This troper was eleven when the World Trade Center was attacked. When seeing the reports on TV, she assumed it was an action movie and was angry that her favourite cartoons had been cancelled, and is still ashamed of that reaction.

No need to be ashamed for being a child. This Troper was also 11 and in the science room the teachers crowded us in that morning, she thought it was weird of CNN to be playing an action movie trailer. Her example is probably more ironically innocent than yours. (You should be ashamed that you weren't in school! Ditcher!)

I (who posted that comment) was in the UK and didn't find out until getting home from school that afternoon. So I have an excuse for that.

Eh. This troper was six, and her first response to being told that an airplane had flown into a building was 'cool, fire!' and upon being pulled from school that day 'awesome!'. So yeah. This troper wins the inappropriate response award.

Not so fast! This one has vague memories of thinking that whoever this shadowy "Osama Bin Laden" guy everyone was talking about was, he sounds like a bit of a MagnificentBastard...

This troper kept a diary back then. She has read her diary entry for that day. She was annoyed about her Spanish class being cancelled because of the incident, and clearly did not know what the word 'hijacked' meant. And that was it. She then went on to complaining about being forced to go shopping. The rest of her class clearly remembers that they were all shocked and horrified by the incident. This troper is ashamed of herself.

Then there was me, the second grader who knew nothing all day and came running up the hill to her house after school, to see not only her mother as usual, but also her father standing there. Immediately realizing what was going on, she yelled, "Oh, Daddy! Did they let you off early ''because it's your birthday?''"

This troper didn't get it either. Since she was told that if her parents weren't home, she would come back to school and they would have a sleepover, she was actually praying that her mom wouldn't be home. Now she feels soooo ashamed.

Eh, don't be. I probably would've had the same reaction, because sleepover at school = fun! (Though I never have had one. Nothing big enough's ever happened.) TBH you can accept that something horrible's happened but still want something like that. If you were like "I hope it continues!" then I'd be a bit ashamed though.

All I can remember is my mom yelling at me when I asked her why she had gotten up so early to watch the news, and my teacher telling us a plane had flown into some buildings. Then the trip to Sacramento that fourth grade classes took each year was cancelled for fear of terrorism (paranoia at its finest). I was a bit ticked, I recall.

This troper was 8 at the time, and was a latchkey kid that went to an afterschool program until her dad got off work. She remembers wondering what was happening when recess was cancelled and complaining with everyone else at school, then wondering why some kids were being called out of class by their families. Then she got to the afterschool program, where they had the [=TVs=] on. She didn't pay much attention, and then started crying because she fell asleep, hit the table, and chipped a tooth. Now, she can't believe how selfish she was.

This troper was also eight. I remember the vice principal coming in to tell us that planes had hit the towers and all I could think about were the massive armpit moisture stains on his shirt. Since I lived on the Long Island Sound shore I could actually see the smoke and thought that was cool too.

All I remember is wanting to watch Spongebob instead.

Odd. I remember Nickelodeon being the only thing that actually was still showing cartoons.

I remember not understanding what happened for about three days. When I finally got it, I was extremely frustrated by my middle school classmates who didn't realize that thousands of innocent people were just killed before our very eyes!

This lurker was watching 'The West Wing' (in Australia, at 11pm or so) on 9/11. He spent several minutes trying to work out how a plane running into the World Trade Centre was supposed to fit into the plot. It was only when the scene didn't cut away to the interior of the Bartlett White House that he realized that it might be real life.

I was in 4th grade when the Towers fell. The only thing I realized back then was that something caused our schedule to be messed up. I didn't realize that people were dying; the only thing I remember thinking was that it didn't concern me. After all, I didn't know anybody who was there. Looking back on it, I know how wrong I was.

[[{{ladygem}}I]] was in 4th grade too, our teachers didn't tell us anything other than "someone attacked the WTC." Since I didn't know exactly what had happened, my mental immage was of some random crazy guy trying to cut down the twin towers with an ax, and my reactions was along the lines of, "well, that's easy to stop, I don't see what all the fuss is about." It was only latter in the day that I understood how bad things were.

They sent the kids at this troper's elementary school home with notes to parents about "today's terrorist attacks". Cue this troper and her friend wondering what terrorists were and deciding that they were planning on kidnapping us in our sleep. This made total sense to fourth graders.

This troper was an 11 year old 5th grader at the time, who knew exactly what and where the World Trade Center was (having grown up with a great love of skyscrapers) but had virtually no knowledge of current events and therefore no knowledge of the concept of terrorism other than a vague idea of what had happened he year before with the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. There were no [=TVs=] in our school, so the teacher told us very early on, when nothing was quite certain, that "planes had crashed into the World Trade Center". She said nothing about it being a deliberate act, or that the planes were jet airliners, so the first thing I envisioned was a little single-engine prop plane crashing into the building by accident. Of course it soon became clear what actually happened, and was abundantly clear by the time I got home and saw the news on TV. I didn't watch any TV back then, so I was hardly missing any cartoons. I guess the closest thing I felt to that reaction was a subdued "Oh well..." feeling in regard to my mom not having gone and bought the latest Redwall book for me like she said she would. I also immediately mourned the loss of two great buildings, but the death of thousands of people didn't really register until later.

Same troper here, on a related note: As soon as Afghanistan and the Taliban hit the spotlight a few days later, my reactions were "Hey, it's that country that's first on any alphabetical list of the world's nations!" and "The Taliban...oh, I read about how oppressive and dangerous they are in my Guiness Book of Records..." which was interesting because that Guiness entry had a list of things banned under the Taliban, including, somehow, use of a paper bag. My friends and I poked fun at that for a while.

Being a six year old troper at that point, she didn't really get what was going on. I was concerned about my approaching birthday and the math worksheets I was doing more than anything else. And the memory of how the sky had been this vivid blue against the towers, had stuck in my mind more than anything else that day. They had turned on the t.v. in my classroom school, and some other teachers came to talk with my teacher, but they didn't really explain what was going on. I don't remember if I even saw the towers fall, but the fact of what was happening didn't really register. I kinda knew somewhere, that something really bad had happened, but it didn't really click in my head. It was so far away from my everyday life, and I didn't sort out the details till I was older and it was over.

This troper lived in a house where she could see the planes out the window. But she wasn't looking out the window when the plane hit at first, and thought they were just fireworks...in the morning. When she did look out the window, seeing the building where her preschool just happened to be getting hit by a plane, she got the sense to go tell her dad right when the second one hit.

This troper in a subversion understood it all pretty well when she was 10/9-ish. an Aversion.

This Troper takes the cake. She was five when 9/11 happened, and all she remembers was something about buildings falling down. Fast forward three years. When she was surfing the internet, she found something about September 11th, and she was like "What's so special about ''that'' day?" but she clicked on it anyway. She saw the heading "1 Day+Forever" with a white kid and a black kid shaking hands in front of the world. She was like "Aw." A few months later, her parents were talking about September 11th and she said it was a ''great'' day. This Troper still feels oh so guilty about it, six years later. Did she mention she had autism? Sigh...

This troper was nine or ten when it happened. This is the scenario. #QUOTE#''Me'': ''(Going to his mother.)'' Can I have a sandwich? #QUOTE#''Mother'': ''(Watching the news.)'' ...A plane just crashed into the twin towers. #QUOTE#''{{Beat}}'' #QUOTE#''Me'': ...Okay. ''(Walks back out, confused and still hungry.)''

If it makes you all feel better, I was eight when it happened and I don't remember ''anything'' about it. I am from the UK and was probably at school the time it happened (I can't remember if we got sent home early; like I said, I don't remember anything) but at least you all remember the day.

This Troper was in 5th grade when the Space Shuttle exploded on Reentry (not the Challenger, the other one), and I remember being pissed that my Saturday morning cartoons were not being played.

You mean Colombia? When this editor hered about it, he was upset that everyone forgot about the Groundhog.

This troper used to be very close to her grandfather; one day, he promised her (at age 8) that they would go bike riding the next day. He forgot the promise and she was ''pissed'' and yelled at him in true small child fashion. He ''forgot'' because he had Alzheimers. This troper is still ashamed of her behavior.

I once heard someone say hash brownies, and thought that it was a combination of hashbrowns and brownies. Apparently someone thinks that me using this trope is just so cute, so I decided to put {{moe}} points into this skill and act as if I don't understand people's more mature jokes. There's still a lot of times where I honestly use this, so I'm still legitamately {{moe}}, right?

This Troper grew up only knowing about corned beef hash. She thought 'Why the hell would you make brownies out of that?'.

When this troper was about seven, her family's dog was run over on the road. The next morning, her family received the news that a close friend had committed suicide. She thought the reason everyone was crying was because of the dog being run over, and said "It's only a dog!" More tears all round. It's made worse because our friend actually poisoned her own dogs while planning her suicide, and told the neighbours that she was going on holiday and the dogs were in kennels.

This troper was in kindergarten or grade 1 at the time, but I guess I was sick or it was just bright for that time in the morning, because I recall standing by the window, watching the plane hit the building and then wanting to go back to bed.

This troper was about seven when his mother had a miscarriage of what would have been the fourth child in his family. As it happened only several months into the pregnancy, he hadn't even fully realized that his mother was pregnant at the time, just that both his parents were very sad for a couple of weeks. Despite annual trips to a graveyard to visit what had been referred to as "the baby in heaven", he never really understood what happened until he hit his teen years.

This troper's cousin, whose parents are divorced, once told me about a lady who had visited her dad. My cousin told me that the lady had been really nice, and thought it strange that her dad had only been in love with her for one day. I just sighed and wondered how you go about explaining the term "one-night stand" to a six-year-old.

When I was young I thought that humans reproduced through pollination, like flowers, and that said pollen somehow magically detected whether the two people were in love before fertilizing. In a case of... rather LESS innocent innacurate, I spent the first year or so of my adolescence attempting to figure out whether the vagina was in the anus, the mouth, or the navel.

I lived very close to my school, and so was the last person to be picked up each day. I watched the second plane....I didn't really understand what had happened, but I was sick all day because I did understand that people had died.

Hilariously, this happened to my best friend who is about as far from a RalphWiggum that you can get. In high school, I raised pigs as part of the local 4-H, and the first time my friend came over to take a look, we got this little gem when he saw a few that had not been neutered. #QUOTE#'''Friend''': Uh, what are those things on that pig's backside? Is that cancer or something? #QUOTE#'''Me''': No. Those are pig testicles. #QUOTE#'''Friend''': ... ''OH. MY. GOD!''

When this troper was seven, her grandfather died. At the wake, her and her three-year-old brother ran around, laughing and playing because we thought it was a party because there was cake. We didn't understand why everyone looked so sad and our mum was telling us to stop.

Recently, this troper was at a petshop. One of their rats had delivered a litter just a day ago, and there was an eight-year-old girl looking at two babies that were at the front of the cage away from their mother, fawning at how cute they were. I had to wait to go get the owner, because I didn't want her to know those two babies were dead...

This troper spent a lot of his time playing by himself as a kid. One day, he found a half broken egg with a baby bird still inside. He spent the whole morning playing with that baby bird, thinking that the reason it wasn't moving was because it was asleep. He even made a little nest for it in his toy truck. When his mother found it, she made him come inside. When he came back out, he started crying because he didn't understand why his mother had taken his new friend away. Yes, the troper had a HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood, why do you ask?