A day like all days...

[bigmacbear]

• When John F. Kennedy was shot (11/22/1963)
  Not even a figment of my parent's imagination yet...


• When Mt. St. Helens blew (5/18/1980)
  In high school (freshman year).


• When the space shuttle Challenger exploded (1/28/1986)
  Had just started a co-op job with Eastman Kodak. Found out at work.


• When the 7.1 earthquake hit San Francisco (10/7/1989)
  About a year into a full-time job at Kodak. I wasn't watching the World Series, so I probably found out at home watching the news.


• When the Berlin Wall fell (11/7/1989)
  Again, probably at home watching the news.


• When the Gulf War began (1/16/1991)
  On a date with this guy I thought was incredibly cute. I'd just come out the previous fall and this was actually one of my first actual dates. Unfortunately I got a major cold the next week, and by the time I was feeling better he'd lost interest.


• When OJ Simpson was chased in his White Bronco (6/17/1994)
  Don't really recall, probably saw it on the news at home.


• When the building in Oklahoma City was bombed (4/19/1995)
  Don't really recall, probably saw it on the news at home.


• When Princess Di was killed (8/31/1997)
  I seem to recall hearing about this at an RGMC rehearsal.


• When Bush was first announced President (11/7/2000)
  Likely in bed asleep. I don't typically stay up all night awaiting election results, since they are almost never final until well into the next day.


• When the 6.8 earthquake hit Nisqually, WA (2/28/2001)
  Huh? Never heard of it.


• When terrorists knocked over the World Trade Center (9/11/2001)
  In bed asleep, in a friend's home in Portland, OR (gmjambear and I had just arrived by plane about 10 PM PDT the previous night). Shortly after the immediate events transpired on the East Coast, my mom called -- 7 AM PDT, or 11 AM EDT -- to make sure we'd arrived safely and hadn't been stranded by the grounding of all aircraft. (We'd spent the previous night at my folks' place.) As luck would have it, we weren't scheduled to return until the 19th which gave plenty of time for flights to resume.