I was teaching my third period class of eighth graders when the principal announced on the intercom for us to turn on our TVs. We saw one tower on fire and witnessed the plane crashing into the second tower. I guess NY seemed too far away for many of them to grasp what was going on. A few didn't care. In fact, one girl told me to turn it because it was boring. Yep, sadly, that's the first memory I have of what I was doing at that very moment. I was pissed at her.
We had the TV on all day in the room while we continued to "work" on our projects, every teacher did. A few of the teachers said they were gonna stock up on supplies and gas because prices were gonna spike and there would be a gas shortage. Of course there wasn't, but that didn't stop me from filling up. When I got home, I called my best friend who is in the army at the time and discussed the possibility of him going overseas. Three days later, he was married and had his first child on the way. Talk about life a life changing experience.
One silver lining for me is that I had a chance to meet a very nice young man due to the tragedy. A new student who moved from New York, named Charles. His parents decided to move because they had ties to that small rural community and didn't feel safe anymore. Charles was sweet, intelligent and had a heart of gold. He had actually taken a field trip to the twin towers the very day before.
That little town was where I had my first teaching experience, a cesspool of a town, really. But I will always remember some of the students, like Charles, who made it easier to work there.
It was the second day on the job for me when i worked at that spam company. As I was getting out of the car they had just reported on the radio that one of the World Trade Center buildings had been hit by a plane. My first thought was "what an idiot." I assumed it was a small tourist plane that just clipped one of the buildings because every now and then you hear a story like that. But a few minutes later other people started coming into the office with more details and it was quickly apparant that something was very wrong.
No one in the office had a radio so we kept trying to go to cnn.com and other news sites but they were getting so many hits that the streaming videos wouldn't work and the articles wouldn't update fast enough. Eventually we got a radio from somewhere and started listening for details. 2 hours later the boss told everyone to go home.
When I got back I turned on my radio since I didn't have cable and couldn't get reception. For the rest of the afternoon I played Legend of Mana and listened to the radio getting whatever updates I could.
Thanks for sharing guys, Travo that was a nice story.
I was with my dad, but he's so forgetful he forgets I was there. We were watching the live news after the first plane hit. Then suddenly we saw the second plane just smack into the second tower.
It was gobsmacking.
Everybody is know that , Relatives of 9/11 victims make their way along the ramp to a reflecting pool at Ground Zero at the World Trade Centre site, New York, September 11, 2007.
He was busy.
I figure I do this now before tomorrow cause I will be busy with football. Tomorrow is the ten year anniversary of what I consider to be the biggest event of my lifetime. I will never forget that day, I will never forget what I felt when I heard the news and listened to reaction on the radio. I will never forget that feeling of being scared that my country, a country where we basically felt invincible, was under attack. I will never forget crying on the way home from university as I heard stories on the radio.
And I was far away from where it happened. I can't even imagine what its like to all New Yorkers and everyone that was personally effected. Its one of those days that changed the world, changed history.
So I guess you can share your 9/11 stories if you like. It's insane to think its been 10 years, time flies.