STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

I was in college(can't remember which year).  I remember waking up and turning on the tv and seeing smoke coming from the first tower.  I just thought it was on fire because the tv was on mute.  I remember looking at the tv and seeing the plane fly into the 2nd building and thinking "WTF is going on". I turned the tv up and my mom called from work and said that her company was letting everyone go home early and that she would be home in a few.   The whole thing was definitely a shock but I think I broke down when the 1st tower came crashing down.  I just remember thinking that no one got out alive.  I didn't even go to class because my eyes were glued to the tv. 

I was a junior in college, studying abroad in Brisbane, Australia that semester.  It was about 1 am or so when my friend Erin came to my house and was banging on my door, but I was tired, so I didn't get up to answer, thinking whatever it was could wait until morning.  Then my roommate Shey came home and woke me and my other roommate up.  We watched tv all night and cried and cried. 

My dad was an airline pilot and my roommate's dad was a flight attendant so we were super scared and it took forever before we could call the U.S.  We stayed up til 5 am watching the news and I made pancakes for a bunch of us on my study abroad program the next morning as we watched more of the news.  One of the weirdest things was going to my class the next day and being one of three American students in a class called "The Politics of Non-Violent Change."

The whole experience was so weird and confusing since we were so far away and didn't have any idea of what was going on.  Coming back to the U.S. that December and seeing all of the American flags was pretty amazing though.

i had just graduated from college in may and was in NYC up until the week before the attacks.  I decided to come home for a few weeks, go on vacation with my friends from college and visit my parents before heading back to NYC.

i woke up around 8:30 and came downstairs right around the first reports on telly.  my dad and i watched the news all day long.  9/11 is also my mother's birthday so all festivities for that were obviously put on hold. 

i ended up not going back to NYC afterall.  9/11 put my life into perspective for me and i ended up getting a job about an hour away from my parents and brother and in the same town as my sister.  i still miss NYC and wish i was there and perhaps someday i'll go back- but for now, i am happy where i am.

I was a senior in high school but, I happend to be at home sick that day. I had my TV on but it was on mute, I didn't really pay attention to what was going on while I was going in and out of sleep. My mom came home at about 11:00 and I was like what are you doing home? Her response was, "Don't you know, planes hit the towers and one just hit the Pentagon." This was pretty scary because I like in Northern VA about 20 min from Arlington. I left out later that day and where I lived looked like a ghost town. It happened to be the day that a Jay-Z cd came out, when I went to the mall to get it the only store open was Target, it was then that I really knew the strength of what had happened.

I was freshman in college and need to be advised.  I went to the advising office and everyone was standing in front of tvs instead of helping.  I was pretty mad ( I didnt know what was going on at this time) and finally went up to a secretary and said "I dont have ALL day."  So someone came and helped me.  I then went to the union and my mom called and told me what happened.  I felt like such a bitch.  Also, I was suppose to go to a concert the next evening and they cancelled it which pissed me off (hey I was a freshman and had been dying to see them forever).  Since they cancelled the concert my mom made me go to the doctor (I had been complaining about my side hurting and was super tired all the time) and turned out I had mono.  I felt like such a bitch later, but because I had been sick and whiney I kind of had an excuse. 

At the time, I was waiting for my first condo to be built so I was staying at my sister's house here (in DC) at Dupont Circle.

SO I was in the middle of my a.m. routine, slightly earlier than usual b/c I had a 9:30 meeting. I was putting the final touches on my makeup and had been listening to NPR as I do every a.m. They were talking, I believe, about the afghani leader (an anti-taliban guy) who'd been assasinated in the days before. I think they were, unless that was the prior a.m. I just remember later thinking of hearing about that and how I'd had an icky feeling about it.

When they mentioned the plane hitting the WTC, it really sounded like a private plane. I just thought, "huh... hope everyone's ok." On the drive in to work I pulled an illegal move and went left on Connecticut Ave and then over to 17th, which I never did usually. I was late to my meeting and in a bad mood. They were talking about Bush at the kindergarten class on the radio and I was thinking about what an idiot he was. Then the second plane hit and the converage became very confusing because even the NPR people didn't seem to know what was up. It was unclear what types of planes were involved. I remember driving by the White House/Old Executive building. They weren't evacuating yet but it seemed something was up. I seem to remember sitting in traffic and cursing. It was maybe 9:20-25. I headed up to Constitution and across the Roosevelt Bridge to Arlington at 9:30. I later found out that if I'd been 15 minutes later, I would have seen the plane hit the Pentagon.

I remember sitting in the car at a light near my office and listening to the woman on NPR saying something about the smoking towers looking like lit cigarettes from where she was in Brooklyn. And I just knew it was terrorists. When I got into the elevator at work, my coworker Danny told me that it had been commercial planes and I told him what I thought.

I rushed to my meeting and it was weird because nobody in the meeting wanted to talk about the business at hand but we had to b/c they were external vendors with whom we were terminating a contract. So I was stuck in the meeting just wanting to know what was going on. I found out about the Pentagon when I got out of the meeting at like 10 (10:30?).

Then there were wild rumors floating around about a car bomb outside the state dept, a fire on the mall (not sure what would have been on fire) and things like that. I couldn't reach my sister, who works right next to the White House at Commerce, her husband even closer, his firm is near Treasury. It later turned out they'd gone home but it was impossible to get through to anyone that day. Nobody knew what was up or what to do. I didn't know if I should drive back downtown to my sister's house or stay where I was. Most people at my office stayed put - where I work in Arlington it's a couple miles to the Pentagon, but it was total gridlock outside, with sirens upon sirens and cars honking all day long. I was to close on my condo (this was my first one which I have since sold - it was also in Arlington) the next day, 9/12. I didn't know if I should still buy it or what.

I spent the whole day reloading CNN or the Washington Post sites, or walking into the one office where someone had a TV. I stayed at the office sort of late and when I drove home, the streets of DC were deserted and there were tanks at many of the intersections. Super creepy. They stayed there for days.

I did settle on my place the next day and it was very odd b/c the title company's office was close to Rosslyn and high up, and out the window I had a perfect view of smoke rising from the Pentagon. It felt surreal, and I still didn't know if I should even be buying the place because everything seemed so uncertain. Later that night my friend and I went for a run over to the Lincoln Memorial and we could see it from there, too. We just stood watching for a long time, and I told her about how my whole life I'd always thought something was going to happen to the Pentagon. Growing up, of course, I thought maybe the Soviets would bomb it. But I had always known someone would.

You know, I was relieved when I sold that condo out in Arlington and moved into my new one here in D.C. Now that I think about it, I had always sort of connected it to that day, isn't that weird?

Sorry this was such a long post... I have a lot of memories of that day.

-- Edited by dc at 00:03, 2005-09-12

I was home getting ready to leave for work and my sister in law called and said something about the planes flying into the towers I turned the TV on and by then the second plane already hit the tower. For an instant I thought it was the end of the world. It was scary driving to work even though I live on the West Coast, I thought it would happen here too. At work I was glued to the radio, I don't think anyone got much work done that day. At night the military planes were patroling the skies, but I just kept thinking it was the terrorists flying the planes. Then watching the horrible images on TV kept me up the whole night.

-- Edited by FashionFreak at 00:55, 2005-09-12

i was a junior in college and i had just started my study abroad program in spain.  i think we had been there for about a week and a half when the attacks happened.  it was the middle of the afternoon in spain and i was apartment hunting with 3 friends from my program.  we went into one apartment and walked into the living room and one of the roommates who lived there was sitting on the floor eating cereal and watching the news.  he must have heard one of us say something in english because he turned around and said, "you girls american?  you better watch this, it's crazy."  (he was american too.)  then we all looked at the tv and our jaws just dropped.  it took a minute to process what was happening (i actually even asked, "is this a movie?  is this real??").  then all of our cell phones started ringing and it was our study abroad program directors telling us to go immediately to the apartment that served as our program center/offices.  all 40 or so people in the program (all american) gathered at the office.  we were scared, crying, trying to call home, etc.  there were several people from new york city and some had parents who worked at the WTC.  it was so surreal and terrifying. 

i thought for sure that we would be sent home and that we'd have to start school back in the US a few weeks late.  we ended up staying in spain, but we had strict safety rules- we were told not to wear overtly "american-looking" clothes, to not go to mcdonalds, to not draw attention to ourselves, and to avoid walking around in groups together.  basically we were told to blend in as much as possible.  it might sound extreme, but there was definitely a faction of people in spain who were very "anti-american" (a very small minority).  a few weeks after the attacks, my friends and i were waiting for a table in a restaurant and these spanish guys at the bar started taunting us and saying, "osama bin laden" over and over again.  that was uncomfortable and extremely upsetting.  but really, those people were the minority.  everybody was generally extremely supportive and expressed their sadness/concern.  aside from a few isolated incidents, i generally felt very safe and supported in spain. 

it was so hard to be abroad during the aftermath of 9/11.  i felt so removed from everything....

-- Edited by sfcaligirl at 15:01, 2005-09-12

I was in my fourth year of college and for some reason, I had the day off from classes that day or maybe I was just skipping them (??).  But anyway, I was at my apartment, on the computer, drinking my morning coffee in my pj's. 

I had just gotten a new serving job at The Cheesecake Factory and needed to buy the uniform (white pants, white shirt, tie, ect).  I was planning on going back to my mom's house for the day and she was going to take me shopping for the uniform.  I was just about to get in the shower (I have no idea why I didn't already have the TV on) when my mom called and asked me if I was getting ready to come to her house yet.  I told her, I was about to get in the shower and would be leaving directly.  I had no sooner hung up the phone with her than my phone started ringing again. It was my mom telling me to turn on the Today show b/c I plane had just hit one of the twin towers.  I watched as the second plane hit. 

Obviously, my mom and I decided not to go shopping, but since I was in Philly, I decided to flee from the city for the day.  I listened to the radio on my way to my mom's house.  I arrived at my mom's house and saw the towers collapse.  We pretty much stayed glued to the TV the whole day.