Less than one day until the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
I remember it well. Our students union building had recently installed overhead televisions for the purpose of keeping us up-to-date, or perhaps for on-campus advertising (I choose to consider the former option). It was the first week of classes, and I was browsing for my course books before class. It had already happened while I was at home, and no one could quite believe it; in fact, many had not yet even heard of it. Somehow, I managed to slip into the bookstore unseen. When I emerged from the store, I was met by a gathering of hundreds of students who were collectively fixed to the images and news on these new televisions. I was speechless and, like them, somewhat immobile. Do I stay to take part in this group activity or do I continue on my way to the library to collect books for class. Later that evening I attended class, and I couldn't help but feel like it wasn't quite right to be holding an academic class. At least not today. However, wasn't this just what we should be doing? Or should we have been mourning collectively? I still wonder. What I do remember is feeling two overwhelming emotions: intensely sad for what had happened and fear of such an event taking place in Canada.
Do you remember what you were doing on 9/11? Please share your thoughts. Respond either to this blog or start a new posting on your own blog site.
I was ten years old and getting ready for school. I remember not fully understanding what was happening. There was an eerie silence and I did not have the words to ask my mother what was going on.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember much of it since I was only 8 years old, but I DO remember how rattled my mother was. She was driving us (my younger brothers and myself) to daycare and she told us that something terrible had happened, and that we'd probably hear more about it in school. She was pale and shaking and I remember she hugged us very hard before saying good bye.
ReplyDeleteI do somehow happen to remember this event quite clearly. I understand that it was a global tragedy viewed and felt by many, but I was still quite young when this happened. Much like Nancy said above, I was at home getting ready to go to school. I remeber my neighbour and bestfriend (who I walked to school with) calling me and telling me she would be coming over early. She was crying into the phone. I remember being afraid to find out why my "tough-as-a-rock" bestfriend could possibly break down. It took her minutes to walk through my front door and climb the stairs to my living room. She went straight for the TV. What she turned on was the most horrifying image I believe I have seen up to this day. It was almost surreal, as if it were impossible for it to turly exist. Neither of us went to school that day.
ReplyDeleteI remember the scene when I first saw something horrible on the TV that day. It was early morning for me, and I was still wearing my pink pajamas and eating yogurt. Suddenly, I could feel the atmosphere change in the living room, where both my parents were watching the big TV, standing up, unmoving. I didn't understand what was happening, but I went into my parent's bedroom, where there was a smaller TV. I turned it on, and the image I saw was forever burned into my memory... the image of a man who jumped out from the top of one of the towers, and the camera was following his descent down as he fell through the air, spinning. I sat down on the edge of my parents' bed, staring, not fully comprehending what was going on. My yogurt completely forgotten, I started to cry, and I didn't know why.
ReplyDeleteWhile watching the TV programmings on 9/11 these past few days, I THOUGHT I had remembered what I was doing the day the attacks occurred but now, actually being asked that question, I realize I have no memory of what I was doing that day. I truly wish I was able to remember for that could have been a memory I would have shared with my future grandchildren!
ReplyDeleteWhile watching the TV programs on 9/11 these past few days. I do somehow recall this quite clearly, as everyone has stated we were all young ! I remember the day before 9/11 when I had gotten braces, and I was embarrassed to go to school the next day to see what my friends would say. So the next morning I had told my mother, that I wasn’t feeling good and did not want to attend class, so I stayed home that morning and played Nhl 2001. While I was playing I herd my mother getting all worried while she was making breakfast for me, right after the phone had rung couple of times. So Right Before my game was about to finish my mother had turned off my gaming system and turned on the local news station, and all I recall seeing was an elderly women who was dangling off a patio in mid air screaming, and crying for help!, After seeing that I didn’t want to stay home Alone or even bother playing NHL 2001!
ReplyDeleteLike many of you who have posted so far, I was still quite young when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. As a 13-year-old in grade 8, I was too naive to understand immediately the magnitude of that day or to envision with any accuracy the international consequences of this event. I remember, after watching the news for most of the day in class, students of different ages and social 'cliques' discussed the events openly - brought together by shared feelings of confusion and (masked) anxiety.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, 9/11 marked the first time I chatted with a guy who would go on to become a life-long best friend. Our first conversation centred around the possible culprits of the terrorist attacks and the media saturation of the event. Our thoughts were laughable at best. Neither of us considered Al Qaeda - a group we were not familiar with until a number of weeks later. And, I remember specifically making a guess that these attacks would be the only subject of the news for at least 3 weeks to come.
Looking back, I think these reactions speak volumes about the changes (socially, politically, etc.) brought on by the events of 9/11. It is difficult to imagine a present-day North American student in grade 8 who could not identify Al Qaeda (or at least a generic - and racialized - idea of this group) as the enemy-number-one of the U.S. and of Western values more broadly. In this way, it becomes evident that 9/11 lent itself to an ongoing construction within out society of an external enemy against which we can define ourselves. We can attribute this process largely to the changes in news media brought on by 9/11 - which (10 years later) still remains in background of most news stories covered by CNN. So, my modest guess that we would experience 3 weeks of non-stop coverage was fairly off the mark. I did not consider the unprecedented focus on security, national identity, terror-likelihood ratings and enemy identification that would arise in the wake of that day.
All in all, I appreciate that I can look back to my pre-9/11 mind (despite my naivety) to see the extent to which these terrorist attacks inform my present-day perceptions of the world.
at that time,i'd fallen asleep and when i heard of the news, it was in the next day.Actually,i'd never heard of the twins tower before that,and i was too young to understand what terror attack meaned.I just felt that it was so terrible that too many people lost their lives.
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