Countdown to 30: Day 20

Since I talked about 9/11 yesterday, I figured I should go ahead and talk about another national tragedy that made an imprint. I believe that I was in kindergarten when the Challenger blew up. For me as a little kid, it seemed like a normal day until our teacher was upset and we were watching TV reports about the space shuttle blowing up. I remember that we had talked about the Challenger at school before the liftoff because there was a teacher that was on board and was to be the first teacher in space. At that young of an age, you really just know that something bad has happened, but you do not yet know how to feel emotion about it. It was weird to watch footage at that age because, quite frankly, a blowing up shuttle looks pretty cool until you grow up and realize that there were people in it that died at that time. I wonder if that is how those who were kids when 9/11 occurred feel now.

In middle school or high school, I toured the local manufacturing plant where they made things that were used on airplanes and I do not remember what else. At the end of the tour, the students were all given posters that had the pictures of those who died in the Challenger tragedy on it with a picture of the shuttle itself. That poster hung on my wall of my bedroom until my parents moved out of that house while I was in college. I probably threw that poster away in the move, but I think I held onto it for so long because I was always fascinated by the tragedy. It was the first national tragedy that I remember as a child. The Branch Davidian compound burned when I was in middle school. The Oklahoma City bombing happened while I was in high school. 9/11 happened while I was in college. The shuttle burned up on reentry while I was in law school. However, I think that the Challenger tragedy was what taught me in a way how to respond to national tragedies even if it had to be learned over a period of time.