As a kid growing up, I liked to ask my parents what it was like living through X historical event. My dad grew up in Europe during WWII so I had a lot of questions. My mom was a kid in the 60’s so her questions were more like “Where were you when JFK was shot?” or “Did you go to Woodstock?”
This weekend, I watched a bunch of Frontline specials on the economic crisis when it hit me that this is living through history. I remember the chill and anxiety in my office as the market tanked and listening to NPR with this growing dread in my stomach. It makes you wonder what teaching points will be culled from the whole mess so that our kids will come home from school to ask us about it?
I was born in 1976 and have lived through 5 recessions (according to this). It feels like a lot of historical moments have been crammed into my life from the end of the Cold War to 9/11 to today’s financial mess. My parents still get really upset talking about RFK’s assassination. I wonder if that will be me in 30 years discussing 9/11? Anyone remember that Jesus Jones song, “Right Here, Right Now”?
I don’t go quite back to the Cold War, but I was in sixth grade on 9/11, and I remember thinking about Pearl Harbor. Someday I would be the old lady who was alive when it happened, telling kids who only knew about it from history books what it was like. It’s a weird thought.
I remember the day and the night the Berlin Wall came down. While a lot of American kids are not interested in this, I have encountered kids from Europe that find it fascinating. The most popular question asked with wide eyes, how did everyone know the guards weren’t going to start shooting?
I remember watching the Challenger space shuttle explode on television. There was no commentary for what seemed like the longest time as the solid fuel rockets cork-screwed around in the air. I mean not nothing. Dead air.
And then the voice of the newscaster saying, “Obviously something unexpected has happened” in as flat a voice as you could imagine.
Many years later a friend told me how the everyone in the control room was dumbstruck. Apparently, the whole control room was quite silent for a long time.