The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Fridge => History Section => Topic started by: aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) on September 11, 2009, 07:37:15 AM
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This could be a touchy memory for some, so of course don't join the discussion if you don't feel comfortable, but I'm just curious what some of you remember of the day. It's especially interesting for me because I don't remember anything. My parents kept it hidden from me, and I must not have gone to school, because 9/11/2001 came and went and I was none the wiser.
What about you?
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Well, although I'm not from NY, when that happened, I got really upset because my aunt was at NY at the time for some business and we got really worried becuase she didn't answered the phone calls, and we thought something might have happened.
I was at a resturant at the time, suddendly that came on the news, I was 8(not 11, my mistake) at the time, a LOT of people from the outside gathered there to see what was happening.
I was really shocked with what had just happened, it was at that time that I first started to deslike some religions, no offense to anyone.
I heard today that they are building a memorial to the 9/11/ 2001, and that it should be finished on 2011, I support the idea.
Poor people :(
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I remember seeing it on the news. Of course I was only 7 years old(gees... I really thought it was only 5 years ago or something), but I did realize something bad had happened in America and a lot of people died. It didn't hurt myself so much personally.
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I was fifteen years old (I feel so old now :p), and I had just gotten out of Biology. My next class was about to start, and the TV was on in the classroom I went into. I looked up just in time to see a plane smash into one of the Twin Towers, and I thought it was just an action movie playing (the Trade Center is attacked in "Die Hard", I believe). But then, I saw it was CNN, and the headline "Terrorist Attack on America" showed up on the screen. I was like, "Holy s***!" and told a friend of mine to look at the TV when she entered the classroom. That's what was goin' on in my life when 9/11 happened.
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One of the things I remember is this thread (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=23) started in 2004 (shortly after the founding of the GOF) about 9/11, but it was more political than commemorative. I am absolutely positive there must be at least one other thread which is more about our memories rather than the political discussion, but I did not find it. I have some very clear memories to the day. I was sitting at the computer typing an email to the first other land before time fan I ever got to know describing cut scenes from the bonus materials of a DvD of Disney's Dinosaur to her (obviously it was afternoon over here when the planes hit the towers) when the phone rang and my Dad told me to switch on the TV because a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I am positive he spoke of "a" plane, not plural but I cannot say for sure if I saw the second plane life or if I switched on the TV shortly after the second plane hit.
I remember I was thinking of Pearl Harbor at that time especially after the news of the Pentagon arrived. Another thing I vividly recall was that they were talking about another passenger plane circling about Washington (they showed that too). What was it with that plane actually? I do not recall it was ever mentioned afterwards (presumably told to land at the closest airport around).
There is a lot more to tell about the day but I got to go right now. Here is a link (http://www.network54.com/Forum/26773/message/1000309249/Atrociously) to the very short message I posted in the N54 land before time forum on September 12th 2001.
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I was in fifth grade at the time.
I didn't know how to feel about it then, and I don't know how to feel about it now.
It's hard for me to accept that there is a hatred prevalent enough in this world that it may drive people to abusing eachother based on group affiliaton, yet that hatred has proven itself time and time again, in so many different guises. To refuse to accept it would be a disrespect to everyone who has suffered at its hands.
But things like this happen. People die. You can't always anticipate everything, that's part of what makes life so spectacular and precious. And I don't think it's fair that we play this event up so adamantly when other countries have endured so much worse.
That's just my thought! I really don't mean any harm or disrespect and I am extremely sorry if I offend anyone.
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It's always terrible when folks use their hatred for others as a reason for doing such terrible things to them. There's never an excuse for such barbaric behavior :anger!
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i remember i was 7. i just came back from school and the tv was on, with the screens of the attack.
terrorists are just way to crazy. :crazy
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I was in high schol pyschology that morning, and we had the tv turned on, it was after the second plane had hit, and we watched the towers collapse. it was a surreal moment , which i didn't fully gerasp until later. looking back, the attacks united america and most of world. It was a tremendous missed opportinity to show leadership and unity, to try to reduce terrorism as a threat. instead Bush used the attacks as a political bludgeon, using it as a basis for questionable policies and greatly expand executive power. the push to war in iraq fdestroyed the goodwill the US gained after the attacks, and greatly undercurt the struggle in afghanistan, which should have been our sole focus after 9-11. We kicked out the Taliban, and nearly caught Bin Laden then forgot about both him and Afghanistan after the war in iRaq began. we have lost tremndous ground in Afghanistan because of this nreglect, and we might not be able to regain that. the afghan people don't trust Karzai, and are losing faith in our ability to help them reconstruct thier country and thier lives.
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That's the story most of my friends have. They were at school, and saw it all over the televisions. Apparently not much work was accomplished that day.
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I first heard about it at school.
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Dude, the TV was on in my house and I was home sick. I watched it all, even though I had no idea what the hell was going on.
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I didn't find out until I came home from school (I think I was in 5th grade at the time). When I did hear what had happened, I thought the event was so insignificant, I actually wanted to mark it on my calendar so that I wouldn't forget it (I often had a hard time remembering things). These days, I now know that event was much more significant that I had once thought. In fact, I currently see it as the day that marked a turning point where America has since gone nowhere but downhill. (now that we have a new president, I'm hoping that things will improve)
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I was in my 8th grade classroom waiting for my first class to start. Absentminded as always, it took me a while to notice that the TV had been turned on and everyone else was fixated on an image of a pair of smoking skyscrapers on the screen. I honestly didn't understand what was going on at the time; it wasn't until later in the day that I learned more about it, and became aware of the true magnitude of the incident. While my memories of that day are dim, I rememberóand regretóthat I was effectively unable to participate in the mourning nearly everyone else around me was engaged in, due to my frustrating inability to express empathy. In other words, while I was cognitively aware of the tragedy surrounding the incident, I didn't know how to indicate that I felt that way, and as a result I must have looked terribly apathetic. :bang (I apologize in advance if I sound self-centered or insensitive for talking about myself as having had those feelings in the wake of such a serious and tragic event.)
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I was in NYC when it happened... in Latin Class. I remember parents pulling their children out of school, and then thinking, if my father comes to get me, this is serious... if he does not come to get me, it isn't a big deal. Well, sure enough, he came to get me... and I remember walking home, and seeing the NYPD had mobilized EVERYTHING they had, including a police car disguised as a taxi cab... it wasn't a very good disguise.
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I was in NYC when it happened... in Latin Class. I remember parents pulling their children out of school, and then thinking, if my father comes to get me, this is serious... if he does not come to get me, it isn't a big deal. Well, sure enough, he came to get me... and I remember walking home, and seeing the NYPD had mobilized EVERYTHING they had, including a police car disguised as a taxi cab... it wasn't a very good disguise.
Wow, I couldn't imagine being in New York City during all that. It must have been hard. Were you out of school and whatnot for a long time?
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I was back in school in two days. Not long at all.
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I don't remember much...I was in AP English when the planes hit (no TV on in that class) but heard a bit more after lunch. Didn't mean much at the time, and it didn't make a lot of sense either. People striking buildings for what benefit and purpose? Terrorism in America wasn't a new thing, but it also wasn't so commonplace that people knew what to think or how to react to such an event.
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It is still not commonplace... we haven't been attacked since 9/11... it is one of those things that we can go many decades before it happens again... like Pearl Harbor...
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I was in the fifth grade, and my math says I was 9. I don't remember much, I just remember the TV being on. I don't even remember watching it. I do remember, though, one of the next day's papers front page. It had a huuuge American flag on it.
It's good that Amercan's all came together after the attack, it's good that we know to do that.
What's NOT good is my generation, in regards to the attack. We were disscussing it in one of my classes today, and a kid actually said "Well I think..like..since Bush wanted to like..go there and attack and everything..and Obama wanted to get out of there..". If I had been any closer to that kid, I would've been swinging.
I'm already sick and tired of all these weirdos running around saying "oh Bush was in on it, it's a conspiriacy." But, to say something like what that kid said..It's stupid, and even more ignorant to say something about it, when obviously he doesn't have a fudging clue what he's talking about. The kid has a reputation for being an idiot already, though, so I should've seen it coming.
Overall, I think the attack worked more than al-Qaeda planned it to. They got their 2000+ lives, and as an added bonus, they got a large number of people to turn against their president because they can't understand they difference between the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
So I'm just kind of disappointed that I can't remember anything about such a large event, an event that I've read, and watched, and listened about, that actually went down when I was alive..wish I had watched the TV..I might have..might just have a bad memory..
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The attack was counter-productive... it increased America's occupation of Islamic countries, and directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of far more Muslims than we could have killed without 9/11 as a reason to attack them.
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Oooh, wow, my school didn't have TVs. Our principal told us we couldn't go out for recess because 'the bees were acting up.' When our parents came to get us, a friend of mine and I were convinced it had something to do with aliens. Jokingly, of course. My mom told my sister and I what had happened in the car ride home. I remember feeling very distant, teary-eyed, and very strange, but it didn't effect me greatly beyond that.
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The attack was counter-productive... it increased America's occupation of Islamic countries, and directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of far more Muslims than we could have killed without 9/11 as a reason to attack them.
I don't think it was counter productive. Instead of spending money, planning for years, and with all risks of failure, now they can drive a couple miles and kill Americans if they want to.
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I remember I actually came home early for lunch and mom had it on the TV... I watched the news for the rest of the day and I remember my dad said to me,
"You do know what's going to happen now?"
"What?" I asked.
"War."
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I was in 5th grade. And I knew something was up because my mother came to pick me up... AND she never said anything about a doctor's appointment.
And I found out when I got home as the TV was on and I, like Pangaea, could not feel anything and to this day I still cannot feel anything. Cognitively, I am aware of the magnitude of the entire attack but no emotions come to mind. Then again, no one in my family was mourning.
I am not being disrespectful but that is what I felt during that day.
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I was in fourth grade, the teacher came in and said planes hit the world trade center ect ect. Other than that I remember it being a normal day. I suppose I was too young to understand the political implications and why it was allowed to happen. That's probably all the better. What facinates me to this day is how the effect stretched across the whole country. The 3500 some odd people who died that day had friends and family in every crevice and corner of the country.
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And I found out when I got home as the TV was on and I, like Pangaea, could not feel anything and to this day I still cannot feel anything. Cognitively, I am aware of the magnitude of the entire attack but no emotions come to mind. Then again, no one in my family was mourning.
I am not being disrespectful but that is what I felt during that day.
That's how most people reacted to this event over here. There was a news flash on TV. Some politics said something wise... And that's all.
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Overall, I think the attack worked more than al-Qaeda planned it to. They got their 2000+ lives, and as an added bonus, they got a large number of people to turn against their president because they can't understand they difference between the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
Actually I'm afraid the attack worked better for Al-Quaida than they could have ever hoped for. There was the huge chance after 9/11 because for a while almost the whole world stood behind the US and had some effort been taken at that moment to not just kill terrorists but also attack the causes for terrorism rather than starting a totally unrelated war in Iraq the world might look a bit better today. The way things stand the rift between the western and the eastern world has become deeper than it has been for a very long time and as a consequence of the crimes committed and the ideals betrayed there are flocks of new recruits to the ranks of the terrorists. People who would have never turned into terrorists had it not been for some of the actions taken after 9/11.
Anyway, I understand this thread to be mainly about our memories to that fateful day. Therefore I strongly suggest to keep our political views on it for a different thread and instead make this one a thread for our memory to the events.
I remember some things about the time preceding 9/11 like the murdering of Ahmad Shah Massoud (leader of the "Northern Alliance" in Afghanistan two days before the attack, the arrest of the members of the aid organization members "shelter now" in August (who seemed to be held like hostages rather than for an actual reason). The destruction of the Buddha Statues by the Taleban in the spring of that year, and in late August 2001 the Tampa affair, where the Australian government refused to permit a boat with 430 refugees, most of whom were from Afghanistan, to land in Australia. I remember that one in particular because just a few days before the attack I wrote an email to the first other LBT fan I ever met (she is the same one to whom I was writing when the news of the attack came in and she is from Australia) saying something to the effect that I too would try to leave if I was in Afghanistan.
Another thing I remember from the time preceding the attacks was the utter horror we felt about the news of suicide attacks during the second intifada in Israel. The idea of so many people blowing up themselves in order to kill some random other people was just something beyond our comprehension. In later years we almost stopped taking notice when the reports of the newest suicide attacks (which came on daily basis) with the number of victims came in :unsure:
In spite of all this I remember a statement from a fellow student of mine (not a friend mind you) who said (I think it was less than a month before 9/11) that he was "bored" and that there ought to be "some real war" so there would be something "interesting" in the news again. I wonder if he remembered the statement after the attacks.
As for me I have been a little "haunted" by a statement which I gave during a school trip in summer 1999. I was talking with a cousin of mine (who was in the same class as I was) about terrorism and I said something to the effect that terrorists were incompetent (I probably used a term more literally translated as "stupid"). Referring to the 1993 attack on the WTC I said something to the effect that if they took so much effort one would expect them to bring the entire building down. You can imagine that this statement of a then 14 year old gave me something to chew on came 9/11 :(
Another thing I remember of that fatal Tuesday was my concern when I heard about a plane nearby Harrisburg in Pennsylvania. The reference was of course to Flight 93 which crashed near Shanksville. When they mentioned Harrisburg in the news a real shiver ran down my spine for I was thinking about what would happen if they stirred a plane into the nuclear power plant (if that had been committed I'm afraid 9/11 as we know it would in spite of all its horrors look small by comparison)!
One of the eeriest thing however was the day after, September 12th. I'm going to tell more about it, but in another message. I am really interested in everybody's recollections of September 11th and would really like to hear from you. I beg everybody for a moment to cut out political discussion (we can do that in another thread) and refer just to their personal memories of that day or of other memories relating to it.
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The attack was counter-productive... it increased America's occupation of Islamic countries, and directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of far more Muslims than we could have killed without 9/11 as a reason to attack them.
I don't think it was counter productive. Instead of spending money, planning for years, and with all risks of failure, now they can drive a couple miles and kill Americans if they want to.
Not true. They have hardly killed any of us in Afghanistan... fewer than 200 Americans per year out of a population of over 300 million. That isn't even a cut for us. By contrast, we have killed tens of thousands of their people, and thousands of Al-Quaeda
members.
Not to mention they cannot hope to push us out of the Middle East... and out surge worked beyond our best hopes in Iraq... even left-wing commentators say that the conflict there is basically won, and the real issue is to fix Afghanistan...
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PLEASE let us keep this thread for memories to the day and events surrounding it rather than political discussion. We can discuss the politics in another thread, but it would be really good to have one thread devoted to the memory only, the much the more as we do have several politics threads related to 9/11 consequences already.
Let us have one thread about our memories to the events and others for political arguing.
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I nudged the other thread to the top for political discussion. Its in the Fridge. Any political discussions will be moved to that thread.
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I'm going to move that thread to AM to and rename it to signify that thread is about the political discussion.
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One of the eeriest thing for me was September 12th and the attitude of almost every single teacher at school. They were clearly overstrained with the situation and almost every single one reacted by pretending that nothing had happened at all.
One religion teacher mentioned that we were all aware that something terrible had happened the day before, but that this was not the topic and then she got down to business. The only teacher who devoted one of his precious lessons that day to talking with us about the events was a Latin teacher. He was a choleric and I was never very fond of him, but I will always hold in grateful memory the fact that he was the only teacher who was courageous enough to talk with us about the events of the previous day and about our concerns and the events that might happen.
For the honor of our teachers I must admit that of course it WAS a "peculiar" situation for them to be in and also that of course I did not have lessons with every teacher that day (others with whom I had lessons during the following days may have talked with their students that day, but I don't know this for sure). One teacher of Latin and history whom I had in history at the time later mentioned that he was looked at very strangely by his Latin students on Wednesday the 12th because on Monday the 10th he had translated a text with them which was about a roman siege of a town. The headline of the text translated to "We are knocking down the high towers" :huh:
My recollection of the day after 9/11 would be incomplete if I did not mention the nutcase either. The nutcase in this case was a girl in our grade who was somewhat infamous for her strange views and gothic outfit. She went on about how the terrorists had deliberately crashed the planes into the towers at so early a time in order to "avoid many innocent victims" and that also they had aimed exactly for the floors of the building where "all the gun lobbyists sit" :crazy :bang :x :angry:
At a much later time we learned that two students of our grade who were on a students exchange had been on the WTC just a few days earlier. I wonder what it felt like for them on 9/11. Truth to be told I never asked them as I knew neither of them very well.
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Wow, Malte. College would have been an extremely interesting time to be in during 9/11. I almost wish I had gotten the chance to talk to people about what had happened at the time, instead of go through the whole thing ignorant.
Also Cautizer,
I remember I actually came home early for lunch and mom had it on the TV... I watched the news for the rest of the day and I remember my dad said to me,
"You do know what's going to happen now?"
"What?" I asked.
"War."
That sent a shiver up my spine when I read that. I would never forget a moment like that.
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^ It wasn't college, it was highschool.
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I was in the first grade at the time of the 9/11 attack and I do remember coming home from school and my dad telling me about the jet hitting the world trade center and I also remember watching it on the news(CNN I think) since I was like 7 at the time the magnitude of the attack didn't really affect me,but when I look back at the 9/11 attack I think its just horrifying,darn I can't believe I thought it was cool when I was wtching it on the news while it was happening.