Where were you?

In remembrance of this day a mere 8 years ago I would like to hear when and where you were when you heard about this tragedy and how you felt.

I was 16 years old, in my junior year of high school. I had just gotten out of first period and I was chatting in the hall with Kirsten. Another friend Carlie came up and told us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Of course we had many questions but no one seemed to know what was going on. By the time I got to second period word was released that another plane had hit the second tower. We didn't go over our planned agendas in any of our classes that day, we just sat and watched tv. A short time later we watched both towers come crashing down and heard as it was announced that two more planes had been hijacked and crashed in Pennsylvania and one at the pentagon. It was frightfully clear by then that we, The United States of America, were the victims of a terrorist attack, right here on our own soil. My high school is practically in the backyard of NASA so parents began to show up and pull their kids out of school for fear that there would be more attacks. My mom decided I should stay at school because my house was actually closer to NASA than my school is. You could also hear the boys that were 18 talking in the halls saying things like "That's it, we're going to war!" "We're all going to get drafted...". It was a terrifying thing to hear. It was the first time I had experienced war and terror in my lifetime as I was too young to remember Dessert Storm.

It seems, although unfortunate, that every generation experiences a time like this. They remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, and how they felt. For my parent's generation it was the day JFK was assasinated, for my grandparent's it was the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Please share your story in the comments. Thanks!