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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
 Posted - 09/11/2008 : 08:20:48 AM
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at about this time (9/52 am) I had been let out of work I was walking down 6th Avenue trying to figure out how I was going to get home. They had shut down the subways and it was a long walk to my home in Brooklyn so I went to my friend's workplace and hung out there for a few hours before they decided to let their people go at which point my friend and I were going to stay with on of her coworkers who lived in Manhattan. This person was this old British lady who had lived through the Blitz (her father had said when the Germans started bombing Liverpool "The impertinence!") and was completely unfazed and was like a rock among us freaking out younsters (sadly she has since died of cancer). We stayed at her apartment for a few hour and saw the events on tv for the first time (actually saw the events for the first time period. Previous to that all we had seen were photos on the internet and the only physical manifestation of the attack that we saw were billowing clouds to our south and dust covered cars. Funny how being so close to the event we were less aware of what it actually looked like than people who were much farther away and watching it on tv.) The subways eventually started running in the afternoon and I was able to get home. Six days later I was on plane to Europe to visit World War One battlefields, a vacation that I had been planning for months. Damned if those nuts were going to change my plans. Those two weeks among all those graves and the fact that those dead were still honored even among people who had never known them or even lived through the events and the story of how Ieper (Ypres) build itself back up after the war helped me greatly in dealing with the events of 9/11. And, Hell, even the French were friendly during those days.
"You talk to us about heavy artillery. Thank God, we don't have any. It's the lightness of its guns that make the French army what it is." - representative of the French General Staff to the budget commission of the Chamber of Deputies, 1909 |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2008 : 10:46:12 AM
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btw, I'm not trying to blow my own horn or anything with this. I was just thinking of what happened 7 years ago and my reactions to it. Anyone else have a story of that day?
"You talk to us about heavy artillery. Thank God, we don't have any. It's the lightness of its guns that make the French army what it is." - representative of the French General Staff to the budget commission of the Chamber of Deputies, 1909 |
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TVsGrady
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
671 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2008 : 9:40:43 PM
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I was a senior in college at the time, and I didn't have to get up that morning until around 10 or so. I had the "wake-up track" on my clock radio/CD player set as this bouncy J-pop tune from my "Best of Anime" album, which usually had me starting the day in a bright and cheery mood. Then I switched from the CD to the radio, but then the station I had it tuned to was running this static-y transmission from a guy saying something about a tower collapsing. My first impulse was to write this off as some kind of War of the Worlds-type hoax, but then I turned the TV on and saw this was all too real. One of the first people I started to worry about was my grandmother, who lived just outside of DC at the time- in fact, I later found out that some of the victims from the Pentagon were taken to a hospital that was pretty much right in her neighborhood.
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"If you really want to irritate a flaming screaming skull, turn him toward something highly unpleasant, like, say, a Rob Schneider movie. He has no eyelids and no way to turn away. It's fun!"-Michael J. Nelson
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http://tvsgrady.livejournal.com |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2008 : 10:15:09 PM
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I can't imagine what it must have been like to actually be in the city. I woke up to a friend calling me and telling me I had to turn on the TV. I did and they were replaying the first crash and I had this absurd disconnect- it looked like a Hollywood effect and yet I knew it was real and all I could think was, "Wow, so it really does look like that." Like everyone else I was thinking what a horrible accident it was and then about 5 minutes later the second plane hit and I had the horrible realization that, holy s**t, it's intentional- we're under attack. And then just watching, numb as the towers eventually fell. It was horrific but, like I said, seeing on TV made it hard to relate to the reality of the whole thing, like a movie. Actually experiencing it firsthand would have been just so overwhelming...
BTW I also have an ex-brother in-law that was working in the Pentagon that day. He and my sister had children and were still fairly close as a result. He was fine, luckily.
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I sleep now!! |
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Flangepart
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
2329 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 07:34:31 AM
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I work for the local newspaper. I did not catch the news that morning, and the first I heard was as I drove my work truck to the front of the building, and heard the radio. I KNEW it was no accident, as no airliner would accidentlly hit a skyscraper.
They had a tv in the sales meeting room. Thats where I first saw the images from NY.
It got more weird driveing past Port Columbus...and no planes in the sky.
Anyone else immediatly think of the Tom Clancy nover 'Debt of honor'...I think that was it...japanese nutjob slams a 747 into the Capitol Building?
Marvin the Paranoid Android to Buzz Lightyear "Too infinity and beyond-i've been there, its rubbish!"
"Hoody Hoo, i waste 'em with my cross bow!" Bob Herzog- KODT
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Edited by - Flangepart on 09/12/2008 07:36:49 AM |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 09:12:38 AM
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I'm in the Air Force and was at the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia. We saw the planes hit live on a CNN feed we had. There was a bunch of "oh crap" going on, but we had aircraft in the air patrolling for Operation Southern Watch, so business came first. Having a live mission going on at the time kept us all occupied and focused. After all our planes returned to base, then we had time to reflect. We knew things would be getting VERY busy over the coming weeks.
One tough part was when we got back to the barracks. There were night shift people who were just waking up. They'd come out to the TV room, rubbing sleep out of there eyes and just thinking about getting some chow, and find a bunch of solemn-faced folks sitting staring at the TV. I must have had to explain what was going on four different times.
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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Bobby-G
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
904 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 12:28:14 PM
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They were still speculating whether this was some kind of accident when I put on the TV that morning, I think -- I know it was a while before I knew it was a terrorist attack.
Rob |
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