The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Off Topic => Topic started by: okamigirl64 on September 11, 2013, 04:07:20 AM
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While ponies are great, don't forget about the people who lost their lives on this day. :cry: ^.^
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Yes, every year on this day I watch a DVD that has French brothers video taping 9/11 which originally was meant as a documentary on being a firefighter. I do it to keep the memory fresh, sorry it it sounds morbid it isn't meant to be.
I was a senior in high school. I remember I was in my morning English class and we were doing our weekly reading assignment. We had to read a book and each week right a paragraph about what we read. Then, my teacher goes to the door to talk to another teacher and she then turns the TV on and we see one of the towers on fire. They do recaps and that's pretty much what we do the rest of the class is watch the incident on TV. The next class is the same thing and eventually we see the second tower collapse. I think eventually classes start up again but I remember thinking at that point that the world was going to end or something.
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I was a sophomore in High School, and an ex boyfriend stopped me in the hall and said " World War III just started" I scoffed at him and pretty much thought he was full of crap, until I got to my class where the news was on the TV. We all just sat in our classes all day, watching the news, in stunned, horrified silence...
Where were you, and what were you doing when you heard?
[merging like threads - kkat]
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I was in my 5th grade classroom. I can still go in there and tell you the exact spot I was sitting in when the principal quietly came in and turned on the television. I think I was a little too young to understand exactly what was going on, but I knew it was absolutely horrific. Nobody spoke a word, we all just sat there staring at the screen. I'll never forget that moment in my life.
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I was at home and my grandma called and said one of the towers had been hit, it was minutes after it had appeared on the news. I tuned into the CBS broadcast of it and just sat there with tears running down my face thinking OMG was it happening, all of those people, all of the lives that were lost etc... I was dumbfounded and scared and I don't think I moved from couch for at least a good 8hrs straight.
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Home, waking up and getting ready for classes. I remember thinking it was a movie for a second, because I'd fallen asleep with the TV on. Changed the channel, and it was definitely not a movie.
I was online chatting with someone and watching tv when the 2nd tower fell. Never forget that image.
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I was sitting at home watching Imus in the Morning on MSNBC when the news swithched over that a plane had hit the first building I was watching live when the second plane hit........I was in shock and it took me a few minutes to even realize we were under attack....I had gotten out of the ARMY about a year before this happened and I was so upset and angry I called my old unit and asked if I could help..........I WILL NEVER FORGET THAT DAY
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I just came home from school. My mother was watching it on the news and I actually thought it was a commercial for a video game. I remember thinking how disrespectful it was that they did something like that in a commercial, until my mother told me it was real.
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I don't remember much unfortunately. My memory is the worst. :( All I really remember is walking into my classroom in 6th grade and seeing the teacher watching the TV. I had no idea what was going on 'til I walked into the classroom because I took the bus to school. I couldn't really comprehend what was going on, but I knew it was very tragic.
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I was also in high school when I happened. I was walking the hall way when I saw one the rooms had a tv on. I stopped and looked at the tv. That was just a few minutes before the second plane hit the other tower.
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I was in college then. I had just gotten up to get ready for my classes that day. My mom had already been up for a while and had seen the news. She met me in the kitchen and told me what was going on. I watched the news as much as I could before I had to leave for class.
I had two classes that day. First was my creative writing class. (What a semester to take creative writing!!!) We didn't do any work that day. We just sat around talking about the news. My other class was a math class. In that class not a word was said about what was going on in the outside world. It was really hard to focus on my work that day.
sailorstitch
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Very sad sad day. I am one lucky person to say that I got to see them two towers just a few months before this happen. I was there during the 4th of July. We went up to the top of one of them. On the very top was the look out. There was a gift shop there and a restaurant there. I was so scared that I would not look of the edge for very long. I cant and will never know what them people were going threw. All I know is that I was scared out of my mind then and nothing was going on.
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That was a very sad day, I will never forget it when I saw it on the TV at High school. I got to see the towers 2 months before this happened. I cant even think what them people were going threw and how they felt before it all ended. Very very sad :(
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At home watching a movie.
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My mom, brother and I were in the car on the way home from the vet & we heard it on the radio. We had just dropped our dog off to have surgery to get his tail cut off. To be honest, the words weren't registering because I was so worried about whether Buddie would wake up from the anesthetic & make it through the surgery. My mom offered to let us stay home, but I went to school anyway. I needed to get my mind off my dog. We watched tv at school that whole day, and I felt selfish for worrying about Buddie when I realized how many lives were lost.
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I was getting ready for lawschool- I think it was super early in the morning. I thought the world was ending- I can't believe I went to class that day. Saddest day ever...
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I grew up in New York, just moved to PA 3 years ago at 18.
I remember that day, I was in 4th grade, about 10-11 years old. So, I was sitting in my classroom, and we smelled smoke. We were all the way in Brooklyn, but you could STILL smell the smoke. We thought there was a fire nearby but the teachers knew. They shut the windows partially, talked to each other in whispers, then when the second tower was hit, they closed the windows fully and shuffled us all down into the cafeteria, where they told us what happened. I remember watching the news on a TV in the school and all of the parents being called to pick us up.
Mainly though, being 10 years old, I was upset when I saw my mom, because I didn't get to get a cookie with my lunch since she came early. I didn't fully understand what was going on, thought it was an accident, and didn't realize that anyone was even hurt.
I remember going home and my mom crying and watching TV. It was pretty amazing that my mom walked, all the way from downtown Brooklyn, many miles, to come and pick me up. She didn't want to get on the train because it was too crowded. She saw the buildings drop from her window across the water from Manhattan.
I went home and relaxed, and when people in my family talked about it, it made me scared and I had nightmares. I remember asking my mom days later if I had to worry about a plane hitting our house, and being afraid thinking of people burning. I still get terrified thinking of it, even though my mom didn't really let me watch it on TV until I was older.
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I was 24 years old, married, with one toddler and one month pregnant with my second child. Living in Whitehorse, YT. I will paste my journal entry written a few days later.
It was 15 minutes until 6:00am. I had just gotten home from a long Greyhound bus trip less than two hours earlier. (From Colorado to Whitehorse.) Even though I was tired I was too excited about being home with my husband and my toddler again to sleep. We decided to get up and make breakfast. My husband listened to the news on the radio alarm, and casually mentioned he had heard an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York. We turned on the television, and the rest will be history.
I started to make pancakes for the family. At first, we didn't know how large the plane was, so we assumed maybe it was an accident with a little airplane. That impression was swiftly corrected when we heard about a second 757 hitting the other tower. The view we had on the TV screen was only showing one tower. The other tower was hidden directly behind it. My husband saw what looked like a giant fireball coming out of the first tower. We didn't know it was the second plane hitting the second tower until a few moments later.
One hour and 5 minutes later, we wondered what happened to the tower. Where did it go and what was all that browny-white soot? The shock we felt when we learned the tower had collapsed. The news folks told us to expect the other one to fall, too.
All the airports closed, in the US and in Canada, and even in some of the other countries. The stock markets all closed. The US-Mexico and US-Canada borders were closed. The White House was evacuated. Lots of other buildings all over the US were evacuated, fearing potential further terrorism. Schools and colleges were closed.
And this all happened on the very day I came home on a long bus trip. When I was leaving my departure point, I was almost going to take a different route, one that would have taken me 4 days instead of 3. The person behind the counter at the bus station was insisting that I take this other route, and they'd change it free of charge. If I hadn't done so, it's possible I would have been in Edmonton when the attacks happened. And I would have been stuck there as all the buses were stopped.
The story doesn't end there. All flights that were to go to America were redirected to Canada. That means that even Whitehorse might expect some airplanes to land. True enough, I heard the planes come overhead. I watched them land (my toddler even locked me out of the house - that's a story in itself). In fact, two planes landed, both 747's. In another words, very big planes that don't often, if ever, land on the Whitehorse airstrip. Our house is directly under the airplane path too.
I didn't recognize the symbol on the fin (made me think of the Pepsi logo), but I later learned it was Korean. A pair of airplanes were low on fuel and sent out a signal. That signal was misinterpreted and they were thought to be a hijacked. All the schools in Whitehorse let out.
My husband came and picked the both of us up and we spent the afternoon in his office's lunch room. He was still under the impression that a possible enemy plane's flightpath was above our house and that it was headed our way. He didn't know it was a friendly plane and that it had already landed. It would have landed in Anchorage if the airspace hadn't been shut down.
A couple of Canadian fighter airplanes circled around the landed Korean plane. It was scary, but we are glad that it was a false alarm. Months later we learned that the Prime Minister (Chretien) would have had no qualms about ordering the fighters to shoot those planes down. A lot of innocent people would have been killed. I shudder at the thought.
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I was 19 and married to my husband who was deployed on a ship and in the Navy and in the Mediteranean Sea at the time. I had just gotten to work at the drug store where there was a tv on in the office. (We never had the tv on) then I saw images on the screen of what appeared to be burning buildings. We then realized what we were witnessing and I began to cry. Crying for what had happened and what I feared may happen with my husband. I thought for sure they'd send his ship to retaliate and I was scared out of my mind. I stood at the register sobbing as I checked people out throughout the day.
My husbands ship was not sent to retaliate and he came home from deployment a month or two later. Still, that day was terrifying to me.
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i was a senior in high school, driving to school i heard on the radio the tower has been hit. and due to the fact that the station was always pranking i thought it was a really bad joke and in very poor taste. that was until i got in my first class and my teacher had the news on with all the replays.... that whole day in every class we watch or listened to what was going on. horrified doesnt begin to explain it.
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I was in the locker room getting changed after my 1st period Gym class. The principal of the school came over the intercom and announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. For the rest of the day, we watched the footage in almost every class.
I lived in south eastern PA at the time, but a lot of my fellow students' parents worked in NYC or DC, so it was a really stressful day while they waited to hear from their parents. I think one of my teacher's daughters was in the tower at the time, but made it out.
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I was in my on-campus apartment at my college in Florida. I had gotten home from my first class of the day and hadn't turned on the TV or anything yet, none of my roommates were home. But then I noticed outside there were lines of cars blocking up the streets leaving the school. I was confused, but then my Japanese roomies got home and told me a plane had crashed. I thought it had happened on campus and that's why everyone was leaving the area. They weren't that good at english, so I kept asking where the plane had crashed while I looked outside our window. One of them turned on the TV and I just stood there in utter shock for I don't even know how long. It was like watching a movie. So unreal. I saw the second plane hit and then I was just terrified. Reports kept coming in on the news of other plane crashes and no one knew what was going on. It was the scariest day of my life.
What a horrific day, forever burned into my memory. I have since been to two of the crash sites (Ground Zero and Shanksville, PA) and visited the memorials. Just wanted to give my respect to those who lost their lives that day. They will never be forgotten.
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Between classes, Junior year...
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I was 7 years old, in first grade. I can't remember it, but my mom has spoken about it before. For some reason the whole family was awake and getting ready to leave at the same time. Mom turned on the TV to watch the news and the towers were coming down. I was so young I don't think I understood or even cared. We all went to school and work, and I remember my teacher had us write something about the events of the day. I wrote that I was so sorry for the people in the towers and their families, and asked god to help them, but even writing that I didn't register what exactly had happened to all those people.
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I was in highchool when it happened. I remember having a headache just before then our second period teacher acting strange.
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I was in my Intro Structures class in University... We'd learned how the Towers worked and some of the mathematics behind it two weeks before. Two of my classmates who are perpetually late came in without their books and visibly shaken and interrupted class (which they never did) to tell us that something had hit the first tower and classes were likely to be cancelled while everyone tried to figure out what was happening. They walked out immediately after the announcement and we all packed up and headed to the dorms to see who needed help calling after relatives. I was in a kind of daze but I remember that the Professor looked shaken and urged us out before heading to the Offices. It took about 9 hours to confirm that one of my friend's (and later roommate) mom was OK, that she'd just had to walk across the Bridge to get to her sister's house. She had been only a couple of blocks away...
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My sister's birthday is on 9/11 so I was making her a cake when I heard about it. Even though I was 17, I really didn't understand what was going on. I never watched the news, never knew much about terroism, didn't know much about the wars (even though I studied wars in school, I didn't remember hardly any of it :P ) I watched the news constantly after I figured out what a horrible tragedy it was. I couldn't turn the tv off. The most striking thing I remember is the people jumping out of the buildings. I will never, ever forget that. To have to make a choice of being burned up or jumping to your death is not something a person should have to think about :(
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Thanks for all of your stories! I loved reading them to see where people were during that moment... Unfortunately I was only 5 and in pre-k when the towers hit (I'm 16), so I had no idea what on earth was going on and truly was more interested in just playing with toys and stuff. xD
I love history though, so I always like to hear what happened first hand. :)
Thanks again!
-Okamigirl64
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I was living on the western end of the country then, and my colleague and I were just opening the coffee shop where we worked when one of our early-morning regulars came in and told us, flat out, "Two planes crashed into the World Trade Centre." He was usually telling us one off-colour/sick humour joke or another, so my colleague and I were just standing there, waiting for the punchline... and he must've known from the looks on our faces, 'cause his face fell, and he elaborated, "No, really. It's all over the news."
It always gets me when this day comes round, because I later found out that one of the girls who was in my grade in high school died there; I wasn't particularly close to her or anything (she was in a far different social circle than I was), but still... :sad:
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i was in college. my day off of classes and full day of work. alone in the house, parents were away for the week.
i work up at 7:15 as always. turned on the tv, watching the news, eating breakfast, i remember the moment the special report broke through cause there was no warning, just "BAM" 'there has been an air space accident at the world trade towers' ... and then the work crew showed up to continue putting siding up ... i walked out and told them to go home that we were under attack ... they all came inside and watched ... i got ready for work ... i walk up the stairs and remember dropping to my knees as the second plane struck ... and crying as i see those poor souls trying to escape the flames ...
... i drive to work ... get there on time ... boss is mad that everyone is calling in, raving and screaming and swearing up a storm and i just took him by the shoulders and said 'shut up, the US is under attack, no one else is coming in ..." and walked away to unlock the doors ... and so many people had no clue what was going on when they came in to buy toys and got upset that i was the only cashier ... boss put the radio over the loudspeaker, people shut up and slowly meandered away ... one lady sat on the bench near my register to listen ... we turned on the tvs in the electronics to try and get a station ...
... gas stations jumped to over $4 bucks a gallon (we were barely over $2 at the time i think) ... grocery stores jacked prices up ... it was insane ... like was walking around in a war one ... people fighting each other for food and water ... fist fights over gas ... and no planes ... it was eerie ... there are planes all the time ... but nothing ... that's i think what scared me the most ... the no planes ... and then when you'd see the stray fighter jet you'd jump out of your skin ...
... it was awful ...
... i didn't lose anyone super close ... but at the time on one of my message boards someone i chatted with all the time worked in the trade towers ... ran errands as courier between several offices ... i never knew their real name ... but i know they never came back ...
... my grandfather remembered Pearl Harbor the exact same way ... said it was a shame that people who weren't alive then didn't have the gravitas of the situation ... and said it was an even bigger shame that they should ever have to learn the gravitas of a similar situation ...
... but really i think it's the aftermath that i remember most ... friends joining the army/military/navy ... EVERYTHING changing ...
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I was 24 at the time and living with my parents in San Diego. My Dad had woken up and turned on the radio in the kitchen, around 7am our time. I could hear it from my bedroom, my ex gf and I where just waking up. Getting ready for college, I told her half joke/half serious. "Some idiot is buzzing downtown in a plane". Because that's what it sounded like on the radio. Got up and started talking to my Dad, told him the same thing. He told me to go turn on the TV, that he didn't think it was local or a small plane.
First thing I saw when I turned on the TV was the first building and a bunch of smoke. It took a few seconds for everything to click in. That it wasn't in San Diego. I started yelling for my parents and ex to get in the room. We spent the rest of the day watching TV. My ex had family in NYC, she was busy trying to call them. Thankfully they where no where near the towers. But phone lines where a mess. My Dad signed up to donate blood the next day. We hung my Grandfather's US flag outside the house for a week. My Mom started talking about what it was like during WW 2 (she was a toddler).
It was surreal. And school was closed for three days afterwards. My birthday is 9/12 and my Mom's was 9/13. We've always a bit somber, always take a moment to remember. How easily it could have been us or even our town that was attacked.
I know it's something I'll never forget.
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There's a part of me that always marks 9/11 as the end of my childhood. I was only 12 years old when it happened, months away from being officially a teenager. When you are a child, the world is a wonderful rosy place, and bad things only happen in Disney movies. When they really did happen, it was only to other people. But when you're a teenager, you get a better glimpse of the ugly face of the world, whether you want to know or not.
I was taking a standardized test and I remember my teacher being pulled into the hallway by another teacher to tell her something. Lots of animated gestures and tears from one teacher, and a gasp and sunken face from the other. We knew something was up, but we finished our tests. Our school had a system that divided grades into "teams," and we had a meeting place called the team room. So we all shuffled into the team room and it was explained to us not only that a plane had crashed into the WTC, but that a second plane had hit just during the time it took us to gather together. I remember being really sad at first, and then really afraid. A bomb threat was called in at our school, so we all had to evacuate and that was when I became especially scared. I thought that maybe the bad guys had moved closer inland and made it to the Midwest to attack a middle school in Nowhereville, Indiana. I don't think I had a true grasp of what had really happened- I remember sadness and fear, and hugging my parents and grandparents a little tighter that day. I remember the gravity of what had happened, but it took a few months to understand what they meant. That was when I started to grow up.
My childhood ended that day. That was when I stopped believing that the world was as magical as I once thought as a child. It was the day that I learned that evil was not a fairy tail, that it really existed in the world- and that its true face is one of violence and of hurt. Optimism is a good thing to happen- there are good people in the world, but I can't ignore the bad ones anymore. I mean, people died. I'm 24 now... that was half a lifetime ago. I've taken this one pretty hard today. It's a really difficult milestone to face that I've lived half of my life in a post-9/11 world. Like how could this happen? I should have spent 6th grade worrying about 6th-grader things and 6th-grader things only, not feeling an overwhelming fear of terrorism or learning about racism against the innocent American people who chose to practice Islam as their faith. I just want to cry. It's so surreal to think that next year I will have lived more years in 9/11 than not.
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I was 21. Still living at home, but was at my partner's place hanging out. I was just about to go home, as it was nearly 10.30 and I had to work the next day. We were watching the late news when the news reader started mumbling and stuttering and didn't know what to say. She along with everyone else in those first few minutes didn't know what was happening. Then we saw the 2nd plane.... I remember texting my mum, telling her to put channel 10 on. I drove home just after that, and stayed up till after the 2nd building had collapsed... It was probably about 2 am by then. When I got to work the next day at 8am, my boss had our one and only tv on (I didn't even know it worked till that day) and we spent the day walking in and out watching the news.
my most striking memory was from about a week later. I worked in Melbourne cbd, on level 2 of a 4 story building. My boss was at my desk when we heard an airplane fly over. We both simultaneously turned, looked out the window, followed it's path, then just looked at each other as if to say oh no. It was the first and only time I'd ever seen a plane so low over the city, it sent chills down my spine.
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I was a senior in high school...it was during 1st hour AP Biology 3/4. My teacher was out of the room for some reason, and we were waiting for CHannel 1 to start playing on TV. Well, one of the boys in my class jumped up and started trying to find ESPN on the TV instead...he was flipping through the channels, and we were all watching and laughing at him do it. When he flipped past one of the news stations, we saw a shot of where the first tower had been hit. He paused and kept flipping. Everyone started shouting, "Wait! Wait! Go back!"... so he went back...and I remember a girl saying, "Is this real???" And the class that NEVER shut up was dead silent. We watched the replays a few times, and we finally starting discussing among ourselves - was this an accident? How does that just happen? THen the second plane hit...and we knew it wasn't an accident.
One girl popped into our class to say hi since she was on an errand for another teacher. She saw us all watching the TV and quickly spread the news to the office and the rest of the school.
Needless to say, we didn't do much that day. Pretty somber day... May we always remember.
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I've
enjoyed... no... liked...... I've been reading everyone's stories. :cry: I'm glad we can talk about this without the discussion devolving into a huge fight. I was following a thread similar to this on another message board at the time of the 10th anniversary. Somebody asked if anybody was planning on doing anything special to honor the day. Many people replied with a very angry "Why would I want to celebrate such a horrible event!?!" :doh: Apparently "honor" and "celebrate" mean the same thing now. :huh:
If it's ok, I have my own question to add to this thread. For those of you that were in school (elementary through high school) on that day or had children in school..... How did you (or your parents) feel about how your school handled the news? I've heard a lot of parents that had school aged kids at that time say that the school/teachers had "no right" to tell the kids what was going on. That news like that should only come from the child's parent. I'm not a parent so I don't really have an opinion. But would have not telling the kids been a practical option?
sailorstitch
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I was 17, and the clock was about 4:30 pm. I was sitting by the computer when dad came running through the garden to the front door, telling mom to turn on the TV. We spent the rest of the evening in front of the TV. I can still remember the horrible sound of the bodies from people jumping. I didn't undertand it at first, mom had to explain it to me and I got cold with horror.
Two years later, our minister of foreign affairs got murdered on the exact same date which also shook me. It was such a chock that something like that could happen in little Sweden. Dubble sorrow.
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I've enjoyed... no... liked...... I've been reading everyone's stories. :cry: I'm glad we can talk about this without the discussion devolving into a huge fight. I was following a thread similar to this on another message board at the time of the 10th anniversary. Somebody asked if anybody was planning on doing anything special to honor the day. Many people replied with a very angry "Why would I want to celebrate such a horrible event!?!" :doh: Apparently "honor" and "celebrate" mean the same thing now. :huh:
If it's ok, I have my own question to add to this thread. For those of you that were in school (elementary through high school) on that day or had children in school..... How did you (or your parents) feel about how your school handled the news? I've heard a lot of parents that had school aged kids at that time say that the school/teachers had "no right" to tell the kids what was going on. That news like that should only come from the child's parent. I'm not a parent so I don't really have an opinion. But would have not telling the kids been a practical option?
sailorstitch
I agree so much with the first part of your comment. The MLPArena is a really awesome community- we're here for each other when we hurt. Like all groups of people, we're not perfect, but we've still got it pretty good. I'm so glad that we can talk about things like 9/11 that really do deserved to be discussed even now. This really is the best fandom I've ever been a part of :grouphug:
Now I'm getting sappy though, so I'm gonna move onto your question, which really is a good question and one that I've never considered before.
I was just beginning middle school when the tragedy happened, so even though we were pretty young, I think we were old enough to have the right to know what was going on. (I can't speak for elementary schools though because I have no firsthand account of that... but I think that middle school and high school needed to know.) That was the week that we took the ISTEP, which is an Indiana standardized test which is a HUGE deal here in the schools here. Or at least it was made out to be. The event was huge enough for the school to want to pause on the testing and turn its attention to the news, and looking back, I appreciate that. I belong to a generation where standardized testing is a much bigger deal that what it probably should be- but the school took its attention away from that and put it on the attack where it needed to be. What happened in New York 12 years ago was more important than what happened on page 15 of that little gray packet 12 years ago. I have little faith in a lot of my local school system as it is, and I have terrible memories of that particular middle school, but I've always been happy with the way that they handled 9/11 because it put the focus on the things that are way more important than the trivialities of normal school days.
Honestly, I don't think I would have been so freaked out if not for the bomb threat that was made that afternoon, forcing us to evacuate. I thought that the people responsible for the attacks had somehow been pillaging their way inland and decided to bomb Indiana schools when they got here. I just remember being really afraid- that childish fear, and then my friend standing outside with me trying to calm me down by talking about Pokemon. Pokemon was so uncool back then that nobody dared talk about it, even if they liked it, but she risked being laughed at just because I was sad. I'll never forget that. That was a huge deal when you are in an environment where being cool is like a matter of life and death.
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The day was pretty well normal for me (no one spoke of it at all in school) until I got home from school and that's when I watched the TV for like an hour.
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I was 22 and had just started graduate school. I was out-of-state for college, but once I graduated, I moved back home to CA (since the university I chose for grad school was relatively close by and I could commute and save a bit on rent).
I was supposed to have class that Tuesday morning, but with a last minute schedule change I ended up being home. I remember getting up and being in the bathroom when I heard my parents' shocked voices. I came out and watched the TV in horror. It was just all so surreal. And I was glad I didn't have to go to school that day. I would have been in downtown San Francisco, and I knew my parents would have freaked out and probably would have driven up there to personally bring me home.
But the next day in class (which was an art history class), the mood was pretty somber. The events were a big elephant in the room, so our teacher let us have a few minutes to voice our thoughts, concerns, anger, sadness, and fear.
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Rachel-Eyes,
Thanks for replying. I agree, MLP is the best fandom! :grouphug:
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm from IN too. Born and raised here. So I remember ISTEP VERY well. I'm about 8 years older than you, but some things never change. It sounds like your school did a good job of handling things.
My school had a bomb threat when I was in high school, but they didn't close the school. They just made attendance optional. I don't remember being scared. I just remember being happy that I didn't have to go to school. :P A friend of mine, her mom made her go to school that day. She told me the next day that there were only a handful of people there. If our bomb threat had come on or after 9/11, I'm sure the school would've been closed.
I was trying to think today how my school handled the news of other tragedies. I started kindergarten in '85. In '86 the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. This was NEVER discussed at my school. I didn't know that even happened until I saw that special episode of Punky Brewster a couple years later. Even then I didn't realize that it was something that really happened. I think my elementary school tried to avoid current events as much as possible. I remember the teachers talking to us about the Gulf War when I was in 3rd grade, but I didn't understand what was going on.
I started middle school in '93. In '95 the Oklahoma City bombing happened. I didn't find out about it until I had my social studies class in the afternoon. I still remember walking in to the room and being surprised that the tv was on. The tv was NEVER on. We spent the whole period talking about what was going on in Oklahoma City and watching the news. And that was the only class where it was discussed. There was no school wide announcement.
I started high school in '96. Then in '99 the Columbine school shooting happened. I remember being in science class and somebody turned on the tv. The teacher I had for this class was WAY too laid back. He didn't care if we did our work or not. It was more of a social hour than a class. I remember being confused as to why the tv was on. But I didn't pay much attention to it. I was too concerned with hanging out with my friend. I didn't find out what had happened until I got home and saw it on tv. I felt so guilty about not paying attention to the tv during class. :cry: Once again there was no school wide announcement of any kind.
I know these events pale in comparison to 9/11. But they are still tragedies that rocked the nation. If I remember correctly I believe our local schools went into lock down mode on 9/11. Nobody in, nobody out. The only way a student was leaving was with their parents.
The day was pretty well normal for me (no one spoke of it at all in school) until I got home from school and that's when I watched the TV for like an hour.
May I ask what grade you were in?
sailorstitch
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I was in college and I had just left an appointment at the university's health department before my Brit Lit class. I saw it on the TVs in the university center and was all "yep, no class today." I called several people, and I went back to my dorm and watched the news all day.
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I know these events pale in comparison to 9/11. But they are still tragedies that rocked the nation. If I remember correctly I believe our local schools went into lock down mode on 9/11. Nobody in, nobody out. The only way a student was leaving was with their parents.
In my experience that's exactly how things were handled post-9/11. Once in middle school we went into full blown lockdown, and they (wrongly!) communicated that there was an armed individual in the building. The reality was... Two teens had broken into a house in the neighborhood and stolen some guns. Students weren't allowed to leave without a parent with ID who was listed in the students' file. Some kids were there all evening waiting.
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Rachel-Eyes,
Thanks for replying. I agree, MLP is the best fandom! :grouphug:
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm from IN too. Born and raised here. So I remember ISTEP VERY well. I'm about 8 years older than you, but some things never change. It sounds like your school did a good job of handling things.
My school had a bomb threat when I was in high school, but they didn't close the school. They just made attendance optional. I don't remember being scared. I just remember being happy that I didn't have to go to school. :P A friend of mine, her mom made her go to school that day. She told me the next day that there were only a handful of people there. If our bomb threat had come on or after 9/11, I'm sure the school would've been closed.
I was trying to think today how my school handled the news of other tragedies. I started kindergarten in '85. In '86 the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. This was NEVER discussed at my school. I didn't know that even happened until I saw that special episode of Punky Brewster a couple years later. Even then I didn't realize that it was something that really happened. I think my elementary school tried to avoid current events as much as possible. I remember the teachers talking to us about the Gulf War when I was in 3rd grade, but I didn't understand what was going on.
I started middle school in '93. In '95 the Oklahoma City bombing happened. I didn't find out about it until I had my social studies class in the afternoon. I still remember walking in to the room and being surprised that the tv was on. The tv was NEVER on. We spent the whole period talking about what was going on in Oklahoma City and watching the news. And that was the only class where it was discussed. There was no school wide announcement.
I started high school in '96. Then in '99 the Columbine school shooting happened. I remember being in science class and somebody turned on the tv. The teacher I had for this class was WAY too laid back. He didn't care if we did our work or not. It was more of a social hour than a class. I remember being confused as to why the tv was on. But I didn't pay much attention to it. I was too concerned with hanging out with my friend. I didn't find out what had happened until I got home and saw it on tv. I felt so guilty about not paying attention to the tv during class. :cry: Once again there was no school wide announcement of any kind.
I know these events pale in comparison to 9/11. But they are still tragedies that rocked the nation. If I remember correctly I believe our local schools went into lock down mode on 9/11. Nobody in, nobody out. The only way a student was leaving was with their parents.
The day was pretty well normal for me (no one spoke of it at all in school) until I got home from school and that's when I watched the TV for like an hour.
May I ask what grade you were in?
sailorstitch
My school had no grades, it was a private school.
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I was 18 and had just graduated from high school that past May. I was at home and woke to the news being on and on, nothing but the images of the tragedy. I remember being in shock for pretty much the whole day and in tears for much of the next day after. I'm from CA but I had just been to Manhattan the April beforehand with my family; I had pictures of leaving New York with the twin towers in the skyline.
I wasn't really scared about what would happen next, just horribly saddened about the people who had died. And I remember thinking that my job (at the mall) took forever to close; I didn't have work that day but I also knew nobody was going to go shopping. But the mall stayed open until 3 pm. I went in the next day and it was a ghost town for like the next 2 weeks. Nobody was shopping.
I also remember writing in my diary a lot back then. Lots of journal entries; lots of poetry.
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Thank you to everyone for sharing their personal stories. Coming from New Zealand I am fascinated by the things you have all observed and remembered. On the recent anniversary I watched a TV show dedicated to the children of 911 - those who lost parents in the tragedy - and found it utterly heart-breaking.
My own memory of the day is of getting up for work as usual while hubby lay in bed listening to the news. The next thing I knew, he leapt out of bed and stumbled out into the lounge to turn on the TV. We just sat staring at the TV and shaking our heads in disbelief.
I would like to one day visit Ground Zero and pay my respects to everyone who passed on that day.
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That day, when it happened, my family and I were in a car on our way over to my twin cousins who were about to celebrate their 20th birthday.
All were in shock and we tried calling so many people that day as we knew our family (and many friends) were working and living close by. So... we all stared at the tv's for a few hours.. ate dinner and cake while staring at the dinner and hoped that the phone lines would get back on.
It was a sad day indeed and ever since that day I keep thinking if people would care more about the wars going on if they had anyone close to them there.
It was a shock for the proud USA to take a hit like that but when I think of it in perspectives of what's going on today, around the world, it really wasn't such a big deal.
It was to me, it was to many people I know.. but when thinking in a world-population that dies in wars every year and that has their towns bombed or massacred.. not so much.
Also, I tend to watch clips like this one on memorial days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWKPjSirbcU