Where were you when you heard about…?

I discovered this meme via one of those random WordPress links on my own blog post. Forgive me, Labour Party bloggers from whence this came, but in fine American tradition, I’ve de-Brit-ified the list.

September 11 attacks
This is, of course, the big one for our generation — so far. (I wasn’t alive when JFK, RFK, and King were assassinated.) I live on the West Coast so I was sleeping. When the phone rang, I heard my Dad, who lives on the East Coast, talking on the answering machine telling me to call him. Since my Dad always calls at “oh-dark-thirty” to make sure he catches me at home, I rolled over and went back to sleep. (He was calling after the first plane hit.) Fifteen minutes later, he called again. (Second plane.) I couldn’t hear what he’d said so I just rolled my eyes at his determination. Five more minutes and I heard another friend’s voice talking into the answering machine and I thought, “WTF?” When I answered it, my friend said, simply, “Turn on the television. Turn it on right now.” If he elaborated I was too sleepy to understand the magnitude of what he was saying, so I turned on the TV. I had only just gotten my head around what had happened, what I was seeing, while my friend was telling me what he knew, when I interrupted him to say, “One of the buildings is collapsing. One of the towers is completely falling down.” Now it was my friend’s turn to disbelieve.

Challenger shuttle disaster
I came back from class to the all-female floor of my dorm to find everyone in hysterics. I didn’t even make it to my own dorm room, but was pulled into the first room off the stairway upon hearing the news. Since I had been in class all morning, I believe I heard about it almost an hour after it had happened, but I kept watching the video loops of the explosion on the news. I think I was hoping that each time it played it would end differently.

Hurricane Katrina
Having grown up in Florida, I had been keeping an eye on the hurricane’s path to make sure it stayed away from my family so I turned on the TV first thing in the morning. These are two things I never do: watch news on TV and watch TV in the morning. However, I was concerned about this storm very much. My husband came home from the grocery store to find me nearly in tears in front of the television. I was appalled and angry and aghast that what I was watching could actually happen in America. How could our government let us down in such catastrophic fashion? I was depressed for days.

Reagan assassination attempt
I had just come home from school to turn on my traditional fare of Leave It To Beaver and Gilligan’s Island reruns. I’m now embarrassed to admit that I cried when Dan Rather reported him dead.

John Lennon’s death
Can you believe that the Brits didn’t have this one? I would’ve chalked it up to their list being more politically focused, but they had Princess Diana’s death on their meme, which I’ve excluded. As to where I was? No earthly idea.

Kurt Cobain’s death
I was listening to the radio while on my way to the airport to pick up a friend who was coming to visit me. He’s a Baby Boomer. Instead of hugging my friend whom I hadn’t seen in a few years, I was so distraught that my first action upon seeing him was to give him a huge heave backwards and yell, “You killed him! You Boomers killed him!” Of course, having been on the plane, he had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

I now tag the following five bloggers:

• Ess
• Matticus
• Kestrel
• Big Bear Butt
• Two and a Half Orcs