Kudos to Game Dame for tagging me with this excellent meme last week. Due to the lack of free time over the past week with school (and this blog thing breaking), I haven’t been able to p ost my version of things.
I have to confess.
I’m a little perplexed as to why she tagged me because of 2 reasons:
- I’m Canadian
- I’m quite possibly the youngest WoW blogger in existence and I don’t recognize these events.
In lieu of that, I guarantee you that this will be a very quick list.
Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
I wasn’t around for this event. In fact, I wouldn’t be around for another year. On the other hand, what I was around for was the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. I was in tenth grade and I had just woken up. It was around 730 AM for me at the time and I powered my computer to check out my news sites. Yes, at grade 10, I read news sites. My source? Fark.com. I woke up my dad about it and we flipped on the TV to catch what was happening on CNN.
This one I remember fairly clearly. I was in my drafting class working on various technical drawing exercises. The mood was different that day. It felt more somber and I had a feeling something was up. I didn’t get the opportunity to check the news that morning. Many of my classmates were crowded around various computers. I figured they were playing some SNES emulator game like Gundam Wing or Street Fighter. To my amazement, they had CNN streaming live on one of the terminals. Even more amazing, my teacher came by and actually stood there and watched along with us.
This happened during my graduating year. I don’t remember much about this one. To be honest, as a Canadian and an outsider, it didn’t have as much of an impact on me as the others did. I don’t know why and I can’t really explain it. I think it was because the event occurred over a longer period of time instead of striking all at once within a limited time window. I just can’t remember.
Reagan Assassination Attempt, John Lennon’s death, and Kurt Kobain’s death
I’m sorry gamedame, I’m just way too young for those.
What about you? Where were you at? And why not try these on for size?
- Operation Desert Storm
- Fall of the Soviet Union
- The Millennium (Matt was partying)
Bah, don’t worry about it. I’m a wee bit younger than you, so you’re probably fine.
Probably.
Euripedess last blog post..New Racials?
New blog post: MEME: When Matt was a Young Warthog http://tinyurl.com/5h9bnw
I’ll give this one a go–seems like a worthwhile topic!
Space Shuttle Challenger:
I was in either kindergarten or first grade, and I have a memory of being in the school cafeteria and seeing the principal, Mrs. Compton, with a worried look on her face. I wasn’t old enough to remember much, but I remember the sort of hushed, agitated mood of the day.
September 11
This was my first year in graduate school at Berkeley and I lived in a dorm full of international students. At the juice machine in the cafeteria, I overheard a conversation in Italian, beginning with “Hai sentito quello del World Trade Center?” and of course, I hadn’t heard a thing. I went back to my room and called my mom on the East Coast. She had been at the DMV of all places when the first tower was hit, and apparently everyone thought it was the end of all things. I turned on the tv just in time to see the towers fall. I’ll never forget it. Later that day, my professor led a class discussion about the attacks–it was a seminar with only 6 students–and we speculated about what would happen in the future of the United States. Incredibly, by putting our heads together we foresaw some things–I think even then we knew that there could be a neo-conservative movement or even a war. What I didn’t realize is that it truly would be the end of an era. Before that time, at least for me, the world was safe and the nation was prosperous, and no one was particularly suspicious of anything. My, how things have changed.
Hurricane Katrina:
I was writing my dissertation during this time, and I was home a lot. I was absolutely glued to news websites, and I remember that there was never enough information. The media always seemed to cushion the disaster. Maybe that’s human nature, that we can’t quite get our minds around a disaster of unimaginable proportions. What really made me understand it better were two things–a series of blog posts by people who had lived through it, and a conversation with a displaced university professor a couple of months later. What made me mad was that New Orleans continued to be in a shambles, but the story disappeared from the news. I think people assumed that everything was fine and fixed when it actually wasn’t.
Challenger- I was in school, 2nd or 3rd grade if I remember right. We were all pulled out of class to watch it on TV. I recall some the teachers crying in the back of the class while the students were watching it on TV. I didn’t fully comprehend why. I think the teacher that died on that shuttle represented a lot of things to a lot of people, just by being there.
9/11- I was asleep (had just started working graveyard shift), and got called by my wife at work. Was pretty thankful that I’d recently left active duty service, but immediately checked in with my National Guard unit. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go anywhere that time.
Katrina- I deployed to New Orleans with my National Guard unit 2 days after it hit. It still amazes me how badly misperceived the events and occurences there are by most people. The press bungled that whole affair just as badly as the government.
Ronald Reagan- I really don’t recall. 1 of those things that happens at a time of your life when things like that don’t matter to you. I was pretty young.
John Lennon- I don’t think I’d been born yet.
Kurt Cobain- At school when I heard about it. I was a pretty big Nirvana fan (still am), so it was a pretty sad day. Still listen to the music.
Desert Storm- 7th or 8th grade. I really thought this was the coolest thing at the time. I was getting in trouble a lot at school, because I was sneaking copies of Newsweek and Time into class to read about it. As a kid, it seemed like a big adventure.
Fall of the USSR- Kind of a bittersweet moment. For most of my childhood, Soviets were the big bad, the ones pulling the strings on everything bad on earth. I hated Communism before I even understood what it was, just because I was told I should. Suddenly, they were ok, people who weren’t bad at all, our new friends, soaking in Democracy and Capitalism with great vigor. With them gone, who was left to fear or hate? I guess Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic were stand-ins until we could find something meatier. Now we have Islamic terrorists, Iran, and China to be afraid of, so all is right in the world again. 😉
The Millenium- I don’t precisely recall, but I believe I was out training with my unit in the field.
The Millenium – I went scuba diving & fishing with my mates, as far away from work as possible. I have been ducking all the irrelevant Y2K paperwork (our software company got smart early, long before “Y2K” reared it’s ugly head), so figured, if anything actually went wrong, my mates could catch fish for me while my work tried to work out which part of Australia I went fishing in
Gnomeaggedons last blog post..One in a Million