I live in New York and was in the city with my father that day, i was only 9 years old. i had no idea that what was happening in front of my eyes was so incredibly significant and important in history, to be honest it all felt morbidly unreal as if i was living in a movie or a dream or something, the city id been to a million times was not the city i was in that day. it started early Tuesday morning, i was so excited that i was able to take off school! my father is a Broadway musician and was going to check out a new theater that one of his new shows was going to be in and invited me to come along and listen to a rehearsal. I live in Rockland county, its about 25 minutes north of NYC, so it took us about 30 minutes to get to the city, we parked somewhere around 30th and 10th, Somewhere around the Javits Center. by now it was about 8:25-830 and we hopped in my fathers co workers car and headed down the West Side Highway twoards Lower Manhattan to get a beautiful view of the hudson and the statue of liberty. about 20 minutes later my entire world just sort of went into slow motion as things morbidly unimaginable started happening. ill try to play it out for you as best i can: we were still in my dads friends' Lexus with the World Trade Center in plain sight when we heard this ridiculously loud whining noise, i didnt see the source of the 'jet' sound, but what occured next played out in front of my very eyes. We heard this horrendously loud metal on metal sound as if someone took a metal crowbar and smacked it against the side of our car, it didnt sound like an explosion, but the fire and smoke and pieces of falling debris told an entirely different story. no words were being said, just a gasp from my fathers friend and an "oh my fucking GOD" from my father. we were about 5 or 6 blocks from the Twin Towers at this point, and we pulled the car over and got out. i just kept asking what was going on, but it was as if i wasnt even speaking, nobody was responding to me they were just staring up at the buildings with this confused look on their faces, one id never seen my father make before. the world really stopped around us, everyone was just staring up twoards the sky with absolute horror on their faces. after a minute or so from the first explosion my dad sort of realized his 9 year old son was with him, he tried his best in a panicked state to explain that a bad accident just happened in front of us, a very very bad accident. we were so mesmerized that we stood where we were and just kept watching. it wasnt even five minutes since the plane hit the north tower that we started seeing shit falling out of the 90th-110th floors. some guy standing next to us said "hey look, someones throwing chairs out of the building! they must be breaking windows for air!" every few mintues these huge things would pop out of a window and flail around in the air untill the freefall ended. something wasnt right, we all knew (even my 9 year old self) that these were NOT chairs. this was confirmed by a gentleman behind us who had a pair of binoculars in his briefcase. he looked at the tower intently until again one of these dark figures flew out of the top of the building. he started crying and bucked over and puked on the sidewalk. never have i seen a 65 year old man cry like a baby, but he sure was. he whispered to a couple of the older gentlemen there intentionally keeping me out of the conversaton, but i did overhear the words "those are human beings" i still didnt understand, it took weeks for me to realize that what i was looking at was people choosing to end their lives. it bothers me in my sleep to this day. 15-20 minutes after the first impact we heard that sound again, it didnt sound like a plane, but more like a shreaking military jet. BANG. we saw the second tower explode. it was after this that everyone realized that this was no accident, and my father, in tears and in shock, grabbed me and we ran. we just ran. we didnt go back to my dads friends car, the mass of police fire and ems vehicles meant we werent going to be driving anywhere. we walked to my dads friends appartment and spend the day and night there. that day was the single most traumatizing experience ive ever lived through, i hope i expained it well enough for you to understand, ill answer any questions if people would like to ask, just please avoid asking me about the jumpers. i wont answer you.