And Here We Are... 10 Years Later...

It is coming up on the 10 year anniversary of 9/11.  I remember sleeping in my study hall class when a student burst into the room saying the twin towers were falling.. and my teacher turning on the tv just in time to witness the 2nd tower fall.  My mother came two hours later and checked my brother, sister and I out of school.. I remember going to work.. I was a senior at the time.. and even after what had just happened.. getting pissed off at people for blaming ALL Muslims, spewing racial slurs like it was nothing.  I know, for me personally, that moment changed my life forever.  If not for that.. I would have never joined the military.. even though my parents forced it on me.. Never got deployed to Iraq.. Never got sent to Ft. Gordon.. Never met my husband..   My life would have been utterly completely different if we were never attacked.

I was just wondering if anyone else had stories about where they were.. how they felt.. and how it affected them personally that they wouldn't mind sharing.. I, honestly, would love to hear them.

I was actually in New York when it happened. I was in sixth grade, a lot of the kids in my class were commuter kids, meaning their parents all commuted to the city to work but we went to school on the island. Throughout the day I started realizing that less and less people were in the classroom. My English teacher finally told us what happened when there were only three of us in the classroom because so many kids were sent home early to be with their families. I remember worrying about my uncle who worked there, luckily for whatever reason he didn't go into work that day. My father and uncle were home safely, but my father said he could see the buildings burning from his office window.

It definitely was personal for me. I knew kids that lost parents and relatives. I remember being completely shocked that someone would attack us like that. What I remember most though was not the anti-Muslim sentiment, in fact I don't remember any of that. Maybe your experience was different, but most of the hate in my area was directed toward Bin Laden himself, not Muslims in general. I remember the overwhelming patriotism. I saw American flags everywhere, on cars, in houses...everywhere, and in New York that's rare. I feel like in Texas I see them all the time. People were friendlier too, because we were pretty much all going through the same thing.

Since we're in California, I sat down to my computer and saw a headline on Yahoo "Small plane crashes into World Trade Center".  Then my 82 year old grandma calls me, "Turn on the TV" you should see what happened.  So we did.  Then it all unfolded in front of our eyes on the TV.  The entire thing was a masterful idea from a group who's leader is dead(thank you Seal Team).  The heroism that we all heard about from the firemen and police(and even those heros on board of flight 93) showed so much about how we are as a nation. 

What I really hate about the whole thing is that the 9-11 site has be so over politicized and it should have never been.  Around here, I did hear a lot about people hated Muslim extremism and how they blamed the attacks on those extremists beliefs, though.  One thing that I did hear was crazy lunatic political ideal-based ideas like George Bush arranged the attacks or somehow we attacked ourselves. lol There are still crazies who believe this even today.  please. /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20">

I was at work.  There was no mention thru email of what was happening but they had placed a couple of TVs in the atrium.  I walked by and they were showing a plane crash into a tower.  We thought it was hoax because of the lack of announcement.  

I work in a secure govt facility, government is also too cheap to spring for internet so we don't really have access to the outside world.  

i remember just being completely horrified at what was going on, especially when that second

plane flew in and hit the south tower

I was sitting beside an Italian lake when a friend phoned me. I rushed to the nearest bar and saw the full horror on the tv. I couldn't believe it but two women were chatting away as the rest of us gasped. I couldn't believe it. I had a friend working in one of the Towers, he told me he had to push his way past a guard to get to the stairs and rushed down them. He jumped on the train to New Jersey grabbed his family and drove out to Vermont or somewhere. He said if he hadn't done that he would have been killed.

My father works at the Pentagon but on that day he took off work to take me to the dentist. Talk about a major blessing!