Millennials: Did Your Parents Pick You Up From School On 9/11?
Or did you watch it on TV with the rest of your class?
We all remember where we were on September 11th. Me? I was in 7th-grade history class. And yes, I was one of those kids who watched everything live. My teacher (history, c’mon) turned on the TV in the classroom right after news started to circulate, and we watched some of the most horrific moments in our nation’s history. At 12 years old, this is pretty...intense! And while nowadays, we know that would never fly, it was a pretty canon event for kids in school on that day.
At my school, the administration let kids go to the office and call their parents if they wanted to be picked up. Probably half of the school went home. My parents both worked full-time, so I rode out the rest of the day at school.
On 9/11, did your parents pick you up from school?
One TikTok user and comedian, Caitlin Checker, wants to know if you were one of those kids.
“Did your parents pick you up from school on 9/11?” she asked.
“Did your parents come and drive and get you? Because my mom did not. And I asked her about it and she was like, ‘Yeah, I was home. I decided not to because honestly, there's four of us. It's a lot of hassle.’ I was like, ‘Honestly, I kind of get it.’”
“Also, here's another fun fact, on 9/11, I was a child, so give me some grace, but I was really stoked about it because this is going to sound bad and sad, but I was excited because I was like, ‘Wow, now I finally have something to talk to my dad about.’ Yeah, that's bad,” she joked.
“I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be a fire conversation starter for dad. Dad's going to love this.’ And I remember I ran out to him, and I was like, ‘Dad, you heard the news?’ And obviously, he was processing it like an adult at the time. So he was not...real talkative.”
After her video went viral, tens of thousands of people commented on the video with their own stories from that day.
“No. We sat in school and watched the second plane hit the twin towers. We were in shock. Cried. We stayed at school but curriculum went out the window for the day,” one user wrote.
The OP replied, “Mrs Stravinsky made us watch, she said this is history, watch it”
Another said, “First the teachers wheeled in a portable TV for all of us 6th graders to watch the news. THEN they had all of our parents come get us at lunch. 😂”
One user said, “I was in the 4th grade. my parents definitely didn't. i asked my mom later on in life and she said ‘we live in Iowa. we were not a high priority for a terrorist attack’”
One California resident said, “No it happened before school and she full on sent me to school — no worries or cares”
One user wrote, “We were back on busses almost immediately after the second tower because they had to make sure every kid was going to an adult because so many people worked in the city. It took 6 hours to get us home”
Sounds like a lot of this was really dependent on where you lived. I was close to one of the largest cities in the country, possibly at higher risk for something to occur, so our school was more open to having kids leave while kids in smaller towns just proceed as usual.
