Where Were You?

A little questionaire I got from Shae's blog...

The following are 5 major events and the impact they had on me:

Princess Diana's death - August 31, 1997
I was just coming home from the California State Fair with a college roommate. We had gone to my parents' house for the weekend so she could see the fair. We were shocked to find the news on TV. Her mom came to our apartment a few days later and we all watched the funeral together.

Margaret Thatcher's resignation - November 22, 1990
I was in 7th grade, and it was a loooonnng time before my Anglophilia came out, so it didn't rock my world in any way.

Attack on the Twin Towers - September 11, 2001
I was working. I had to be at Mervyn's at 6:00 to do the ad work--basically scanning all items to make sure they were signed correctly. As the first plane hit, I was driving down Folsom Blvd. to the store.

A few minutes into my shift, I was bleary-eyed and tired, scanning pajamas and bras, when the manager came over the PA to tell us she was turning the radio on, replacing our normal "Mervyn's Muzak" with a news show. We had no idea what was going on, but the more we listened, the more we knew it was terrorist-related.

The lady in jewelry (the department next to mine) and I hugged and worried about our families, even though the terror seemed confined to the East Coast, and not the West. I don't think anyone felt truly safe that day.

We had a TV in the employee break room, but the reception was terrible. We had fuzzy images of the towers smoking, and people fleeing. I tried calling my parents but couldn't get a hold of them.

The store opened at 9:00 and our manager turned the muzak back on, and told us, "I know our country has just been attacked...but we still have to push credit!"

Within a couple of weeks, I had quit and gone to subbing and teaching private music lessons full time (this was while I was working on my teaching credential).

I got off at noon and went home to find that Dad had been sent home from work. All state employees had been sent home. Dad already had our American flag posted in front of the house. As I pulled in, Mom was just coming home for lunch. We hugged and went in to watch the news. It was terrible. We watched the towers fall on TV.

I had class that night--National University didn't cancel classes. I couldn't afford to miss one, so I went. We spent the first hour or so discussing the day and how it had affected us, and for those who were already in classrooms, how it had affected their kids. In the end, I was glad I went to class that night, to get insight about how to handle this kind of situation in a school setting. I wish I could say it helped me when I was teaching in England on the day of the London Transport Bombings (July 7, 2005), but we weren't allowed to talk about that with the students...which seemed really awful to me.

England's World Cup semi final v Germany - July 4, 1990
I was eleven...and about a week shy of getting my first period. Wow! Yeah...I was pretty self-absorbed at that point.

President Kennedy's Assassination - November 22, 1963
I wasn't born yet, but I know it was a huge thing for my parents' generation, and, indeed, our whole nation.