Isn't it our generation's date that will "live forever in infamy"? Our folks had JFK, we've got this. Ask anyone who was alive during the assassination to describe what they were doing that day, and they'll tell you, down to the last minute.
I work in film post-production, which is relevant to my memories of 9/11. I left home early to swing by my new apartment, as I was receiving furniture that morning. As I was in the front yard greeting the deliverymen, my landlord grabs me by the shoulder and says "Hey, have you seen the *****ing news?", and then proceeds to drop me in front of his TV. The first plane had just hit. I watched the second, and the collapse(s), live.
I jumped in my car, and rushed off to work, thinking I needed to tell people what was going on. I've never trembled from adrenaline so badly in my life - I was expecting all-out war within hours, and I'm Canadian...
I arrived at work, and saw that everyone was gathered in the lobby, watching TV. They'd ripped the tube out of my edit suite, in fact, and pilfered the cable running down the side of the building in order to do so. We watched for three hours straight.
At one point, realizing that nothing of much import was going to transpire for at least an hour, I grabbed a colleague or two and forced them to come have lunch with me. Though none of us were even remotely hungry, I reasoned that we had to eat eventually, and this was probably the best time. Over lunch, I recommended to them that if anyone approached us to do post for a film on these events, we should turn it down, as it could be deemed in bad taste, or controversial, or what have you.
Well, as it turns out, about a year and something later, a film did come our way which featured extensive real-life footage of the disaster, and we worked on it. For months. Up until that point, I'd managed to avoid seeing those shots of people jumping out, and then I had to watch it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, at least a hundred times. It made no sense to me by the end.
My most vivid memory of the day itself, however, was watching people in public. We had three types:
1: "La la laaa... Life's good. Nothing happening."
2: "Holy armageddon! I just heard the news and I'm wired! I need to talk about it!"
3: "I feel like I've been run over by a tank. I've been watching the news and talking about events for five hours straight."
The most fascinating thing was watching the proportions of one type versus the other type shift during the day, from a predominance of type one, to a predominance of type two, to a predominance of type three.
Lest we forget, despite everything; despite how tragic this was, and how livid it made people - myself included, that this cannot be singled out as the sole nor even the largest or most senseless mass assassination of innocents in recent history. It was merely the most public, the most spectacular, and directed toward the most dangerous of targets.
Reads to me that you put a lot of feeling into that one. 
