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Comment by linsomniac | Hacker News Reader

I had a fairly weird 9/11 realtime experience. I had pulled an all-nighter and ended up going to sleep right around the time this all started happening. So I went to sleep blissfully unaware, and then was woken up by my wife. Within 30 seconds of being woken up I learned: "4 planes were hijacked. They were flown into the World Trade Center. The WTC collapsed."

I kept waiting for the punchline, but then realized it wasn't coming...

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Something similar from my side. Was in college, on the West Coast, and had no early classes so I was still asleep. It wasn't until the girlfriend's family called her and woke her up - that we found out something was wrong. They were on the East Coast and her father was flying that day (just ended up grounded and stuck for a few days). But I don't think we woke up until 8 or 9am PST, Noon East... so by the time we were awake it was "over". Totally surreal to wake up to something like that.

I don't think anyone at the entire College did anything but watch the News channels, even though there wasn't anything "new", for the next 2 days.

One of my college housemates barged into my room and woke me up with "dude you need to turn on your tv". "What channel?" "It doesn't matter...".

TV warms up in time to see a replay of the second plane hitting.

I was groggy and said "woah good effects... what movie is this?".

The guy (who was rarely serious) looked me in the eye and said "this is real".

The world changed that day, in ways we're still figuring out.

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