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9-11: Never Forget


Fanpuck33

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Sept. 11th 2001.

I'm living on campus. I wake up to a bright sunny day. I dont have any classes that morning so I turn on the TV and computer.

While my cpu boots up, I zap to Global. They have a feed from some US news channel and they're showing the World Trade Center and smoke coming out of it.

Wow, looks like some dude in a Cesna didn't know how to fly and landed himself in the WTC. Spectacular accident. Anyway...

I check my emails while ignoring the TV. I go grab myself a cup of coffee and I sit down watching the TV. Man, they're really making a big deal out of this accident. Slow day in the news I guess.

I go on ESPN's Habs board and start reading some threads while drinking my coffee. The TV is just right next to my computer so I keep checking the screen now and then. Global keeps switching from different US feeds.

There's some reporter on screen now, with the Twin Towers far away in the distance. I'm looking at it distractingly. I dont really care what he's talking about. I'm still half-asleep. Then behind the reporter, far away in the distance I see a plane in the shadows come at blinding speed and dissapear behind the WTC. Then an explosion and smoke.

The World changed the next second...

Edited by KoZed
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I remember it like it was yesterday. Senior year in high school, we're starting 2nd period US Government class when one of the class clowns raises his hand and says someone crashed a plane into the World Trade Center. Everyone just laughed, thinking he was just making things up. Little did we know, he was telling the truth and had heard about it on the radio while lifting weights in gym class.

At the beginning of third period, the principle comes over the PA and tells everything that has happened and leads the school in a prayer. Even after this, the teachers wouldn't let us watch the news. Until I got home, all I got to see that day was 5 minutes of coverage after everyone finished their Physics lab experiment. I got in trouble in computer class for going around different news sites rather than working on the assignment. I was always kind of bitter that for 5 periods we all had to go about our day as if nothing had happened.

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I was a freshman in high school. Right before I was dropped off at school they interrupt the news station here and say a small plane of some kind has flown into the World Trade Center. Didn't think much of it, because planes hit buildings all the time. (Empire State building being the best example)

Then I went to Chapel and they told us everything that happend. I immeadiately said pretty loudly to myself "Osama Bin Laden" and my homeroom teacher who I always sat next said: "Who's that?". I replied to her and about 20 other people who were shocked at what I said "he's a guy in Afghanistan that hates american foreign policy towards the muslim world and called a jihad back in the early 90's against us, they tried to blow up the WTC in '92". People were shocked that I said this. I was like follow the news, people.

Sorry if thats not a rememberance but my response of telling people who this guy is was more then anything they learned from the television that day or from teachers because even the history teachers didn't know this guy or his cause.

We ended up watching tv the whole day.

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I was off from work that day, or at least that morning, as I had to go to court for a minor ticket. I got up, let the pup outside, and turned on the TV for a rare glimpse of the morning news. I'm usually not up terribly early in the mornings, and 6:30 Mountain time is pretty early, so when events started to unfold, I was still in bed. I tuned in to see both towers smoking, and the first tower started to go down. From there I was glued to the TV, and saw the news flash across the bottom of the screen that all government offices had been closed, thus no court appearance for me. My friends from England called. Had I been at work that morning, there are big screens everywhere in that office, as it's a network operations center, and CNN headline news is permanently shown on at least 10 of the screens. That would have been very surreal to be watching that while sitting at work.

nine-eleven

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Like Pierre i was also a freshman in highschool. I was working in the schools canteen during the morning break and a friend of mine who also worked there asked me if I had heard about the plane hitting the World Trade Center. I had first thought that it was a Sesna or small plane and it was an accident. No biggie I thought, a few broken windows or a plane hitting the street below. Then in 4th period our vice principal came over the PA and announced what had happend about the second plane hitting and it being a airliner like the first. Wow. I was in shock and then began wonder what or how or why something like that happend. (never thought about an Afghanistan terrorist group who could have done it) in the afternoon I remember going into my home room where about 100 people were jammed in watching a news clip from CNN that somebody had taped at noon. It was a weird silence as we just watched it over and over again. We began talking about it and a local preacher came in to pray. It was 5 oclock by the time I got home and all I could watch was the news and coverage of it all day. My dad told me sometime later that there is an event that changes the world for every generation.... WW2 for my grandparents, the Kennedy assassination for my parents and now this for me....

Today i watched a memorial service from Pennsylvania and I got chills watching all of the family members singing Amazing Grace. I stood up, bowed my head and prayed for them until the song was over.

:hlogo:

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It didn't hit me until my lunch hour which was 1:00 PM AST. I knew about the attacks but I had no visual source. Just the internet. Plus, the industry I work in meant I had to work that day. Where I worked we went into Emergency Response mode. I became involved in my work. I wasn't in denial but more so a fight or flight adrenaline state of mind.

My lunch came and I went to the lunchroom and saw the towers getting hit on replay. I began to cry and felt a rage so intense I wanted us to nuke whoever was responsible. I felt an incredible urge to enlist.

It took me about 3 days to get fed up with it. For the next week all that it seemed that was on TV was Tower 1 and 2 getting hit. Over and over. It wasn't good at all. I just replayed it in my mind getting upset again and again. I remember going out for walks at 3:00 AM just to clear my mind.

Then about 3 to 4 days later I was myself again. If you can call that, "myself".

Never forget. Never.

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Had just finished a late dinner consulting for some Danish gov reps and was walking them back to Shinjuku train station. Suddenly a foreign guy came up to us, a guy I didn't know, white, probably American, and he said something like "An airplane just flew into the World Trade Center." Incredulously, I propped my laptop on a ledge and tried to get online but got error messages from all the news sites I tried to visit, then I got a simple page from CNN, not the usual page but a low-graphics version with the early reports. By now the street was discernibly divided into those who knew and those who didn't, you could feel it. Dropped the Danes and headed back to my place on the way found a crowd of people huddled in front of a TV in a window, watching the images of the smoking building, then the second plane hitting.

They had not yet started censoring the images of people falling from the top of the towers and these were being replayed, it was a terrible, cold helpless feeling, but like everyone I continued watching television for days trying to make sense of it.

I had been in the East Village about two weeks earlier so tried for a day or so before I could finally get in touch with the friend I'd stayed with. She was ok but pretty shaken up emotionaly, said the weirdest thing was the day-long procession of dust-covered office workers walking like zombies northward through the Manhattan streets. Around her apartment the area was smoky and littered with dust and light debris, papers and so on. She left New York City a few weeks later, has never been back as far as I know.

I felt like New York had had its two front teeth kicked out, and felt terribly sorry for a city I had very much loved, sorry for all the people who had died. When my American and other foreign friends here discussed the events over the following days, we agreed that something profound had shifted in the world as we knew it.

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The surreal part, for me, came later that day when rumors and theories started to pop up about who had done it.

As I said, I was living on the University's campus. In the dorms, 80% of the 3000 people living there are foreign students. So while you'd walk through the dorms, you'd cross Muslims and it was just there, this tension between people, this silent aknowledgement that it came from them. Rumors ran that some Muslims who were watching the attacks live in a common room (where there's giant screens) had been cheering. A great divide had been created and it made its way to your doorstep. Suddenly the Arab next door was guilty before proven innocent. It was instinctive, crazy and mean. Human nature at its worse.

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My wife and I were sitting in our apartment in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates having drinks with friends as a prelude to going out for an expensive steak dinner at an American steak house in Dubai.

Suddenly, we see live coverage and we think it must be an accident and then the second plane...

First thought the horror and the tragedy....

Second thought... It's a hell of a long boat trip home

Third, Do we need to leave the country? If so, how... ???

Finally, we went out had a great dinner, got drunk and tried not to think about it and what would happen next.

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I always find it terrible, when that grief overcomes people and turns to hate. I know many friends who felt very vulnerable from the new direction of fear.

My friend likes to look up things, including conspiracy theories. I always try to keep a mild tone in the conversation because I feel squeemish about the topic. Death happened, and I feel the greatest tribute is the quiet respect and memory.

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