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.

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?

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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).

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 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).

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.

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 road 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