ok but as soon as you tried to go somewhere else it was incredibly slow.

I think someone tried to load a famous news website and after a minute the page loaded, with no images but there was the news about the attack.
As soon as he started to read it, in loud voice, every one in the office gathered behind is monitor to understand what just happened.

The rest of the afternoon was spent to collect the whole story. I am not sure if i remember correctly but the internet connection was restored after half an hour more or less... I have to say everyone just wanted to go back home and the rest of the afternoon was probably spent jumping from a news outlet to the other to read the different articles.

What i can say is that, a part from being horrorific, it was pretty surreal

Highschool in Canada. They didn't tell us anything. Throughout the day rumors were swirling around. The only outside info was coming from kids that went home for lunch or maybe people that had a class in the computer lab. By the time school ended, most people had a pretty good idea what had happened.

When I got home, I turned on the tv and started watching the news. It was the first time I had ever deliberately chosen the news. Just sat there watching for a few hours till my parents came home.

It looks like I'm one of the older ones here, I see a lot of teens and middle schoolers (at the time) posting.

I was in my 20's living in California at the time. My mom woke me up after the first plane hit and said "the world is ending". I don't remember my exact words anymore but they were along the lines of "if you're waking me up it can't be ending that badly". By the time i got in front of the TV i got to watch the second plane hit live on TV. Everything was happening on the east coast so I still went into work that day, but I 100% remember basically no customers came in at all. It was just me and my manager. He closed the store at around 3 and told me to go home and be safe.

I was in my early 20's, living in California. I was up at some ungodly hour to let the cable guy in, and he was talking about how both towers had been hit and everyone was sure it was the terrorists and he'd be going in to speak to his recruiter buddy about re-upping. He couldn't have been more than a year or two older than me. I watched the news, flipping back and forth between CNN and Fox and being astounded at just how unhinged the Fox crew seemed to become the longer I watched. I watched long enough to see the first tower come down, then I had to go to work. I called my boss and asked if we were working, all he said was "that's the other side of the country, we've got customers that need our help. Get in here."

I spent a surreal day at work feeling like I should be doing anything other than helping people get online to this new-fangled internet thingy for the first time.

My dad fell off a ladder and fell 15 feet at the factory he worked at, he only broke his wrist but it really scared us. We were in the hospital waiting to hear from the doctor when the news came on the TV. I was pretty young but I still remember it.

I was 15 and at shopping center with my dad. I remember my friend calling me via mobile phone, which was VERY unusual and pricey at the time. He asked whether I'm somewhere near television. There was electronics store in the center, so I said yes. He told me to go there and watxh a TV. When I got there, there were many people watching the same picture on all the TVs there - smoking WTC.