I was in bed after a late night; I had probably gone to sleep at about 4 or 5 am. At about 10:15 (central time), my mom burst into my room and said these exact words... "Laura? Wake up. They just bombed the Pentagon and took down the World Trade Center." Needless to say, I was quite confused, being half asleep and all, but I ran downstairs with her and turned on the TV. What I saw woke me up pretty quick. About that time, I believe, is when they announced that there were still something like eleven planes in the air and our local news was breaking in to tell us they had evacuated ALL of downtown Chicago. We were now flipping out because both my father and my boyfriend work downtown, my father just steps from the Daley Center (a prominent spot in the Loop). We finally got in touch with everyone, including my sister at college, and then I had to go to work. Ha. That was a joke. At the time I was working at a tavern-type sports bar, and every one of our 20 TVs was on CNN, Fox, or NBC. It was unbelieveable. We were all crying, even the managers, right with the customers, everyone sitting at the bar. I will never forget that I had this table of IGNORANT rich people who were "sick of hearing about everything" and were getting impatient about their drinks when congress busted out God Bless America... heh, they waited quite a few minutes after that as well... I figured, hey, if you're here, today, whether or not you're a citizen or natural of this country, you had BETTER respect those who love it and mourned for it, even if you don't... anyway, I doubt many people have happy memories of that day.
Laura