September 11

[batson]

So it's that time of the year again. I've made topics like these on various forums for a lot of years, because it never cease to interest me to hear about people's memories of one of the most significant events of the 21st century.

So let's once again share our recollections of that day.

As for me, as a 14 year old in Sweden, when I first heard of the attacks I didn't at all realize that magnitude of the event and could'nt even begin to realize the effect that it would have on world history. To be honest, I largely saw the attacks as just yet another "tragedy in another, far-away part of the world" that you heard about on the news all the time. However I soon noticed how the adults around me talked about the attacks as something absolutely incredible, and i began to dawn on me that things were not going to be "buisness as usual" in the world. The day after, my friend and I even began to speculate whether this was the starting point to world war 3.

What are you're memories of September 11 2001?

[Big Panda]

I was almost 9-years-old when it happened, and I simply didn’t understand the significance of what was happening. I just remember news reports being played on TV repeatedly over the following days (one clip I particularly remember is a woman frantically telling a reporter about how people were jumping out of windows). I also recall having a minute silence in the playground at school for it.

 

Today, I can’t help but have a morbid fascination with the disaster. Every so often I go and read the various Wikipedia pages about it, watch clips of the second plane hitting the south tower (and even one rare clip of the first plane hitting), the towers collapsing (the most chilling one being accompanied by audio of a man trapped in the tower on the phone, and his frankly blood-curdling exclamation as the tower comes down before our very eyes).

It’s also possible to find VHS recordings of the various major American networks and their programming that morning, right up to and including when the news breaks, and it’s really surreal seeing September 11, 2001 beginning as just any ordinary day.

This is the moment our own BBC1 broke schedules with the news. That ending jingle of the Neighbours theme will forever send a chill down my spine now.

[batson]

I have the same morbid fascination. I think it has to do with the fact that, in retrospective, there is a definite "before and after" 9/11 in terms of world politics. The 9/11 attacks singlehandedly ended the 1990's (much more so than new years eve 1999 did). The 1990's was a "breather" decade after the cold war ended, but then 9/11 came along and made the world aware of another schism, that between western civilization and islamic fundamentalism.

[Adamis]

That morning, I had an interview for an art school (which I succeeded). I came back home and watched a VHS of the original Godzilla movie. When it finished, I watched a belgian TV channel, RTL-TVI, and saw images of the towers with the smoke. I think the second plane just crashed in it. At first, I thought it was a movie, but then I realized it was the news. I left the channel all day, saw the towers collapse, etc. I remember my mom came back with some croissants, she had no idea it happened. It was quite hypnotizing to watch all those events, that day...

[skull902]

5 hours ago, lulzers said:

Kinda off-topic but what if they rebuilt the World Trade Center as it was before 9/11 (albeit according to modern building codes) instead of building what we have now?

That's the direction I feel they should've gone with, making sturdier replicas of the Twin Towers (and having free reign on the other five buildings in the complex,) or at least making the new 2 WTC a twin of 1 WTC, just like before.

As for me, I was seven years old, just started second grade. I remember very little; just the school buses coming by to pick us up and being confused at how quickly after school started that they were sending us home. I think I even wondered out loud why they would even have school that day if they were gonna send us back so early (obviously, as a child, I didn't understand what was going on; especially when having not been told what was going on.) I more than likely spent the rest of my day after school doing my usual routine, which is to say watching Cartoon Network. If there's one thing I can say, I really do commend the kids' channels (and PBS, who were running their PBS Kids block when the attacks began) for not switching over to the news so that children wouldn't have to watch what was going on, and that their parents or anyone who really needed it could give themselves a "media haven" of sorts to get their minds off of it.

[Polkadi~☆]

I was only a couple of days old.

My father was getting ready for work early in the morning, switched on the news, and saw the news coverage. He immediately woke my mother up, as they looked at the news in shock. My mother cried, wondering what world she brought me into.

From birth 'til death, my answer remains the same, whether or not 9/11 happened: a crazy bizarre world.

As someone who never really "experienced" 9/11, it's effect is lost on me. By this point, it feels like America is hung up on it when it happened and it passed. I understand the impact, however, as 9/11 is still a horrible, horrible event, and I condemn those who planned and orchestrated the event. But now it's time to move on as stronger people.

[Perkilator]

I was only 9 months old at the time, so I don't exactly recall seeing the towers go down myself. However, my parents recall having seen it on that day and thought that the towers going down was a sign of war.

It's odd; something as life-changing as 9/11 is something that I only know of after seeing the  news on it because I was born only 9 months prior.