It was almost two years ago. My boss had invited me to dinner. We went to a Sichuan restaurant that I had never been to, near the river that bisected the little town. The food was excellent, and the light Chinese beer never stopped flowing. I walked home in the dark, laughing and being a generally obnoxious foreigner (as I am, unfortunately, wont to do when drunk).
When I got home I thought briefly about getting online and checking the news, but decided sleep would be better. Besides, it was only 9AM on the East Coast, on a non-descript Tuesday morning in September. Nothing of interest would be happening, so I went to sleep.
Meanwhile, I was sleeping rather soundly, rather content to skip my Tuesday genetics class, when a phone call around 8.30 woke me up. “Are you watching the TV?” No, and I was planning on sleeping in today, Mom. “Turn it on, It’s so crazy!” Suffice it to say, I didn’t go to class that day.
Left by Dave on July 12th, 2003
Meanwhile, I was (too) sleeping. My girlfriend called me, I woke up, answered the phone, and turned on the the TV to see the second plane live. That was a pretty sobering wake up call.
Left by Adam on July 13th, 2003
I like the way you wrote that memory fragment…
I actually got to sleep in until 11:00 that day and found out when I turned on my computer, but I thought it was an article on MSN about terrorism… not a real event.
Left by David M on July 13th, 2003
I was at a client’s in London. One of the old sales guys came out of the sales office and said ‘I just heard on Radio 4 a plane hit the World Trade Center’. ‘Wow,’ we all went, and I tried to get the 411 on news.bbc.co.uk, but mysteriously it wasn’t working, so I tried to diagnose the connection. In the meantime, someone had flicked on the TV (yeah, this is a cool workplace), and instead of spending the afternoon working, we spent the afternoon watching TV.
In between the collapse of tower 1 and tower 2, I went to the grocery store and told the checkout girl what was going on. She didn’t believe me and thought I was insane. Bet she got a wakeup call when she got home!
Left by Peter Cooper on July 13th, 2003
I was sitting in Chinese 2 with a handful of people. I got out of class and tried to call the house, but as always I couldn’t dial out because Cingular sucks. I got to the Union and saw what happened. The rest of that day was spent in line at the Civitan blood donation center waiting to donate blood.
Meanwhile, my uncle was a few blocks away in a confusing mess. They had no power, no television, nothing. Nobody knew what happened. He managed to catch the last bus out of there that night, got home covered in soot, and went to the tv to find out what the hell happened.
Left by Eric on July 15th, 2003
the eerieness of that post sucked the air out of my lungs.
Left by Colin on July 16th, 2003