WARNING: Long entry, you may need sometime if you actually intend on reading this… 
My friend, Cyan posted the following list of where-where-you-thens in her journal. I’m so glad she did this. It’s always fascinating to learn about the political influences in peoples’ lives. Not only that, I think this list will also make a great addition to my family history questions.
Well, here I was then…
1. When John F. Kennedy was shot (November 22, 1963): Not even a twinkle in my parents’ eyes…heck, I don’t think they even knew each other yet in ’63.
2. When Mt. St. Helens blew (May 18, 1980): I was only 3 ½. As my mom was total news junkie, I do have vague images of smoke and a mountain but that’s about all.
3. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded (January 28, 1986): I was in 4th grade and was a budding geek. It was the year I had gotten glasses, my adult teeth were coming in all crooked and my reading curve really picked up. My teacher, Mrs. Schumann (who seemed like a crotchety old bag at the time), would allow me and a few other geeks to go to the library during reading time (I think it was reading time, it may have been something else) in the morning. I remember being in the library and a TV was on with the shuttle launch, but the sound was muted, as it was the library. I remember seeing the split stream of smoke but didn’t think it was abnormal as I had never seen a launch and there was no sound.
I got back to class and later that day (could have been 5 minutes or 5 hours, I don’t recall) our principal made a very cryptic announcement about how death can come at any turn and we should all be appreciative of life, blablabla. Our class was completely baffled by this and one boy, the sort-of class clown, Antwon G___ (why I remember the details I do, I’ll never know), shouted, “What’s he talkin’ ‘bout?” And the ancient Mrs. Schumann snapped, “The space shuttle blew up and everyone died!” We were stunned silent.
4. When the 7.1 earthquake hit San Francisco (October 7, 1989): I have vague memories of this. I remember the World Series was going and the Giants were in it. I remember having the TV on and watching the stadium cameras get shaky, then fuzzy, then finally blackout. I don’t recall if I watched it live or in a rerun on the evening news.
5. When the Berlin Wall fell (November 7, 1989): This coincided with the onset of my awkward puberty. I was trying to resolve my geekiness that had settled in over the last few years and the fact that I was going to be a woman at the same time. It was truly uncomfortable.
What I remember about the Wall falling was a mix of pity and annoyance. I had an 8th graders’ understanding of Communism (which put me at the level of most of our leadership in Washington). I ‘knew’ that Russian-brand Communism was bad and American freedom was good. I had read about and seen video of East Germans trying to escape their hardships and I pitied them.
At the same time, I didn’t really have a full grasp of what Communism had done to Americans. I recalled hilarious stories my family told us kids of nuclear fall out drills and known neighbors who had built shelters. I also knew of the bread lines and stories of rationing under Gorbechev. Communism seemed like a joke to me and I couldn’t understand what anyone saw in it. What kind of fools would subject themselves to such a crappy life and once they did, why the hell didn’t they get rid of them?
What I didn’t realize at the time was that my latter inquiry was exactly what was happening. The East Germans, and later the rest of Communist East Europe finally had come to terms with what they wanted in society and it was not Russian-brand Communism, and so the Wall fell.
No surprise, this is about the same time I heard Pink Floyd’s The Wall and that started a whole other set of chain reactions which can be discussed at a later date 
6. When the Gulf War began (January 16, 1991): Ahhh, Gulf War I as we now call it…awaken the Political Midget. It was the middle of freshman year and I was riding full crest on the drama-queen wave. I was pushing buttons and testing waters in my reserved, geek way. I rebelled, but mostly by acquiring radical ideas and not really actions.
As with many youth, I disliked the status quo as it did not seem to be serving me. I was drawn towards a mix of Federalism and true Communism (not the joke Russian-brand). I hated George Herbert Walker Bush because he was the top man of status quo mountain. I didn’t like his whole “New World Order” crap (not that I could really articulate what it meant at the time). NWO seemed blatantly imperialistic – even to a 14 year old. I was very faithful to the myth-like aspects of our founding fathers and thought men like them would not approve of our involvement in other nations, especially in the Middle East. We had no business there.
Other things I remember include viewing a protest in Chicago on the news where people were chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go; we won’t die for Amoco.” I also remember the prevailing liberal sentiment was that the US had been building up a huge arsenal since the start of the Cold War and we were just itching to use some of it and that was the whole reason we were getting involved in Iraq. That’s obviously a rather diluted assessment.
I also had this fear that the draft would be reinstated and all the hotties I knew were going to have to go to war if it dragged on… let’s not forget, I was a fourteen year old girl.
7. When the first World Trade Center bombing happened (February 26, 1993): For some reason, this one’s a lot like my memory of Mt. St. Helen’s erupting…TV images of smoke and replace the mountain with the basement of a building, throw in a few shots of Clinton and his ugly red nose and a middle eastern looking dude. My parents were in full pre-divorce mode at that time. I did my best to hide out from anything painful during the last two years of high school.
8. When OJ Simpson was chased in his White Bronco (June 17, 1994): More images and not a lot of emotion. Memories of ‘he’s guilty’ ‘oh just give it up’ etc. float about. Nothing significant. I’ve never been one to follow the details of celebrities’ lives.
9. When the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed (April 19, 1995): Ah, spring of ’95. Enter the modern incarnation of the internet into my life. I was now a freshman in college. It was here I got my first email address and had my first opportunity to access the net, not that there was really much out there in ’95.
I was already familiar with BBSs (my dad had been logging onto them for years when I was a kid) so it didn’t take long before email and the net became integral parts of my life. I often cite the bombing of the Murrah Building as my first exposure to the rawness of the internet – that look into the harshest sides of life which can only really be accessed on the net.
It was online that I saw detailed, close-up images of damage to the building. This wasn’t stuff you’d see on CNN. They were high-resolution images where you could see the disruption of normal life in all its great and gory details. The shredded papers and randomly strewn office supplies, the mangled steel and cement of the building, the desks and chairs, bits of clothing, a purse or part of a briefcase, a child’s toy or two, fast food wrappers, signs of life, silenced and frozen in time.
The 21st century had peeked over the horizon.
10. When Princess Di was killed (August 31, 1997): Hah. Ok, so I admit I don’t really remember when I first heard the news of her death but I do have a funny story related to this.
At this time, Mike and I were living in our first apartment together. I’m not sure it’s fair to describe this place as an apartment. It was more of a room with dividers. It was just over 300 square feet. We didn’t even have a real bedroom, it was more of a hallway with a bed in it…a twin bed…that we shared. There was no air conditioning and the heat was controlled by the Mexicans who lived next door, who liked to keep it set at an uncomfortable 80 degrees.
Anyway, we were renting this place from a crazy old lady named Pat B____. We didn’t know she was crazy, however, until around the time Princess Diana died; which, unfortunately occurred within our first month renting from her (and we were locked in for a year). Mike had just gotten his wisdom teeth out and was home from work in miserable pain. Our screen door had stuck shut so we had to remove it for a few days while we waited for it to be fixed. As there was no a/c, no real air circulation, it was a hot August day, and Mike was really hurting, getting this door fixed became a matter of urgency.
Mike gives a call to the landlordess to find out why our door had not yet been fixed. Her reply? “Don’t you know Princess Diana just died? I’m in mourning!” and with that, she hung up on him.
Her son did come by later in the day to fix the door.
11. When Bush was first announced President (November 7, 2000):
Well, I take issue with the way this is phrased, as I don’t know who is the announcer. I’ll just focus on election night, as that is the date referenced.
Did any of you sleep that night? I got maybe 3 hours. But in reality, there wasn’t much to do. Once my vote had been cast, there wasn’t anything else left but to watch the returns. Mike and I, being the good little republicans then, tuned to Fox and kept our fingers crossed that Bush would win.
Back and forth the numbers went with Bush and Gore both being declared the winner at various points in the night. It eventually occurred to us that someone would win and we would go on, so we ought to go get some sleep. I didn’t realize that night that it would take over a month to find out exactly who that winner would be.
One thing I found comforting through the whole fiasco was our nations ability to maintain peace in a time of such confusion. Nations have deteriorated into civil war when a question arises over the change of leadership. We somehow managed to keep it together. Heck, hardly anything changed. The cynic in me laughs and says it was our apathy that kept us together and not any real interest in maintaining the greatness that is the U.S.A. Sadly, the cynic is probably most right.
12. When the 6.8 earthquake hit Nisqually, WA (February 28, 2001): Oh, well, this is the first I’m hearing of this so let’s share in our experience together …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..ok, that’s enough sharing. Onto to the next memory.
13. When terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center (September 11, 2001):
It’s all here: Where were you then? Reflections of 09/11/01
14. When Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas. (February 1, 2003): The nice thing about having a forum is that when I can’t really remember specifics, I can refer back to the date in history and see where I was. This is one of those events where I don’t remember details regarding my first hearing the news. I do know that it was a Sunday, so I was off work. I was up before noon because I started this thread regarding the disaster: Space Shuttle Columbia
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Whew. It took me two days to write all this. What an exercise! Thank you for that, Cyan.
