I was driving my son to school and I turned on the car radio and they were talking about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. So I called my wife on my cell and told her to turn on the TV and see what’s going on. She suddenly screamed ‘oh my god’ as the second plane hit.

At work Bluewater nursery we had radio on in our rm children were asleep so we could follow the dreadful advents

First part of the day I was at work. Two hours later I was renting a seventeen passenger van and driving up to New York City. Went to work at ground Zero at 7 the next morning. Left New york on June 27th of 2002. I was working for FEMA as a Mass Fatality Specialist.

I was a 19 year old sophomore in college. I had to give a speech in my public speaking class at 9:30 CST that morning. I was practicing and didn't have on the news. As I walked to class, I noticed there was no one out, and then my roommate walked by me. She told me that the Pentagon had been attacked, but didn't mention the WTC. I didn't hear about NY until I got to class. The person behind me said something, and I turned around like "what?!?" I didn't give my speech that day.

It wasn't until the tenth anniversary that I started to heal. I always felt weird about it, somehow incomplete. I watched every special, saw every documentary, but something felt off. I was reading an article about the anniversary, and it included tons of pictures from around the country on the day. There was a photograph of a group of college kids in Utah standing together and looking up at a TV in their student center. Something released in my chest when I saw it. I finally saw something that reflected my memories of the day. I was able to process that I wasn't alone that day. Many of us had that same experience at campuses all across the country.

It changed the course of our lives. It was the end of our childhoods, the end of our innocence. Our experience was unique and overlooked, but we had it together.

In a cave making videos

At the community college taking a class. That was an odd day indeed.

I was at work as a government contractor with Lockheed Martin. We stopped our work and simply watched TV in the conference room until we were sent home. Saw the towers collapse in real time as if a product of a demolition team downing a building. Twice? Despite plane hits were in different floors, their collapse behaved exactly the same... ???? It was never in the terrorist mind to collapse the buildings... much less two? They tried in the 90's with a van full of explosives in the basement parking of one of the buildings and failed!!! We will never know. And then again, I recalled a laboral terrorism act were at least 43 people were killed, 100 injured with a $2.30 sterno can set on fire on a spare chairs storage room in the Dupont Plaza, former Puerto Rico Sheraton hotel/casino New Year Eve 1986. Granted, played a lot in the tragedy that the Main Casino Emergency Exit door was Chained down!!! So sometimes the terrorists strike gold even when just looking for pebbles since no help was expected!!!! I will Never Forget!

In the hospital getting my appendix removed

I was asleep, then I saw the T.V. set was on, I called a friend and he brought me up to speed.

I woke up late for school that day. I just felt like I did not want to go. I had that anxiety that you get when someone says "we need to talk".

I got to school, 6th grade, and the rest of the morning went by okay. Then in American history class, my principal pulled my teacher out into the hall and that knot in my stomach returned.

The teacher came in and rushed over to the tv in the corner and turned it on. As he tried to get to the news he explained to us that something very bad happened.

When he got to the news we watched the first tower fall. Then we saw the second tower get hit and we all knew but didn't quite understand.

I watched people and debris jumping from the tower. I watched people in the streets covered in dirt and dust and smoke screaming as they ran.

I thought for a moment "it's like a scene from my comic books"

But hydra isn't real and this, this was.

After lunch time we all piled out into the lawn around the flag and had a moment of silence and solidarity. We cried. We went home early.

I wished I had stayed home.

I was on the FWY in Sacramento, driving my son across town to school (shared custody). We were listening to live coverage on the radio as events unfolded. By the time I arrived at work, the planes had already hit the bldgs and I watched a live Internet feed as they collapsed. It was a very surreal and depressing day, to say the least. I recall shedding tears at my desk.

I was in the CVICU at a hospital here in Houston doing chest compressions during a code and the cardiologist yelled “OMG” and was looking at the TV. He said a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Obviously it was a large building, but I had no idea what he was talking about. I had never heard of them before. I had to redirect the doc to the task at hand. Fortunately, our patient made it.

I was baking chocolate chip cookies that morning. My mother called and asked if I had the tv on. I didn't because we had company. We spent a lot of that day sitting outside on the porch looking at a sky with no jet contrails.

I was 14 in the 9th grade basement classroom of my last year of christian school, being indoctrinated in bible class, studying some book of the OT. I remember that morning before it happened being unusually crisp, cool and clear skies. The emptiness of the sky was surreal already, almost like autumn had descended all at once and the aerospace industry was nationally holding its breath. Not a hint of a cloud or contrail anywhere I could see around here.

Having never been to NYC Im sure I didnt know what the WTC was at first, but after news of the first plane, our teacher rolled in the television and we stared in silence at the smoking building, as the second unexpected impact happened, and more smoke, and more for what seemed like an hour; I don't remember if they televised or we noticed the people jumping to escape the fire but it was all very surreal, and when the towers finally crashed down I think we were given some somber words and a prayer and sent home. The blissful ignorance of childhood ended as abruptly as those buildings. Suddenly my awareness of politics and sense of cynicism for politics and religion were born all at once. Really strange transformation of the world to witness out of the blue at a formative age. No tragedy surprises me anymore. Not really.

I was puzzled by the long line of vehicles waiting to get into a nearby military base, but I didn’t hear of the attack until that evening.

But as I was working that afternoon alongside a roadway with my daughters, a police car drove by slowly. I picked up a very strong feeling of love and protection—I could feel the emotion of the policeman. He was thinking that he was ready to give his life if necessary for the protection of such as us.

Call it woo all you want. That was my personal experience and I’ll never forget it.

480 E coming up on my way to a customer.

I was watching it on TV at home.

I was in college. I rode my bike to school that morning alongside my younger brother. We joked about how we never watched the news and that if something big ever happened, we would have no idea....

We got to school and our first class was a religious class that we had taken together. They began the class with a prayer in which the woman saying the prayer emotionally expressed a great deal of concern over "all the people that had died." I wondered if she'd experienced a personal tragedy.

The teacher then got up and asked if there was anyone that didn't know what was going on. I raised my hand and said that we didn't know. He then told the class. I was stunned.

I went through the day in a daze, avoiding the TV's that were on everywhere. I couldn't bear to watch the footage. Because of that it was days, maybe weeks, before I found out the towers had collapsed as well. It was a full year before I finally watched the news footage. It's still so heartbreaking to me.

I was on my way to work. I remember the hair standing up on the back of my neck. I wound up crying all day.

I was woken up by a friend asking me to call another friend to check on if he was working in one of the towers. They had just broken up, and she was concerned. After the expected “huh? What’re you talking about”, I turned on the tv and saw the first tower on fire. I hung up with her, called my other friend checking on what he was doing. He had the same reaction, saying almost the same thing I had said. I then called the first friend back, said he was ok, turned to my father and said, gotta go...

I was travelling with friends around France and Northern Spain.

On our way through Spain we stopped in a small village to eat in a little bar...everyone in the bar were staring at a disaster movie on a little TV perched on the wall....

On closer inspection we realised this was not a movie but a news feed...a very real and terrible tragedy was unfolding in front of our eyes.

At work watching horrified on TV

I worked for a computer software firm and our headquarters was in Tower 2. Worst effn day of my life. I was in Maryland that day at one of our satellite offices teaching a training coordinator class. Lost a lot of really good friends especially a girl who I'd just met and she had recently married.

At work, we pulled it up on the TVs.

I was in first grade at the time. I didn’t even learn about the attacks until I got home.