Never Forget (September 11)

[TheAlpha 3,830]

9/11: 'A gray cloud of debris rolled violently toward us...'

Three-hundred and forty-one New York City firefighters. Twenty-three New York City police officers. Thirty-seven Port Authority police officers. Three court officers. Two EMS workers. Thousands of innocent civilians. Numbers alone, of course, cannot do them justice.

A whole portrait of America was taken from us in an instant: individuals of every race, religion, and ethnicity; fathers and mothers, children and newlyweds, brothers, sisters, and best friends. Amid our grief we now see that New York had been distracted by flash and wit and cash for too long.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/10/opinions/9-11-avlon/index.html

Here’s an article with photos of the event:

https://journalstar.com/gallery/remembering-in-photos/collection_949d7ef1-c67a-5c2e-aa32-d3f758fb8f64.html

 

[calmar 22,766]

What I'm remembering this morning are the similarities and differences.

Today, I'm living in New York, not in Florida, where I remember as a child looking into the air to try to see Air Force One screaming northward from Sarasota. Today, it's also a Tuesday, just like it was in 2001. But the weather isn't the same. I don't own a TV, so I can't recreate watching the news while I was at home with cancer, being eight years old and trying to comprehend what even adults could not. And today I also have the experience of having visited each of the sites - New York, Arlington, an Shanksville - that were targeted and shaped by the attacks. They're memories and experiences that shape my own perception of today. 

There are probably a few people on Gagadaily who don't remember 9/11 at all. Not only does it make me feel, well, old, but it was such an important, world-changing event. Probably the first one I ever lived through and can tell you about, minute by minute. Where I know people who know people who lost family without a reason. But I wasn't old enough to understand until a lot later. My experiences were naïve, raw, and deeply affective. 

But I also remember today because it set in motion America's never-ending war in the middle east, which kicked off a year and a half later. My country's army and government have spent a decade and a half there and who knows how many have been displaced or killed because of us wanting revenge. I can't remember the impact it had on me without the impact it had on even more people. Not only America changed in that instant, but it would begin to shape the change in the rest of the world too. There was a pre-9/11 world and a post-9/11 world. I'm old enough to remember both.  And it's the event on the whole, its impact on everyone from people from Manhattan to Aleppo, and the personal, emotional, child-like lens I carry from that day that shapes how I feel on a day like today. 

[PunkTheFunk 125,703]

Can't believe it's been 17 years. I was only 5 when it happened so I don't remember it very well, but I do have memories of watching the news with my parents in the months after and hearing words like "hijacking" and "terrorist" for the first time. I also remember we went on a vacation the year after and being scared that someone was going to hijack the plane. 

[River 127,310]

I was 14 when it happened, I was chatting with my friends on the IRC and one of them said "open the tv now!!"

So I did and then I think my childhood was kinda over.. I watched every single moment, I was scared and when the 2nd plane came, it was traumatic.. I lived in Israel, so the alert was high for a possible terror attack, so things became more scary, we were not allowed to leave home.. I will never forget that day, I may not be a USian, but I felt like one during 9/11.

[ryanripley 86,575]

i was 5 or 6 when it happened, i don't remember anything

however i did watch United 93 recently and i recommend it to anyone interested in 9/11, very emotional and tells an uncommon side of the story

[tomsches 17,550]

I was 9 when it happened, this is my story:

It was one of the first days at school, maybe even the first one. So I got home quite early. Both of my parents were working, so my grandparents picked up me, my sister and my cousin. We had lunch together and since there was no homework we were having fun together.

After lunch, my grandfather always used to go to his room to take a nap and watch TV. Suddenly we heard him screaming from his room. It sounded like a scream of shock. My siblings and my grandmother ran to his room and that's when I first saw the burning building. At first I didn't know what was happening. I thought, it was just a random building that caught fire. I asked my grandfather why the fire brigade didn't just put out the fire. He said, that it was more complicated than that. When my grandmother entered the room she looked pale and asked me my sister and my cousin to leave the room and go out and play. And so we did, we played as if nothing had happened.

After some time, I noticed that my grandparents had a very worried face. And when my mother picked us up, I noticed that she had the same face. She asked my grandmother: "Did you hear the news?". I felt like something wasn't right.

When we got home, as always, I wanted to watch my favourite TV shows, like The Simpsons (I was 9 but I had my own TV set in my room). But all the channels were just showing the burning building and I didn't understand why it was so important. My mother entered the room and I said to her: "There's nothing on the TV...". She replied: "That's because something very bad and very serious happened today". She didn't explain further and I didn't ask her to.

The following week, I couldn't watch my TV shows because the news continued showing footage of the attack. So eventually, I just started watching the news coverage. I learned words like "terrorists" and how they wanted to get rid of them. At first I confused the words terrorist and tourist and I was scared that that meant we could never go on a holiday again.

At school, our teacher tried to explain to us 9-year olds what happened, but it was only a long time later when I actually found out HOW important this event actually was. For me, 9/11 was the beginning of a new era and it might be the beginning of WW3 if our leaders don't get their **** together.

I kind of developed an obsession for the topic because I really wanted to know how an event like that could make all the adults around me so worried. I read a lot about it and watched a lot of TVs including real footage. I wanted to understand what happened on that day and how it felt... because, since I was so young, all the adults around me being so worried, worried me too and I wanted to know how and why one event could put the entire world into a state of unrest. So this obsession turned into the fear of eventually being in a terrorist attack... I wanted to know what it felt like, to be prepared.

Now I'm 26 and I still can't believe it actually happened. I live in Europe and in the light of the recent wave of terror this fear reignited. 9/11 changed the world forever. Let's hope nothing like this will ever happen again.

[Joemayzin 4,032]

I was in 7th grade earth science and living on Long Island (which is 50 minutes east of NYC) I’ll never forget the panic that spread through my middle school that day 

 

such a devistating day for us New Yorkers and the entire world. Also still feel horrible for some of my friends that lost loved ones this day in 2001 that I still talk to today, they’re memory will live on forever..

[Schizophonic 7,015]

its one of days i can remember like it was yesterday. almost every detail of it.

klaus wowereit, the mayor of berlin had outed himself as gay with the words "i´m gay and thats okay, ladies and gentlemen". big words that changed a lot not only in his life, in mine and in our country. I´t was the time i struggled with my own coming out and was deeply affected by his words and the enourmous scandal it caused because for the very first time i every expierienced the word gay with a positive reaction and partly positive reception.

I just turned 14 a week before the attacks and i got a new CD player. there was no internet available at that time, mp3s were still something u might only heard about but didnt knew exactly what it was , ipods were not yet sold and itunes and the store were not yet existend.

right after school i went to warlmart (yes we had that in germany back then too) and i bought myself a bunch of cds from my birthday money. including kylies cant get you out of my head, emma bunton, turn off the light by nelly furtado and aint it funny by jennifer lopez.

i still remember having the jlo cd in my hands (it had the spanish version on it wich i loved). it was the time we still paid with german "deutsche mark" because we didnt had the "euro" notes yet but it was shortly before so we had double price tags on everything for a while to get used to the new cash system. a cd was about 11 d-mark wich sounds much cheaper by 5 euro.

with the cd in my hand i sat in my grandmothers livingroom, picked up the mail (i expected a britney autograph from her fanclub - got a printed one). and on the news were reports about mariah carey who was supposed to have her glitter filmpremiere that day but went recently trough a britney like breakdown in public.

her "i dont know her" comment about jlo was EVERYWHERE and her going crazy in public caused a lot more backlash that similar things do today. no one cared about mental health, no one was political correct about it and sensitive about such topics. she was just the popstar that went insane and crazy. they really gave her bad, rude and mean press. they made a lot of jokes. and she got huge press for beeing the worst actress ever. (wird how history is now with gaga, right?)

i also bought the album by aaliyah that day, she died just two weeks before and i was heartbroken by that.

 

i still remember what i had for lunch, chicken nuggets and smashed potatoes. i was in the living room of my parents and my dad just got home from work. we had a big fight about what to watch on the tv. wen ended up watching "7th heaven" with jessica biel while i ate sitting on the floor like i used to do every day.

and suddenly there was a banner on the bottom of the tv screen saying "breaking news: airplane crash". airplane crashs were a big topic in our family because we los a family member because of one. so we switched to a newschannel and the news came in about the plane in the tower and we were shocked, how could that happen? how can people get out of that? the news about the pentagon came in but they seemed not connected at that time.

we were watching live pics from new york while the second plance crashed in the second tower and that was the moment the world stood still from one second to another. it was suddenly clear that this was something that huge and the world would never be the same again.
at this point we were really scared if there might follow even more planes at that day crashing.

when the towers then fell on live tv everyone was very speechless and i remember we even didnt wanted to go away from tv for a bathroom break because we couldnt stop watching until late in the night. EVERY tv channel stopped their programm and it was only this theme or nothing at all.

the next day at school we didnt had regular school, instead we talked the whole day and got explained what all that means.

the following weeks and months were so much different than everything before. i still would say it got normal but never like before.

.... this is how i expierienced that time.

i wrote all that irrelevant stuff about my life back then to point out that it was just a normal day, not that different to any day now with almost the same things going on until suddenly everything changed. .... not that i think its important what i ate that day, i just remember it so clear like no other day.

[sipthistea 21,099]

A very sad day in history. It cost so many lives and left a huge mark on the American country.