It will be 30 years in a little under two weeks.
Where were you when you heard about it? What did you hear? What were your thoughts?
I was alive, but only 2 1/2 years old. I don’t remember it, actually. But still, I’d like to hear what others experienced.
I was at the lakefront of Lake Michigan smelt fishing with my step dad.
Don’t worry. I have an alibi.
At the time I worked for a large department store. People found reasons to wander over to the TV department, watch the news for awhile, then go back to their own department and have someone else wander over.
It wasn’t quite the shock as JFK’s shooting. But then, I was 11 years old when Kennedy was shot, and also, Reagan survived.
I was divided into a sperm cell in my father and egg in my mother.
I was playing Donkey Kong on my Colecovision. Mom made me turn it off, saying “you’ll remember this for the rest of your life.”
She was right, but I still think I could have had the high score. I was really close.
I was two and 3 months.
I just got back in the dorm after attending classes at Ga Tech. I was a sophomore. I was looking forward to the NCAA championship game that night and IIRC there was some discussion about about cancellation or postponement.
I heard it from buddy who room was down the hall. I didn’t have a TV in the room and mostly I was ambivalent and went on to do my homework hoping to enjoy the basketball game later that evening.
At my old VFD on standby with my ambulance crew. It was one of my first days on regular rotation and I was actually sort of glad to have something to pass the time (watching the news unfold) rather than playing cards, darts and the like.
I was probably in preschool when it happened. Footage on the news immediately afterwards left me with the inaccurate conviction that he’d been shot in the butt.
I was in the eighth grade. If I remember at the time, the news initially reported that Hinckley had missed Reagan, but that he was being taken for a check up. The initial news was mostly about James Brady.
I was 11 or 12 and remember the shock of a US President being shot…
Good thing no one said that to me. I was 13 years old, and I have no recollection whatsoever what was happening when I heard about it. Probably sitting around wishing I had a ColecoVision.
Actually, I have much more vivid memories of Buckwheat getting shot.
That was my first response, too - “You can’t prove anything!”
I was in grade 13 chemistry class.
I think this was after I’d gotten home from high school. I was watching TV and having a snack. I remember being amazed at how quickly the Secret Service agents pulled big guns out from under their suitcoats and tackled John Hinckley. And there was the confusion about whether the president had been shot.
I was 16, and near the end of my sophomore year in high school. I was in biology class, when the principal came over the PA system, and told us that the president had been shot. The principal asked all of us to pray for him (it was a Catholic high school). I remember thinking about Kennedy, feeling rather solemn, and also wondering if I was experiencing something that I’d always remember (obviously, I did).
Six weeks later, I was in the same place when the principal told us that the pope had been shot. Kind of freaky.
Weird…I had to think what grade I was in. I thought I was in fourth grade, but I remember who told me, and I knew that he came later to our class (it was a small school).
I’ve never thought about it, but if I heard about it mid-morning…how did that boy know? I just have never thought about it.
Anyway, I was in sixth grade. I wasn’t that scared, which is odd because I have horrible anxiety and that should have set me off. I remember freaking out when the USSR invaded Afghanistan.
Probably not surprising, my memories have to do with movies. I’m an awards nut, especially an Academy Awards nut. From the time that I can remember existing, I’ve only ever missed two Oscar telecasts, and one of them was Reagan’s fault. Well, Hinckley’s.
At the time I worked for a driveaway company and I drove cars for a living. I was driving a car to Wyoming and taking a Greyhound bus back home. I timed everything just perfectly so I could get to the town, deliver the car, get to the motel, eat dinner and watch the Oscars, and then take the bus the next morning so I could be back for my next delivery.
Reagan got shot that day and they postponed the Oscars until the next evening, when I was on the Greyhound, alternately fuming and depressed because I was missing seeing my favorite actress at the time, Sissy Spacek, win the Best Actress Oscar for my favorite movie of that year, Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Besides Sissy’s win, that was the year that Ordinary People won Best Picture :rolleyes:, and Robert DeNiro won Best Actor for Raging Bull. For the geeks, The Empire Strikes Back won a couple of awards too.
Sorry honey, I’ve seen the footage.