Thanks to for the meme….
1. When John F. Kennedy was shot (11/22/1963)
My mom was just about to graduate from college high school, so I was in the plans, at least.
2. When Mt. St. Helens blew (5/18/1980)
I don’t remember. I heard about it kind of vaguely.
3. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded (1/28/1986)
I was walking back to class after going to the rest room, and my social studies teacher, who knew I was space-crazy, popped her head out of her classroom to tell me the news. My sister was home sick. My grandmother was in the hospital having her lungs drained. My grandfather had died 2 months earlier. It was a really hard year.
3.5: When Mayor Washington (Chicago) had a heart attack at his desk and died. I was in school, Jr. High still, heading down the stairs to leave school for the day. The news spread like wildfire through the school.
4. When the 7.1 earthquake hit San Francisco (10/7/1989)
I was in high school in Evanston, IL, barely aware of things outside of my world of friends, boys, and music. My aunt, uncle, and cousin eventually called to tell us they were okay.
5. When the Berlin Wall fell (11/7/1989)
I was still in high school, but paying more attention to this than to the other, as my father was stationed in Heidelberg. We went to visit him a year later.
6. When the Gulf War began (1/16/1991)
At school. The previous day (1/15/1991), I had ditched school to protest, but ended up visiting my grandmother in the hospital and making a snowman on the beach of Lake Michigan with my then-boyfriend, Andy.
7. When OJ Simpson was chased in his White Bronco (6/17/1994)
I was, oddly, in California, visiting my aunt and uncle and cousin. It was actually the next day when we found out. My cousin and I had gone to see The Rocky Horror Picture show for the first time the night before, and my uncle, a lifelong journalist and reporter of real news, had taped the basketball game. But he was furious to discover that instead of the game, the footage was hours and hours and hours of this stupid slow-speed car chase.
8. When the building in Oklahoma City was bombed (4/19/1995)
In California. I really didn’t care. I know that’s callous, but seriously; it didn’t have me glued to the TV set.
9. When Princess Di was killed (8/31/1997)
I think I was at a D&D game. Or I went to one that night.
10. When Bush was first announced President (11/7/2000)
Meh. I was watching a movie and switching between it and the election. I taught Freshman English the next morning and had a lot of fun being amused by how worried everyone was about the results.
11. When the 6.8 earthquake hit Nisqually, WA (2/28/2001)
I heard about it while driving in my car to work, in between stories about dogs (I have a whole rant about how my local news radio station covers too many dog stories and not enough news). I was impressed because no one was killed.
12. When terrorists knocked over the World Trade Center (9/11/2001)
I was asleep in bed. Dreaming that I was in a tall building that was collapsing beneath me (there was more than a plot to it than that, with SUVs driving away and holes opening up in the ground, but that’s the part I remember just before I woke up). I woke up just before John told me that a plane had hit. Actually, two planes had hit. And we were under attack. About a half hour or so after I got up, I watched as one of the buildings fell, then the other one some 20 minutes later. It was, literally, a nightmare come true. My two most traumatic days were prefaced by a dream that hinted at the terrible something that would be coming later that day.