Where were you on 9/11?

In my high school home room in Texas. My dad was supposed to be at the restaurant at the top of one of the towers for a business meeting – he was super excited since he’d never been there. However, the meeting was moved to their office in White Plains, NY the night before (something to do with someone’s scheduling conflict, I believe).

I didn’t know that, however, and immediately lost it, begging my teacher to excuse me from class so I could call my mom. He kept refusing so I just walked out and went to the Principal’s office to make the phone call. We didn’t find out that my dad was ok until that night because phone lines were tied up everywhere.

Since all flights had been grounded for the foreseeable future, my dad ended up renting one of the only remaining cars in the area and driving the 1,600+ miles home.

9/11/2001 was the longest day of my life and I’m so lucky that I didn’t lose my father. However, it was the worst day of many people’s lives and the last day for approximately 3,000.

Edit: spelling error

I was a freshman in high school (hello fellow young kids) and our principal made an announcement over the loudspeaker about it. Ironically In world history so my teacher let us watch live footage. Then I came home and basically watched footage all night.

My dad had just flown to PA so I was freaking out a little. But he was fine.

probably in a 1st grade classroom having no clue whats going on and most likely wanting snacktime

I was in 5th grade. Growing up on the West Coast it happened very early in the morning. Normally the news would be on in the morning but my grandparents were staying with us at the time and they let me watch cartoons. When I got to school the teacher started telling us that everything is going to be okay, I was very confused. Football practice was cancelled that day and sadly that was my first inclination of how serious the day had been, we got home and watched the news the rest of the night.

What’s weird is the thing that had the most impact on me was the 1 year anniversary. My dad was watching the news in the morning and had the day off of work, they were showing the names, one by one, of every single person that died that day, when I got home from school the list was still going; that always stuck with me.

At school. I was pulled aside by my teacher and told my mom wanted to take me home early. I was confused and told the teacher I wasn’t supposed to but hey I got out of school. We lived about 2 hours west of where the plane went down so my mom panicked and picked me and my brother up.

Growing up in a 98% white neighborhood post-9/11 being Middle Eastern did a number on me I’ve still yet to recover from. Having to hide what I was, not doing extra curricular for fear my parents accents would get me bullied really hurt.