I have almost the same story as you - I was in Grade 6, so I would have been about 11 as well - our teacher tried to explain it to us, but we didn't know what the WTC was ("is it, like, a mall?" "it's not the white house, right?") - and a lot of our classes combined so the teachers could go watch the news in the library.
I came home and my mom was watching the news, had seen the second tower collapse, and you're right - I didn't know what it meant, but it made me afraid. I remember my parents telling me the US was going to war, and that freaked me right the hell out - my dad was trying to make spaghetti and I just kept asking him questions: "wait so are people going to be fighting here? how many people are they trying to kill?" I think it alarmed me because Canada is right beside the US, and I didn't see how them going to war wouldn't somehow lead to there being war where I lived. (This is also around the time I told my dad I liked Al Gore because his named seemed friendlier.)
It's weird, because even though what it meant to me at the time is very fuzzy, I react very strongly to it now - I can't see real 9/11 footage without crying. I guess you never really know how something is going to affect you, and it probably means a lot of things to people that they don't even realize; I'm not from NYC, but the society that was attacked was close enough (geographically and socially) to mine that I felt attacked as well? IDK.
And oh - the pictures of the people falling. That was one of the things that shocked me the most. I remember that as well, so haunting.
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I came home and my mom was watching the news, had seen the second tower collapse, and you're right - I didn't know what it meant, but it made me afraid. I remember my parents telling me the US was going to war, and that freaked me right the hell out - my dad was trying to make spaghetti and I just kept asking him questions: "wait so are people going to be fighting here? how many people are they trying to kill?" I think it alarmed me because Canada is right beside the US, and I didn't see how them going to war wouldn't somehow lead to there being war where I lived. (This is also around the time I told my dad I liked Al Gore because his named seemed friendlier.)
It's weird, because even though what it meant to me at the time is very fuzzy, I react very strongly to it now - I can't see real 9/11 footage without crying. I guess you never really know how something is going to affect you, and it probably means a lot of things to people that they don't even realize; I'm not from NYC, but the society that was attacked was close enough (geographically and socially) to mine that I felt attacked as well? IDK.
And oh - the pictures of the people falling. That was one of the things that shocked me the most. I remember that as well, so haunting.