How old were you when 9/11 happened? How do you explain it?

I was 40. My partner phoned me (woke me up) and said basically "OMG America is at war!"

I turned on the television the moment the second plane hit, and my jaw hit the floor.

As the day unfolded, I was blown away at both how the attack played out, and especially how exactly this attack was already being discussed for almost a year leading up to it, without anyone actually acting on the risk.

I see the entire thing as being one of those "Oh, there's been talk, but nothing like this would never happen to us," until it does.

Compare this with Covid19, the US having already known years ago that a pandemic was a matter of when, and then cutting funds and pretty much all mention of the risk until the risk became reality, and then passing the blame to the previous government, and finally pretending it's not such a big deal after all, unless it means criticizing the other party more.

I was in 4th grade and I was the 3rd student in my classroom to get pulled out of class/school by my parents. The impression was that the US was now at war, and then I watched the TV and saw the second tower getting struck. I could hear jets getting scrambled over DC since I lived (and now live again) in the DC area. It was wild.

EDIT: Later, I worked at Goldman Sachs and when I did a project in Asset Management, my working station was on the 33th floor overlooking where the Freedom Tower now stands, and I could see the outlines of the Twin Towers. Super eerie.

Last year high school. I saw it on the TV in the living room at home, in my school uniform. Whole family was there. I had an exam that morning. I had no conception of what this was about, but I just felt so sad, and scared, and I felt that the world had shifted. I could see the skyline of my own city from outside the exam room. I wondered if we would get hit too.

Try these oral history samples from the 9/11 memorial website: https://www.911memorial.org/learn/resources/oral-histories