The kids and I had stayed at my parent's house the night before. Mom came in and woke me up telling me a plane had just hit the WTC. A BIG plane. I told her it was a terrorist and she kept saying "no, it just flew off-course or something..." I jumped up and had every tv in the house going, the talk radio, I was trying to get to CNN and MSNBC on the web with no fucking luck.
Before the second plane came I was hitting hubby up on a Nextel radio, interrupting his Cisco class and telling them to get their asses to a tv. The entire class ended up leaving the building and going across the street to a pub because they couldn't find a tv on their floor.
My Dad works at the Norfolk Naval base and they wouldn't even let him leave to come home, everything got locked up tight and this whole area was under "flinch and you're dead" mode for a long time just because of the naval base being here. They later proved that some of the Al Quaeda group had been through the base taking pictures of the buildings and the ships - got through with a temporary Guest pass. Nice, huh?
For the longest time my oldest kid (was 3 1/2 when it happened) was convinced that all planes crashed...
Rage. Rage and an incredible sorrow... and we still don't have the fucker that's responsible. I want his head on a pike at Ground Zero.