I was 11 and fishing with my Grandfather in Horseshoe Bend, Arkansas. My Grandmother walked down to the lake and yelled “The President’s been shot!” So we came in and watched it on TV.
Hmm…why wasn’t I in school? Spring Break maybe.
Hey! You just put a most delightful spin on my day! When I go to bed tonight, I am going to smile specifically for you, eleanorigby!
It was Alexander Haig.
What?
I was in 6th grade sitting at my homeroom desk. We were having “indoor recess” because the weather was bad. An announcement was made over the public address system, but it was pretty noisy, so I didn’t catch it. I remember what seemed to be a loud cheer going up in the classroom. I asked my best friend, sitting across from me, what was going on and he told me that Reagan had been shot.
My first reaction was something along the lines of “Nearly everyone in this goddamn class was such a big pro-Reagan supporter a few months ago when we were having our mock elections and they gave me such a hard time for being a pro-Carter guy – why the hell are they cheering now? It should be my privilege to cheer.” Not that I necessarily felt like cheering, but still I felt like I had been unfairly usurped. It was my first awareness of an attempted political assassination of someone who held political power in my jurisdiction – it was kind of interesting and exciting, but I didn’t feel any particular emotion, one way or the other. Back at home, we were glued to the round-the-clock coverage.
The biggest impact on my life was that that was the day we switched from being a CBS news family to being an ABC news family. Throughout the '70s, my family had been loyal Walter Cronkite watchers every evening. Cronkite had recently passed the reins over to Dan Rather, I believe. For some reason, ABC’s Frank Reynolds’s emotional coverage really impressed us that night and from then on, we watched ABC every evening.
I was asleep I suppose, since it happened during the middle of the night my time. I remember hearing about it the next morning on the radio, while I was polishing my shoes before going to school.
I was at work, only a mile or two away from the shooting.
Honestly, my coworkers and I were disappointed he survived, and disgusted that Hinkley shot him with a lousy little .22. I worked at a small not for profit organization, and his policies were devastating to the public sector. We despised Reagan. I now despise his memory, though Bush II has made him seem not so bad in contrast.
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Someone brought a note to our social studies teacher, she read it, smiled and said, “Oh, good!”
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Gosh, what a class act you all are.
But look at the bright side, Shodan. People like the ones you quoted had St. Ronnie, easily the most successful president since FDR, foist upon them for eight full years, with resonances of his time in office, politically and personally, foist upon them still.
Reading stuff like you just quoted makes me even happier that he survived. Damn, I loved that guy. My brother got to meet and shake hands with him in 1984. I was SO envious! I haven’t forgiven him to this very day. 
With all due respect, that isn’t even what I mean.
I am no Obama fan. If he gets shot this afternoon, anyone who says “Good, I hate that nigger and hope he dies” is an asshole in my book.
The sanctimonious whining of the left on the SDMB is surpassed only by their hypocrisy when the shoe is on the other foot.
Sarah Palin is a terrible person, because she spoke about targeting in a political campaign. Death threats against Republicans, as happened in Wisconsin? Dismiss it. Minimize it. Pretend it didn’t happen. Silence.
Elizabeth Edwards gets cancer, and there are nothing but good wishes for her. Tony Snow dies of cancer, and we get people posting “good - I hope he suffered”.
There aren’t enough :rolleyes: on the Internet.
Regards,
Shodan
I remember hearing that Regan walked into the hospital and thinking it was no big deal. I was home for some reason. I also remember thinking, when seeing the video, how well trained the Secret Service agent was as I saw that young officer offer his body as a shield. My instinct would have been to duck and cover.
I know that my post wasn’t what you were driving at. That’s why I suggested a certain amount of gloating over the fact that such hateful and hypocritical people had to swallow the bitter pill of seeing what a successful president he was to become in the minds of most Americans (and the rest of the world too, for that matter). To me, it’s better that these people who hated Reagan so violently and wished him dead instead got to see their view of him discounted in the minds of the nation’s populace.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you with regard to Obama’s being shot. People around here may well not believe this, but I’ve worried more than once over whether or not Obama will survive his term in office and I’ve hoped against hope that no one will ever cause him harm or his family to suffer. And I would indeed regard anyone who would rejoice in such a horrific occasion as someone worse than the worst kind of asshole. But hopefully such a thing will never happen and I’ll never have to find out whose that kind of asshole and who isn’t.
Regards, 
SA
I was 3 years old and in Denmark. I don’t think I even heard about the assassination attempt until a decade or so later.
Also:
Are you kidding? Reagan remembered outside the US as successful president? Where?
I was sitting home watching my stories after school - Guiding Light, not General Hospital- when the news broke in. As happens so often with me, I had a hunch he’d be fine so I didn’t give a rat’s ass. Also, I was never a Reagan fan.
It certainly doesn’t stand out the way John Lennon and 9/11 do for me.
I am surprised at how many of you report people cheering and whatnot on hearing the news, especially in classrooms. Was he that disliked that early on (he’d been president only two months!)?
As I said, I myself was mystified, especially since his election had been greeted with so much enthusiasm and also because my area was classic Reagan Democrat territory – Catholics and lower middle class whites. People tended to be religious and socially conservative. Today those people are solid conservative Republicans. I wonder to this day what made them cheer.
Yeah, and I remember the Pope being shot too, I remember the Challenger disaster, and John Lennon.
But the only thing I remember about Reagan being shot was that the news pre-empted the TV shows I wanted to watch and I was peeved.
I was six. I don’t remember it, and I didn’t watch the news or read the paper then.
I don’t remember where I was when I heard, but I remember being freaked out when I saw where he was shot.
Just about two weeks prior, my parents had to be in Washington D.C. and I was living in NYC. They invited me to come stay with them for the weekend.
It was at that same hotel where Reagan was shot - and not only that, on the exact spot where the gunman shot him is where we had stood and waited for a taxi. I remember because it was not where you would normally wait (it was off to the side of the hotel) but for whatever reason, that is where we had been standing a few weeks prior.
I was literally in the same spot, (within 10 ft) when I heard about Reagan and Lennon. I hadn’t thought of that until now.