Reply #14: I was working at the helpdesk for the UW Madison [View All]

It was past 9:30 CST so 3 of the 4 crashes had already happened, but nobody told us. I got an incoming call from a woman who asked me why the internet was down. I said its not, what are you having trouble with. She said "I want to find out more about the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and at the Pentagon". I asked her if this was a joke, and she said no. (She sounded deathly serious, but after a sentence like that, I had to ask.) I told her that if that were true, then all the news webservers were probably being overwhelmed with hits. I ended the call.

I went to the front desk and asked the student there if this were true and he said yes. I went to the computer store at the front of the building where there was a large television and saw the scene at the 4th crash in Pennsylvania.

I went back to my desk, and told all the people sitting around me what had happened. It did seem as if all the people younger than 25 really thought these were just a bunch of plane crashes, no big deal. The older ones among us were realizing how huge this was. I took 3 helpdesk phone calls after that and they were all from women working on campus who had no access to tv or radio, and were desperate for news- then the websites started coming up.

I had a migraine by this point and ran into the bathroom to throw up between each call. Finally I told the supervisor I needed to leave. The calls were slowing down anyway. I called a taxi. I had a British cab driver. There were no planes in the sky from the Madison airport and not much traffic.

My dog was happy to see me. I laid on the couch and watched Peter Jennings adlib about this as best he could....