RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused?

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LaTigresse -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 2:17:32 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: CalifChick I had finished getting ready for work a bit early, so I sat down at my computer to see if any friends on instant messenger were online. One of my friends had changed his display name to "HOLY SHIT TURN ON THE NEWS!"... which was very uncharacteristic of him. So I did... that was right after the first plane hit. I took a portable tv to work and not much got done that day. It did spur me to make a phone call that day, to someone that I thought was going to be in NYC (he lived about an hour or so outside of NYC). It was someone I had "met" on the internet that had given me his number a week or so earlier, but I had not called him as of that point. He was not in the city that day after all. That man became my husband, the one I'm waiting on the judge to sign a restraining order on (hopefully will have an answer tomorrow; otherwise Monday at the latest), and for another judge to sign final divorce papers on. So I blame Al Qaeda for my first marriage. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Cali Cali, am I a horrible person if I see some really warped humour in that? (I hope you are okay!)

smilezz -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 2:27:37 PM)
I was already in sorrow as it was the day that marked not only my Mother's birthday, but also her death. She was only 40 at the time. I also was talking to Thorns on voicechat through Yahoo - had the TV on and watched as it unfolded. Both He and i sat on chat for over 9 hours talking and in total shock as was everyone else. Another sad event to add to an already painfull day... -smilezz-

subtee -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 2:33:08 PM)
~FR Just about to head to class: "Writing Comedy for TV." Surreal.

CalifChick -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 2:43:34 PM)
It's okay Miss LaT, I find warped humor in it as well. On another note, one of the best things to come out of everything that happened that day was that people were no longer afraid to stand up and put themselves on the line. People who would look the other way and not get involved in something were no longer afraid to stand up and make a difference. Cali (and yes, I'm okay, thank you)

candystripper -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 2:45:07 PM)
I woke up late and CNN was on...I wasn't sure what they were saying at first; I think by the time I knew, it was 'all over'. I called my brother and my kid; panicked; I don't know why but I desperately needed to hear their voices. I was in shock all day..hearing about the Pentagon and the plane in Pennsylvania. It was horrible. candystripper [sm=pole.gif]

camille65 -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 2:46:58 PM)
I was heading into work listening to NPR, when I got to work no one was aware of what happened and people literally didn't believe me. In between customers I tried to call my parents to check on my bro in law, he worked there (either Bear Stearnes or Smith Barney... can never remember which one). He wasn't there but many of his co-workers and friends of my sister were working there that day. When I got home around noon I popped a blank tape into my VCR and ended up taping the next 12 hours. I've never been able to watch it again. So many emotions. Shock, anger but above all a great sadness that this sort of thing finally hit the US hard. I'd always thought of us as lucky in that regard. I don't have the right words but I felt tainted after that day. Maybe tarnished is better. There is a tangible before and after feeling with this date. I miss the 'before', I miss having that feeling of security and safety. It has changed every facet of our society and I can't think of one instance where I can say it has changed in a good way.

windchymes -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 3:10:39 PM)
Like a lot of us, at work. A co-worker's wife called to say that a plane had hit the WTC. I figured some private pilot had a heart-attack at the controls and his Piper Cub hit it. Then, the co-worker looked at me with a really strange look in his eyes. "A plane just hit the other tower." My blood ran cold, and we turned on the radio and listened to the reports of the Pentagon, the plane crashing in PA, wondering what and where was next. Hearing that all planes were ordered grounded immediately. Since I lived at the time near Atlantic City, I wondered if the boardwalk was a target. You could take out maybe nine casinos and several thousand people by flying a jetliner up the AC boardwalk. I called my immediate family members, gathered them close mentally. And then began living in a new and changed world.

bipolarber -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 3:39:14 PM)
I had just moved to Arkansas a couple months earlier, in July. I was still out, looking for work. In a bizzare turn of events, I was in the building of The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, taking a typing test, and interviewing for a position with them, working in their classified ads division. Midway through the test, everyone's cell phones began to go off. Outside, in the main hall of the offices, everyone was suddenly moving at the visual equivilent of a scream. One of the girls next to me suddenly closed her phone, and sort of stared off into space... "They slammed a plane into the World Trade Center..." A moment later, the HR person came in, thanked us for our time, and asked if we wouldn't call back in a couple of weeks to reschedule... something huge had come up. During the 20 minute ride back to my hometown, I listened to the radio and the live reports coming from near ground zero. I thought of a friend of mine, who worked in the south building, whom I'd met a few times at trade shows, and presentations to her venture capital firm... (I found out about a week later that she had died in the black zone when that tower collapsed.) I got home, and just held my wife close, and watched the TV coverage in horror as the events took place.

kiwisub12 -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 3:43:03 PM)
My daughter called me at work to say that an airplane had crashed into a building in NY. I laughed - i couldn't believe that a pilot would actually hit a skyscraper! After all, they're huge!! I turned on the tv and saw the second plane and realised that it was a deliberate act - that someone actually piloted those planes into the towers, and condemned all those thousands of people. I too was tearful for days, and it made me realise how much i love this country. I had lived here for almost 25 years, and never really noticed how America and its people had snuck into my heart and head - but i got a wake up that day. I was driving in Little Rock not long after the attack - surely far down on any terrorists list - when a plane flew across the front of the car - and i was afraid. Logically, i knew the chances of a terrorist attack were really slim - but my brain wasn't listening, i was nervous when i saw that plane. It took me a while to become blaze again at the sight of a plane. [:o]

SavageFaerie -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 3:51:36 PM)
I felt something was wrong. I dont normally watch the news but turned in on just after the first one hit. My sister lives and works in nyc so I hit redial it seemed forever. I fianlly got her on the phone with relief. Sadly her experience had more impact. She did a blog today for her reunion site. I have her permission to share. Today is the 7th Anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. I'll never forget that day. The weather was beautiful. I was in early to work that day. I had just finished the ratings from the night before when someone in another office yelled out that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. We could already hear the sirens on the streets. I stood and watch it on the television with a fellow co-worker. We saw the second plane approach the building and I said "that news helicopter is awfully close". It wasn't a helicopter. It took only a few minutes to realize that it was another plane and we assumed it was intentional at that point. My hands started shaking and I got a pain in the pit of my stomach that returns now while I think about that moment. Everyone at the office was nervous. We didn't know if another building would be hit. Soon after the first building collapsed we heard that a lot of high rise building were evacuating, including our rivals over at NBC. Most of the people in my office live outside Manhattan and couldn't get home. All of the bridges and tunnels were closed. My friend Scott and I live on the Upper East Side. It was decided that it would be safe for all of us to head that way. We all left the building together and headed uptown by foot. Subways and buses were not running. It was the most surreal moment of my life. There were thousands of people walking, mostly uptown, and hardly a word was being spoken. We had to walk crosstown for a while. As we looked up the avenues, we could see the huge cloud of smoke and dust. We heard about the second building collapsing while we were walking. We all stopped at a restaurant on the way uptown. I don't know why. It was somebody's bright idea. I didn't want to stay, so my friend Barbara and I headed to my apartment. Her husband is a cop stationed downtown near the trade center. She spent the whole day on my phone trying to get in touch with him while we watched news coverage on televison. It was after 5pm before she knew he was ok. He came to my apartment later to pick her up and drive her home to Long Island. He was with another officer. I answered the door and was taken immediately taken aback. His pants and shoes were covered in the world trade dust. The other officer was outside in the car with a bandage on her head. The rest of my office went up to Scott's apartment a few blocks from mine. My friend Marilyn was with them. Her pilot brother was scheduled to fly to San Francisco that morning. She spent the day on Scott's phone and eventually found out that he was the co-pilot of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. I went into work the next morning. I took a bus. The subways were still not running. No one spoke a word on the bus. It was compete silence. I had a block to walk after I got off the bus. There were only a hand full of people on the street. It was eerily quiet until I heard a man shouting "God Bless America". It was Don King, the famous fight promoter, waving a flag while he walked. That was my 9/11. Needless to say she got home a while ago and said she had a really bad day. I makes me sad that 7 years later there is still a big gaping hole there. I had to get my nyc state id which is in lower manhatten, I caught a brief glimpe from several blocks away. I cant and dont want to get any closer than that.

girlivy -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 4:00:36 PM)
Was loading up a catering truck to do a job for FPL..... The owner ran into the kitchen to tell us that a plane had just crashed into the first building. We gathered around the TV, then the 2nd one hit. We stood there tears streaming from all, standing in silence. Holy F*%(&nSHIT.. Had to drive to FPL for the catering job listening to the radio. Upon entering the FPL building, it was chaos. They had TV's wheeled set up all over. so many people all over the place. The day the world changed..

Aneirin -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 4:09:26 PM)
I remember it well, I was at work showing someone how to repair a diesel pump, and we heard it on the radio. The first plane strike, we did not know it was an airliner that had struck the tower, we were thinking a small plane, as the radio report was not the best. When the second plane struck, we needed to see what was going on, so up to the bosses office we went , ignored the boss and turned his tv on. All of us stood in silence around a little black and white portable tv with mouths open, watching what unfolded. Boss tried to get us back to work, and there failed, this was more important, as it affected us all, my workforce did what I did and I was not scared of the boss. Silence the rest of the day, even the usual busy telephones were unusually quiet. I phoned my wife from work, she was at work, but they could not have a radio, so she did'nt know what was going on, she sounded like she was in panic, saying something about someone from another shop running in and blurting out that an airliner had crashed into the world trade centre, but they knew no more, the shoppers had gone weird, it had gone strangely quiet. I told her what I had seen on the tv, she became upset. The end of that day at work, the atmosphere felt different, there was a change, people were different, sort of silent, there was an uneasy feeling in the air. The feeling was, that we were at war, the calm before the storm.

MistressNew -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 4:20:42 PM)
I was driving to work, listening to inane morning chatter, hoping they'd play a song. The dj mentioned that a plane had hit the world trade center, but then went on to talk about other things. I think he assumed, as did I, that it was a small plane, maybe a single-engine contraption, that had hit the building. When he announced the second plane, I veered off the road and almost hit an old man walking his dog. He was scared. I pulled over and apologized, but told him to get home and turn on the TV, because Osama had just attacked the World Trade Center. I was at work in time to watch the towers fall. Shortly after, they evacuated all the tall buildings in Atlanta, so I went to a bar.

TysGalilah -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 4:32:57 PM)
I was in Arizona, in my home and getting ready for work. The tv was on in my bedroom, as usual, as I got ready and I heard "breaking news" chime in...I walked over by the bed to see what it was.. They were showing the plane flying into a NY skyscraper. I was so surprised but thought it was pilot error and that was what was being reported at that moment... I remember feeling so awful, feeling so confused as to what really happened...feeling awful for the planes occupant...wondering why there was fire..wondering if people on the floors that it hit were hurt and why no one was telling about them yet then the 2nd plane hit......I sat on the edge of my bed and watched the tv ( about 3 feet away from me)....couldn't make myself move. Watching image after image of people...dust...debris....the enormity of the buildings collapsing was something I couldn't even comprehend actually, being raised in flat AZ rarely a skyscraper to be found there. I remember my phone ringing...my employer telling me not to come into work. We talked about it for a little while.. I called my kids school > was I to pick them up? they encouraged me not to.. I remember wanting to ( for my own selfish reasons ) but understanding that they would have guidance counselors there and they would be ok.. I remember sitting there for hours and hours...not willing to move from in front of the screen. I remember the tears just falling and a feeling of helplessness to know how to help or what to do really. So I just kept watching. I was still sitting there, don't remember moving from thespot when my kids came home from school...they had their stories too, some classrooms ran the news as well and the teachers had kept the dialogue open throughout the day.... and we all sat and talked about it, hugging each other.. Its funny because some of the day seems like a blurr >d I cant remember what else I did that day ....except for the sitting in front of the news and tv part and watching those horrible scenes over and over and over> that part is vivid to this day. and hoping for the next newscaster to say something new...something hopeful...something positive.... but that didnt happen.. I remember for days it went on...waking the next day, turning on the tv to find out something new.. everything that was new just seemed more tragic...more buildings effected...more lives lost.. more suffering..even fewer answers. I felt close enough to feel the pain but far enough away to help.. I remember wondering if life would ever be the same.. ~~~~~~ Joy Behar on "the View" today told about how her daughter was on a plane at Kenndy Air port waiting to depart....she called her and told her " get off the plane !" no one on the plane knew what had happened yet.. she told how vulnerable everything suddenly felt to her and that any plane may be next (once the newscaster began announcing it was terrorist acts..).. I felt similarly vulnerable...even clear across the country..

sappatoti -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 4:45:55 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LaTigresse I had almost forgotten about the silence of no planes. ... I was at work in Clearwater, FL. We had but one TV and all of us in the office watching. When the towers started to fall, the chairman of the board called and told us all to go home to be with our families. On the way home a traffic accident detoured me from my normal route, so I ended up going past the Saint Petersburg airport. I noticed quite a number of large commercial airlines lined up to land, and noticed with alarm that they were not taxiing to the terminal, but being parked along taxi ways and side lots. People were being picked up in busses as they were coming out by way of moveable stairs. Crossing Tampa Bay, I noticed the same thing going on at Tampa International. I also noticed a stream of aircraft flying into and out of MacDill Air Force base. When I arrived home, I found out that an aviation ground stop was ordered and planes were trying to put down wherever they could. When all of the planes finally stopped flying, the silence in the air for the next three days was quite noticeable (I lived in the flight path for TIA). By the third day, there were no more white trails, the sky was bluer than I had seen ever for a Florida sky, the eagles and hawks soared higher than they normally would have ventured... and the silence was even more pronounced. I think of all the events that I saw on television that day, the silence in the air was the one thing that made the whole terrible day real for me.

JohnSteed1967 -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 4:55:24 PM)
I was in bed that day, I had just gotten home from work. My exwife came into the room saying "a plane crashed into the world trade tower" I told her "Well call me if another plane crashes, other wise its just an accident". Low and behold she came back in a few minuites later. I got out of bed and saw the instant replay, and then watched the towers go down. I looked at her and told her "America is under attack, we have to expect this to get worse, too bad we don't have money to buy gold or else we would be rich very soon." No Truer words

RayvenGoddess -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 4:58:31 PM)
was shaken awake by my mom right after the first plane hit. She had this habit of telling me confusing things early in the morning to make me wake up (I am a night person and a heavy sleeper, it takes a lot of get my ass up), she when she told me that a big plane had hit the world trade center my first questions was, "What the hell is a World Trade Center?" I got up, got dressed, and went downstairs to watch the news. I just stood in the kitchen eating my cereal thinking that it was a tragic accident but that it really wasn't something that affected me (I was still an unmentionable in high school). Then as I was watching the second plane hit and it was like my mind just exploded; nothing seemed to be able to process and explain what I had just seen. I dropped my cereal on the floor and started to yell up the stairs to my mom, and I don't remember anything really after that until maybe my second period other than I changed my normally very heavy goth make-up to a plain face with tears coming out of just one eye in my black eyeliner. Once other kids a school saw me, many drew tears on their faces as well or asked for help having them painted on (both girls and guys). It was somewhat theraputic to see all of these vastly different kids, who most of the time hated each other for petty things, put all of that aside and come together to openly show their fear and sadness. I kind of walked around in a daze without any real understanding of what had just happened; like I said I was still in high school and even though I counted myself as someone who was really into history and global events it wasn't until one of my friends said the word "attack" that I really had any idea that this was something sinister. I was just so shocked that I was a little slow on the uptake that day.

CalifChick -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 5:02:26 PM)
I had trouble for a long time afterwards seeing a plane on a banking turn. Our airport is not that far from my house, and seeing this is an everyday thing. I didn't/couldn't look for a long time. Cali

CookieSlave -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 5:07:45 PM)
I haven't read all of the messages here, I can't. I was working IT for the Post Office at the time(contracted position) and had just gotten back from fixing a printer, and wondered where everyone was.. Got a phonecall from one of our techs at a remote location, and told him there's something up, I'm wondering where everyone is. He didn't know yet. My other line rang, it was my mother, so I hung up with the tech to take the call. I remember her saying "Oh my god!! did you hear about the twin towers in New York?? Oh my god one just fell!" While I was looking outside at the bluest sky I've ever seen... I was like "what?? what are you talking about??" She could hardly get a sentence out, just "Oh my god, it just fell! A plane!" And I said, and I remember this exactly, "Oh my god.. all those people... This isn't normal. This is not an accident. Nothing is ever going to be the same again, everything's different now isn't it?" That, in the span of about 30 seconds.... I remember the initial pics of the people falling/jumping, that was horrifying(before they stopped showing those pics.. ). I remember the planes being stopped, which was a supremely frightening thought to me, that that was a necessary course of action. I literally didn't sleep for several days. People take different things in different ways. The guy in the office across from me was unphased because, he said "I'm here, I'm not in NY, this doesn't affect me". (!!!) My brother is not the same person he used to be, he's very .. umm.. "charged up" about things, when he used to be laid back and easygoing(and yes, that goes back directly to 9/11/01). That is all.... -cs

lusciouslips19 -> RE: Where were you the day the U.S. Paused? (9/11/2008 5:53:53 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aneirin I remember it well, I was at work showing someone how to repair a diesel pump, and we heard it on the radio. The first plane strike, we did not know it was an airliner that had struck the tower, we were thinking a small plane, as the radio report was not the best. When the second plane struck, we needed to see what was going on, so up to the bosses office we went , ignored the boss and turned his tv on. All of us stood in silence around a little black and white portable tv with mouths open, watching what unfolded. Boss tried to get us back to work, and there failed, this was more important, as it affected us all, my workforce did what I did and I was not scared of the boss. Silence the rest of the day, even the usual busy telephones were unusually quiet. I phoned my wife from work, she was at work, but they could not have a radio, so she did'nt know what was going on, she sounded like she was in panic, saying something about someone from another shop running in and blurting out that an airliner had crashed into the world trade centre, but they knew no more, the shoppers had gone weird, it had gone strangely quiet. I told her what I had seen on the tv, she became upset. The end of that day at work, the atmosphere felt different, there was a change, people were different, sort of silent, there was an uneasy feeling in the air. The feeling was, that we were at war, the calm before the storm. I have been wondering. Did the people in the U.K realize a kinship with Americans that they never realized they had before? Admitting a connection to their kin across the pond? I know Americans realized how much they loved America.

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