What were you doing when you heard

[Starblayde]

...about the events of 9/11?

I guess this type of thread has had 6 months to come and go, but i thought I'd start another one. Excorcising some demons, maybe.

Being Engish, It was the early afternoon when the programmes were interrupted for the breaking news. I had just got out of the shower at about 2:05pm. I walked onto the tile floor of my kitchen wearing just a yellow towel, hair and body still dripping from the shower. I put BBC1 on, there was a live feed of a skyscraper with smoke coming out of it. World Trade Centre hit by plane. Oh my God, i thought, what a horrific accident. How could that happen?

Then I realised they were saying there were two planes that had hit a tower each. It didn't make sense. How could that happen? The story unfolded. I drip dried, sitting on a chair staring at the TV intensely.

I actually gasped in horror when they played some footage of the first plane hitting. I don't gasp at anything. Ever. I was listening to the radio, a reporter in the second tower claimed a huge explosion had just gone off. The pictures told me the first tower had fallen. Later I saw the second tower fall real-time.

My mum came in 5 hours later and i was still sitting in front of the TV, only wearing a tshirt and a towel.

Then i thought... 'Somebody's gonna get their ass kicked'. Swiftly followed by 'I wanna go kill some arabs'. I've never even been to America and this affected me.

The however-many-stages of shock. Denial, Depression, Anger, Acceptance... however many there are i went through them as i watched the TV that afternoon

 

[Andreina]

i was sitting with my mom in the living room, the telly was running on "mute" in the background with BeverlyHills90210 (can you blame me for having it on mute? ). My mum just came back from work and we gave each other foot massages when there was a banner running across the telly to change channels because there was a terror attack on the WTC.

We switched over to the other channel and well... I literally was unable to speak or move. I called my dad immediately and he stopped the meeting he was in and they at his office went to watch TV as well. I urged to come home ASAP - I just wanted to have him there.

My aunts and my uncle came round later as my mum and dad had arranged to meet them for dinner. Of course they didn't go but we all stayed and watched TV for about 4h. My family is extremely close and it gave me a lot of comfort to have them around me. I immediately tried to call my friends who worked in the WTC but of course I couldn't get through.
I was up non-stop for the next 40h and taped about 30h of the TV broadcasts.

What made me really angry though that on the Friday we had a minute of silence and my mum and I were just on the way to a commemoration place when at noon all the bells rung and everyone stopped in the streets to observe the three minutes of silence but some asshole BMW driver with a French number plate was honking the horn and tried to overtake the cars (all the cars in the street stopped as well).

To this day I cannot believe that my friend is gone. I'm studying Terrorism and Political Violence and I'm also a student of Middle East Studies and what happend on 9-11 was about the worst-case scenario we spoke through in May. It was surreal to see it.


Halo