Everything After - A 9.11 Youth Circle - When you guys first heard abt. WTC and the atttacks what were the reactions?

I remeber that day exactly. I was in school and we were going through our schedule methodically like we did everyday. I got into homeroom and a kid goes did u hear what happened? 2 planes flew into the world tarde center and they collapsed they aren't there any more. My homeroom teacher looked at him laughed and said " stop joming around that would neve happened" Sure enough two minutes later we found out all the details and it really did happen. The reality of what happened didn't hit me for a little while.... it was incomprehensible. The parents started coming to pick their kids up from school and when i looked outside the line was all the way around the block. Thats when the seriousness hit me. People were crying all around and i didn't know how i could help. When i got home and saw the pictures on TV i remember thinking about people all over world.... im places like israe land palistine and saying to myself i can't believe they live with stuff like this everyday. And it was at that point i relaized how blessed and lucky everyone in this country was. Today everytime i go over the verazanno bridge and i see that huge gap in the New York city skyline where the towers once stood i get a huge knot in my heart..... i dunno if i should cry for those we lost or be thankful for those we didnt and for how lucky we have been. But i do know that i will never forget that fateful day in september... it will forever be etched in my heart and my mind.

I was in school as well. My advisor told me two planes had hit the tower. I then heard from a friend they had collapsed. My friend who lives a few blocks away was crying. I didn't believe they had collapsed at first, since my school is only 1.5 miles away, I thought we would have felt the ground shake or something. It turns out it was there for us to feel, but we didn't for some reason. I had another classmate who thought their parents were dead. A TV was brought in, and I saw the first images. A part of me figured that once the smoke cleared, they would be there still. I thought that way for a long time. The 1st time I went over the Manhattan Bridge going to school a few days later, I thought maybe they were behind some other buildings.
Another reaction was thinking about all the people who were dying. I figured about 10,000 people were killed. My father had died less than a month before, so I though a lot about all the kids who would loose a parent.
I was also really scared for the Muslim community and people's reactions around the country.
I really hated Bush that day too (still do, always will). I thought "What's this guy going to do to calm NYC down?"
I think I the biggest reaction was the panic that my city was being attacked.

when the attacks happened we had all been kicked out of spanish class because someone was having a panic attack or something. so i was already confused. then two of my friends told me that the twin towers had been bombed or something, they weren't really sure. i thought that they were making it up, cuz that's how they are. but then one of the teachers told us that we all had to go to our homeroom teachers, where we were told that planes had hit the world trade centers. since i don't live anywhere near new york we still had to go to class. but in my drama class they turned on the tv and we just watched the news. and all of a sudden the newscasters were said "it's gonna fall". it took us a while to realize that that was a live picture of the second tower falling, not a tape. i was absolutely shocked. i just kept thinking, "what's next?"

I was playing an internet game called Materia Magica when I first heard. They were all talking about it through yells and stuff. It confused me, and to make sure that it was true I went to turn on the news. After seeing that what they said was true I went and told my mom. She was like 'yeah right, something like that wont happen.' Then she turned on the news and saw that it had really happened. At school, we got to watch for one hour of the news and then the gov. told them to turn the TV off.

I was getting ready to go to school and I was in the bathroom...my dad was on the phone with someone and watching one of those early morning shows, and I wasn't really paying attation to anything except what I was doing when I heard my dad say something like "OH S*IT! A plane just hit the WTC" and the next thing I remember is staring at the tv, watching the smoke and flame and stuff. I didn't really think too much of it, I mean the WTC has been hit before rigth?
Well I got home after school and then it really hit me and I just started crying and couldn't stop, and after that I couldn't watch the news b/c it made me so upset...my dad actually told me I wasn't allowed to watch the news...me! a senior and 17...but I guess thats a good thing....

The first I got the news of what happened, I was in my third period study hall studying for a pre-calc test. Although I was hearing from my teacher, my first reaction was, "Come on, you're kidding, right?" The idea of a few foreign men taking American planes from American airports and flying them into American buildings, it seemed like something out of a Sci-Fi flick. Reality, I did not know a quarter of what was actually happening. In my bio class, my teacher said that the towers had fallen. Again, disbelief was the initial reaction. I finally was able to understand what happened when I got home and watched the news (I mean, if you weren't able to...it was on every station). And yet again, although it was there in front of my eyes, I just couldn't believe such a thing happened. As months went on, and more information was attained...terrorism, something that was never an issue for the US, or even something I've needed to think about in the past 17yrs of my life, will now be a last part of everyday life for everyone. But I do pity the terrorists. I mean, if they think the only way to get their message across is to plow planes loaded with people into buildings, or strapping explosives to themselves and setting them off in the middle of public places, they obviously have no idea of the true value of human life. And I don't mean it in a way that I'm judging them, but I feel that way based on the evidence. As a final note, after watching the special 9|11 with the video from inside one of the towers, I still get the feeling of, "Oh, my God, it really happened, didn't it?"