No Way To Forget
All of my life I've heard my parents say they remember where they were when JFK was killed, when MLK was killed. Hell, even when RFK was killed. They remember what they were doing when they heard we'd landed on the moon. I always thought that was so strange when I was younger. There were so many things to remember, how and WHY do you take the time to remember where you WERE and what you were DOING when you heard that someone had died? For Pete's sake.
I was prepared to grow up thinking there would only be a few times I would know exactly where I was at precisely "THIS" time. At 6pm on 05-25-85 I was at the First Baptist Church in Crowley to Make The Worst Mistake of My Life. At 8pm (exactly) on 8-12-87 I was at All Saints Hosp. in Ft. Worth to deliver Austin. on 9-15-89 I was back again to deliver Ryan. And so on... you get the point.
But this wasn't to be the case.
Instead, this is the list I/we were given. Delta flight 191 (strange that I remember the flight number, even after all this time) crashed at DFW airport. The pictures were awful to look at, but it was even worse to see first hand as I did. The fuselage looked like the bones of a charred monster.
Then on January 28, 1986 I was walking through Foley's department store (always shopping, even way back then!!! YAY!) where I stopped in the electronics department to watch the liftoff of the space shuttle Challenger. Never, ever, did I expect to watch it disintegrate not long after liftoff.
The morning of February 1, 2003 I woke up rather startled and confused. I heard what I thought was a train slamming into our house. Our entire house shook. Even our dogs were shaken. It lasted for several seconds, it wasn't just a quick "boom" and then done. Craig had lived in So. California for most of his life and had heard a Sonic Boom before. (the Concord- plus he's actually seen the shuttle land at one of the various places before) So he KNEW that was a sonic boom, and I figured maybe one of the planes at Carswell got carried away and broke the sound barrier... big deal. The politicians around here would make a big deal about it but the rest of us would love it and we'd move on. Blah blah blah. That was not to be the case. As we all know, yet another space shuttle disaster was at hand. Columbia had disintegrated over Texas and we'd heard the Sonic boom as it entered. Another time I won't forget where I was.
September 11, 2005. We all know. We all remember. We all hurt. We all will never forget. Isn't this enough?