What were you doing at 8:46am on 9/11/01?

[HMBeaty]

I was working at Beach Ford, packaging some parts to be shipped, then headed to the back by the receiving doors and heard it on the radio. I still can't help but shed a tear every time I see something on tv and/or photos of the events from September 11th, 2001. But, at the same time, I can't help but keep watching the coverage or looking at more photos.

[BSMedia]

It was my senior year of high school. Class started at 8am, and as usual I was rolling in late after eating breakfast with some friends at Bob Evans. No longer than we walked in to our 2nd period class,(Oddly it was a U.S. History class) did the teacher turn the TV on as we all sat there watching the news, maybe 2 of us had any clue of what was going on or the implications of this. We didn't leave that class till about noon when we were all let out early.

About 2 hours after flight 93 crashed, we learned that the plane actually flew almost directly over our town, and we were dismissed due to concerns over a nuclear reactor that we are within its kill zone from if a plane were to crash there.

[Max Taxable]

Was working in a large manufacturing plant.... A co-worker told me he heard on the radio a small twin engine plane had accidentally crashed into the WTC. I told him, "Impossible that's an accident," because I had done some flying myself. He got a little miffed, was like "They are SAYING it's a accident" and I was like, "Nate - there is no damn way a plane flies into a building of that size by accident. If there is trouble with the plane the pilot is going to find SOME other option."

Anyhow a few minutes later he came and got me, said "Now it's a jumbo jet, a 747 not a small plane" and I knew right then what we had. I told him "this is a terrorist attack pal."

Went into the conference room and turned on Fox news.... Gathered the office and management staff in there. We all watched the second plane hit, and the towers fall. The women were crying as well as some of the men.

I would say, with ten years of time to think about it - it was a bad day overall.

[Juggernaut]

It was my day of from work, so I was sleeping when it all happened, I didn't realize what had happened until I awoke and turned on the news, it was all so surreal, I didn't believe it at first, and just kept on watching the coverage all day long. It was indeed the most important world event that has happened during my lifetime.

[Paul M]

No idea what I was doing.

If it was a weekday, I was probably at work.

[BirdOPrey5]

The night before was a bachelor party for one of my good friends from college. Yes, a Monday night bachelor party because his brother was in the Navy and it was the only night he could be there. Even though I grew up in Brooklyn, a mere 10 miles from Manhattan, I always disliked the city itself- too crowded and filthy IMO, even after it was "cleaned up."I could count on one hand the number of times I had been in Manhattan before that night. But the party went well, it was fun, I remember looking at the towers in the distance a couple of times... I started thinking, maybe it was time I gave the city another chance...

I didn't get home until about 5AM... I figured it would be worse to try and get an hour or two of sleep (I was not at all tired) then to just stay up. (Oh to be young again.) So I shut off my alarm clock since I always turned it back on right after it would go off so it was set for the next day. Took a quick shower, and went into the office extra early... always easier to get work done when no one is there.

I was at my desk when my phone rang, it was my parents (I had only moved out a few months before) my Mom was telling me a plane hit the world trade center! I told the couple of people who had offices near me and we went to another area of the building that had a television. We got there just in time to see the 2nd plane hit. We were of course all confused and thought they were showing a replay of the first but why was there already smoke? It didn't make sense... nothing made sense. Slowly it started to sink in... Soon the whole office (about 50 of us that morning) were watching it- we knew this was going to be a bad day. Cell phones were basically useless- the only communication I had with friends or family was IM. It was a very surreal day- a lot of people crying, tearing, some people couldn't watch... a couple of guys had wives and family that worked at the towers- they eventually left after being unable to get ahold of their loved ones. The rest of us just kept watching. It was obvious I wasn't getting home with all the bridges closed so the company had an apartment nearby they let me and another guy stay at that night.

I had IMed/emailed/called all my friends who I knew worked anywhere near the towers or lived in the city... I got through to one only to hear that his Dad worked at the towers, I hadn't know where his father worked. Unfortunately he did lose his dad that day, the only one in his entire company to die on 9/11- although he wasn't a "first responder" we have no doubt he stayed behind to help others.

The next evening when I finally got to my apartment I started seeing the photos of missing people up everywhere...they started marking the tires or cars left in parking lots to see how long they've been sitting since for many their owners were never coming back. I realized how I "got lucky" - had I not been at a bachelor party September 10th and went to work as normal, at regular time, on the 11th, I would have set my alarm for the next day... It would have gone off September 12th morning and really annoyed my neighbors... They would have contacted the building superintendent who would have opened the door to my empty apartment to find and shut off the alarm. He would have no idea where I was or where I worked, but he wouldn't have been able to miss the picture of the Twin Towers I had on my living room wall and wonder if I was ever coming back.

[Lynne]

I'm in California. I woke up at 7am like I normally did in order to get the kids up and off to school. They were happily eating breakfast so I came up to my computer to check some blog posts. I'm reading through my friends blog posts posts about some tower coming down and I'm going backwards and backwards in time through their blogs until I finally saw enough information to process what they were talking about. I'll admit that I freaked out at that point and yelled downstairs that they needed to turn on the TV. I could barely talk and certainly wasn't making sense as I tried to tell them why they needed to turn it on. Of course all the channels had pictures of what was going on. I just sat their stunned.

And then, I had to still get the kids ready to go to school and then go off to work myself.

(Of course I spent part of work on IM trying to contact my east coast friends and make sure they were OK. Luckily my friend who's husband worked at Morgan Stanley was in London that day. He was supposed to fly home that day but didn't actually make it home for another four days.)

[GavoTrav]

I was 6 years old at the time, But I do remember mostly everything.

It was my cousins birthday also.

[Boofo]

I was sitting right where I am now doing what I am doing now. My son was watching cartoons on cable and I got an email from Coffeecup software (of all places) stating that they were giving away free copies of their HTML Editor software in remembrance of the tragedy that was going on in NYC. That was when I turned on the news channel and found out what was going on.

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Boofo

I was sitting right where I am now doing what I am doing now. My son was watching cartoons on cable and I got an email from Coffeecup software (of all places) stating that they were giving away free copies of their HTML Editor software in remembrance of the tragedy that was going on in NYC. That was when I turned on the news channel and found out what was going on.

They gave away free copies on the actual 9/11/01?