What were you doing 5 years ago when the WTC went down?

I was in the third grade, and the teacher turned on the radio. She explained what had happened, then had us listen to it, quietly. One of my friends sitting near me made a little tower out of blocks and rammed his hand into it. I just sorta raised an eyebrow at it, like Spock (I'ma geek, I know), then kept listening. When my mom picked me up from school, she explained it further, and I understood. I was real depressed for a while.

...you know... for the record... I didn't know that the World Trade Center and the Twin Towers were the same... until like... just a couple'a months ago... so I thought there were like 2 or 3 attacks going on at once.

Probably Watching Cartoon Network,Nickelodeon,Playboy TV or something.

I was at school and all of my classmates started to check out all around me. Probably about ten in all were checked out, leaving the rest of us to wonder what was going on. My teachers didn't look worried, or, they hadn't seen the news yet. I went home and saw the towers on fire, my mom and dad looked worried. I completely didn't understand what was going on, but I knew it was bad. My reaction was fear.

People who had an emotional reaction to 9/11 - crying and the like - are sobbing pussies or idiots. Why anyone with no connections to anyone who died would think anything besides "Aw fuck, someone's getting invaded!" or "Goddamn it I wanted to watch Crocodile Hunter!" is beyond me. The surge of faux patriotism afterwards was surprising, and I suspect that a lot of people convinced themselves that they were mourning when they heard about it.

I'd been out with a friend, I came back and my brother showed it me on the news. Neither tower had fallen when I came in, I watched them both go down.

The first thing I said was "wtf asbestos" at the gigantic smoke, I think I even took a light view on it at first, but then I started to realise just exactly what I'd witnessed and kinda went quiet, biting my lip.

Where were you, how did you react, and how do you feel about it now? For members in foreign countries, was the reaction towards Americans as overwhelmingly positive in foreign countries as the average 9/11 retrospective leads us to believe?

I woke up late. Fox is on my TV 24/7 literally It is the only station the TV in my room gets. So I woke up at 9 to see flaming towers instead of Jerry Springer.

You may all hate me for saying this, and if you want to flame or bash me, please send me a PM. I was a New Yorker when September 11th happened, but by the end of the day I thought that New Yorkers are notoriously the rudest people on the planet so it was great that it happened to them. Although there were people in every nation in the towers, it was mostly New Yorkers. It amuses me now that a month ago a poll came out with "The cities with the friendliest people." New York was #1 (see how sympathy can change perception?), Toronto was #3.

Oh and finally two years ago I went to the Sears Tower Sky Deck. When I came out there is a special exit for people who were on the skydeck. You pass through a security checkpoint then you go out to the street. When I came out there were Middle Eastern men there taking photos outside of the building, but the camera was facing the security checkpoint. There is no sort of tourist value to that shot! It doesn't say Sears Tower exit, it is just sliding glass doors and inside is the checkpoint with elevators that go directly to the skydeck. They could have just exited from the skydeck, but I was just up there for 3 hours, and in that time span you tend to see a lot of the same people over and over again. Just about when I was disinterested with the whole "They are taking photos of the security checkpoint," I saw the four men pose for a photo, then the photographer sat the camera on a post and joined the photo. The five of them posed and the camera was not even pointed at the five of them. It was pointed through the glass to the two guards positioned at the elevators. They kept doing that, leave a camera to take a shot that purposely made it so they were not in it! Maybe I am just a paranoid American and they do not know how to take photos.

I was playing games, most likely. Then I heard the news...

going to school, we don't watch the news often..lol...so I found out at school when everyone kid was in panic

I was still living in the Philippines when this happened and I was flipping through the channels. I was watching it at night after they crashed at 9:00 AM Eastern. Yes I had CNN.

I was in my basement on my computer while watching TV. When I first saw it. I wasn't paying attention to what was going on before that. I thought it was just some sort of prank as I believed that nothing like that could ever happen. But I was worried and watched the rest of the news. I was shocked, 

On a side note: Why is this in intelligent debate?!

I was at Work at a Car Dealership... I heard every one making a fuse in the Mechanics area, they had it on the Radio's in the cars they had been working on... It felt unreal...

I think I was in 3rd grade when it happend.

I remember being mad that resess was canceled that day due to a
"Plane crashing in new york".

So of course everybody in the class was complainng that they missed out on having 20 minutes of fun because something happen about 2,000 miles away.

needless to say none of us knew the full extent of the accident till we got home and turned on our t.v's.

Crazy, I saw the footage of the towers smoking. Then all of the sudden the collapsed.

Wow. My mom had got home from work early and had been watching the news all day.

Not a very fun day I can tell you that.

I was at home sick from school. I was on the couch watching tv with my dad and we saw the towers fall and he screamed "F***ing ***holes!!!" and threw a lamp at my mom. 

Call me cold, call me cruel. But I think America brought this on themselves... (I'm not in for trusting government either).

I was sleeping, mum and dad must've been watching the news - the next day mum told me of the collapse of the World Trade Center. And I was like: "I don't really care." I saw it on the news (god, they STILL show it, why delve in the past?) However I did feel some empathy.

Anyway, the days around the collapse were boring as hell - my parents were glued to the TV. How? It's so boring, the same thing over and over - and we are on another freakin' continent. Jeez...

Not long ago I was told about how not long after the people who attacked the towers had more fatalities due to attacks from the US. I actually was pissed off when I found out about this (my memory is hazsy on the victims and their country - think it was Iraq), the first thing I thought was: "So all of a sudden US are more important than Iraq? o_o" So it's okay for the US to kill thousands of thousands of people but not okay when Iraq destroy TWO, repeat, TWO towers. o_O My god... the world is so freakin' screwed - now I know not to trust US. What about these weapons of mass destruction, there aren't any? Oh, what a surprise. I mean it's not like government has ever lied to us before. What a shock! Luckily we have USA to kill off innocent people just to get (was it oil? again memory...) oil. Wow... well that sure is a grand reason, more so for POWER than anything else.

EDIT:

I just reread this and notice I may offend someone, I certainly don't intend to so I have kept the post as is, and in text I appear really, REALLY cold - I'm not, it's just don't expect me to feel too empathetic for something I am not involved in, I feel sympathetic of course, but not empathetic.

On a side note: Why is this in intelligent debate?!

This is a good point. I don't see any flamewars in here.

I don't mean to pick at you, just let you know, you have empathetic and sympathetic switched around.

Nah it's okay - but I thought empathetic meant: knowing how people feel and relating to them - and sympathetic: feeling sorry for someone due to events that have happened.

In which case I'm wrong, I mean what I've written here in this post.

ALMOST right.

Sympathetic means you see something, and feel pity for those involved.

Empathetic means you have experience, and know exactly what they are going through, and are thusly able to relate to the affected 100%.

I've made it clear what I meant. Thanks for letting me know what it meant. And yeah, kinda obvious I have them switched around now >.< *fixes*

I wass yelling at my mom because i wanted to see Dragonball Z :'(
never saw that episode again..

I was off school, think it was a holiday.
I was 10 then...so I never really knew what was happening, and how important it was. I was worried, scared, but not bothered....then.

I must have been 10 too as we are same age "
I wish i knew what was happening by than i really didn't cared what was going on..
Strange how that can change you in only 5 years :S

Thats what I thought when I was thinking about what I thought/doing when I was writing my first post here.