Where were you on September 11, 2001?

I was waking up and listening to the radio (yes, the radio!) when I heard audio of a woman shouting, "And then I saw them, I saw the plane hit the building!" For a moment, I thought I was listening to a play, and then as I roused myself out of bed, I realized that something must be happening, so I turned on the TV and my mobile phone.

There were messages on it, left by my two friends I had just left behind in Washington, DC only one night before. I had been vacationing with them for two weeks, and we planned a trip to NYC. We had even talked about extending my trip a couple more days and visiting the twin towers that week. On the 9/10, I was in the airport waiting with my friend, and I got bumped out of my flight. He asked me if I wanted to extend my trip at least a few more days, and I seriously thought about it. For some reason, I felt like I should try to go home to Seattle, and so for the next hour, I stood in line trying to get a flight home. We ended up going to another airport, and he put me on a plane through Baltimore to fly out late that day.

The messages on my phone were their attempts to tell me that they were safe, donating blood, and one of them was in an underground shelter for safety. I tried calling them back, but of course, the phone lines were all tied up. I gathered with a few friends to capture the news, and we saw the second tower get hit, and bodies falling from the windows, until the news crew and cameras stopped showing footage of this awful moment. The suffering was intolerable. I threw up.

I actually was asleep when the towers were hit. I was sick at the time, and went back to bed when the girls left for school. I woke up around 11am and headed straight for the shower. I wandered into the living room and clicked on the television while waiting for my hair to dry, only to see the coverage of the attacks. I sat glued to my tv set the rest of the afternoon, unable to move. I cried the entire time I watched. I couldn't tear myself away, though, much like the rest of this country.

My daughters came home from school, and I prepared to tell them the horrible news. Back then, they were in grade school - Beka was only in 1st grade. I was LIVID when I found out that the school had pulled all of the kids into the gym, and turned on coverage for them to watch. These kids were WAY too little to be watching most of what was shown. They didn't understand it. The school did nothing to explain. They simply made this (very BAD) call so that they themselves could stay glued to the tv. I was not the only parent to raise holy hell at the next school board meeting, let me tell you. My girls came home terrified, and confused. Neither one returned to school the rest of that week. I kept them close to me, just as many other parents did.

I was - and continue to be - haunted by what happened that day. I get sick to my stomach when extremists start to rant about how our own government was behind it all. That is the most ludicrous accusation known to mankind. My heart breaks every time I remember that day - that time in our lives.

I also remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, and what I was wearing the day the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986. I was sitting in Sophomore Biology class, wearing the usual tight jeans rolled at the cuff, a green tee shirt and my favorite leg warmers. :p

We tend to remember things like this. I suppose it's due to the emotional trauma that we go through.

I was sitting in my parents bedroom waiting for my mom to take me to school(Kindergarten) and she was finishing watching the news when all off a sudden they broke in with the footage of the burning World Trade Center and my mom's jaw dropping in aw. I remember getting home and having heard that another plane had hit. I don't remember much from when I was little but that will be something that I will never forget.(I was 5)

God Bless all of the people that died on 9/11 and all the Emergency crews that risked their lives to save people.

I was laying in the living room playing with legos. My mom was making food for some reason. My dad was sitting in his "man" chair. He was switching though the channel. We watched it all on TV. I was 5 at the time. My parents were worried. My dad was in the air force, and I think he had to leave a few minutes later.

I was on 5th or 6th grade. I remember seeing the news suddenly on a teacher's tv.

Something weird happened days or weeks after: I was playing with my lil brother in a night, then there were some lightning above clouds and I saw the form of the two towers within the lightning.. it got me kind of scare as it was shocking that two big buildings collapsed and many people died. :O

RIP 9.11 World Trade Center (meant to the people that worked on that day)..

I was in Manhattan where I was born & raised, where I lived then and where I still live. I heard the news, but didn't realize tha plane hitting the WTC was a terrorist attack. So I did what most New Yorkers would do: I went to work. As I crossed 7th Avenue on the way to the subway, I looked south to see flames shooting out from the first tower. I got on the subway to go to my meeting.

I was on the subway when the first tower fell. I got off the subway to go to my meeting, and the office building that was to house my meeting was being evacuated. I began to walk down 6th Avenue. I looked south to see the second tower fall (from 42nd Stret -- a good distance). I ran to my 27th floor office on 31st Street and took my employees home with me, to my 4th floor apartment in Greenwich Village. They stayed with me until trains and busses were running out of Manhattan again.

The burning smell from the site continued to waft all the way up to my apartment every day for about a month.

I was in school, we were all just getting ready to go home (I live in Ireland). A woman knocked on our door and called our teacher out, our teacher came back in a minute later looking like she had just seen a ghost and said "Lads, something very serious has happened, two planes just crashed into two office buildings in New York."

I was in kindergarten, so I was too young to realize what happened. I do remember finding it odd that the radio stations were always playing "Proud To Be An American" by Lee Greenwood.

I was at work, I was 27 at the time and worked in a greenhouse outside of OKC, OK at the time. We always kept the radio going so we would have something to listen to while we worked. When the emergency news bulletin came on everyone just stopped what they were doing and listened to the event unfold in real-time. Because of the OKC bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building several years before, emotions were exceptionally strong. Fear, paranoia, sadness, confusion, anger, etc., washed over everyone. The tension in the air was so thick it was suffocating. We ended up closing up early that day, to go home and be with our families, and to give anyone with relatives in the affected areas time to try and contact them to see if they were safe.

It is a day I will never forget for as long as I live. It is another tragic reminder of how our lives and our way of life can be forever changed in mere moments at the hands of anyone with enough motivation to do such.

It happened when I was 11 and in a theater class in the afternoon (European timezone) when the teacher at the beginning of the lesson remarked that anyone who hadn't come was excused, because of that the might be in shock since a plane had hit World Trade Center in NY, but he didn't know any details. The class went on as usual and I didn't find out anything more until I came home later in the evening after that class. Since we didn't have a TV we went to the neighbor to watch the news.