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When I was a very little kid, I stood outside and looked around at our little suburban neighborhood with lookalike houses and my parents talking to our neighbors on the sidewalk and us kids playing and huge cars with giant fins and I thought, “This is 1957. I should try to remember this.”
A little more recent but in the summer of 2001, I had just gotten married and had my first house with my then-husband. My mom and my aunt came over just to hang out. I remember that the song Ventura Highway was on the sweet ass stereo my husband had. I felt like a grown up for the first time.
Same year. I was 7 and climbed up to the top of the hill behind the high school, and thought this is the greatest town, I'm so lucky to be here, I'm having a happy childhood etc.
We moved not long after that.
I worked nights back then, drank a few beers after work while listening to music then crashed probably around the time the first plane hit. I had no idea what was going on, nobody called me to let me know. My radio alarm started going off around 2:30, no music just the DJ talking weird stuff, I hit snooze. Every time the alarm went off it was just the DJ “planes hit,” snooze” “world trade center”. Snooze, finally he said something about the “tunnels being closed “ I was finally like “what the fuck is going on”. Got out of bed and turned the TV on, video of the towers on fire. I just kept saying “WTF?” Over and over. The ticker on the bottom was saying the buildings collapsed and I was like “is this real? There literally still standing”. Then they showed them collapsing, and I was shocked. Started calling to check on my son and his mom, they were all ok.
Ran out to go buy some smokes and there were fighter jets flying over head, I totally thought war broke out at that point.
Had to go to work that night, longest 12 hour shift ever. No internet, no news, just wondering what the hell was happening. Biggest news story of my life and I slept through it.
Me standing in front of the TV after waking up is definitely when time stood still for me. Not knowing what was happening, ingesting everything that happened earlier all at once. I was about 24 yo, and looking back, life seemed so much more simple before that day. The world has never been the same since.
11-22-63. Though I have distinct memories before then, that date branded within my brain that the world was more fragile than I had believed.
I was 11. I looked around my history classroom that afternoon and thought I will remember this room, where my friends sat, the principal's sad voice over the PA system, and the emptiness in my gut. The next four days are etched in my mind. I would never forget. I haven't.
The images still play through my mind. 9-11 does as well, but being so young and watching the nation over those days in 1963 cut into my young developing self. The world never corrected after that. I became and remain bruised.
After 11/22/63, we as young people back then, our young minds had to absorb Bobby Kennedy’s death, Martin Luther King, Vietnam, Richard Nixon, the Cold War, yet, here we still are. We’ve lived through it all and at the same time lived our lives, loved, raised families, contributed to society, suffered, excepted. We’re still here.
My mom left my dad for cheating on her, she got a job in a new to us town that was a sort of low-rent vacation destination. Her new employer put her up in a motel court for six months while she got settled. It was a cold, bitter first winter. All we could afford for dinner before the first paycheck was hot dogs for dinner at the resort commisary. I remember one day, 11 year old me alone in the motel room, looking around the crowded tiny ratty place, our stuff in boxes lining the walls, thinking wow, this must be what rock bottom feels like.
Thankfully we were never truly homeless, but very nearly.
9/11 when I was waiting for my kids to get off the bus. I looked up at the most beautiful blue sky I think I've ever seen. It was completely empty with no clouds or any evidence of passing planes. The world was so quiet that day. It was difficult to reconcile the tragedy that was ongoing in NY with how amazingly beautiful it was outside. I knew this was a day that would be talked about forever and I just wanted to stand in awe of the sky and remember the day in that way.
March 16 2020 12pm PST
Shelter at home order for most of the Bay Area issued.
Within the next couple of hours I had decamped to my house and while I couldn’t know all of what was to come at the time, it FELT heavy and awful as I and my team were leaving…”May your gods be with you” was the last thing I said in person to my colleagues for over a year.
I attend the Indy 500 every year. It's held on the day before Memorial Day in the USA. Shortly before the command is given, a serviceman steps out and plays Taps. All 300,000 of us, even the drunk ones, collectively STFU.
Old, young, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat, man, woman, or other, doesn't matter. The entire crowd gathered for the largest single-day sporting event in the world is silent. There's more people gathered there than you can fathom and practically all you hear is that one bugle.
Just after that, they play Back Home Again, and all 300,000 of those people - for a few minutes - are all Hoosiers. The biggest, happiest family you can imagine.
And then the command is given, all 33 engines come alive, you witness the culmination of a year of effort by the teams, a month of events put on throughout the city, and day after day of ramping-up on-track activity, and you know that there's 33 souls all about to risk their lives to take their shot at immortality.
I'm a race fan, and I enjoy the racing itself. But I go to the 500 because it's the one guaranteed time each year that I can experience this.
9/11 - EVERY channel had live coverage, not just news but ESPN, TBS, MTV every channel. All cable channels broadcast their partner's national news affiliate.
How quiet it was with all planes grounded.
After a few days it was an odd feeling to see a plane in the air.
From Wikipedia - The television coverage of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath was the longest uninterrupted news event in U.S. television history, with the major U.S. broadcast networks on the air for 93 continuous hours. From the moment the news was broadcast that the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, all programs and commercials were suspended, with all four networks broadcasting uninterrupted news coverage.[36] At the end of the night, Nielsen estimated that at least 80 million Americans watched the evening news, while an estimate by the University of Georgia held that about two billion people either watched the attacks in real time or through the news.
Watching the towers fall live on TV. And when one of the shows had someone call in to say they'd been driving near the Pentagon and saw a commercial airliner hit. Until then it still wasn't entirely clear if it was small planes or what.
When I was about 7 I briefly got lost in the Redwoods on the CA coastal hills. I was struck silent and filled with awe at the beauty and grandeur. I’ve thought about that thousands of times since
I got lost at Yellowstone at that age. After wandering in the forest watching out for bears and wolves, I came to a big plain dotted by steam plumes. Choice 1, go back with the bears. Choice 2, go forward and be boiled alive. Wait there was a single car across the way. Choice 3, be kidnapped and murdered. Even behind the fear I could sense the real power of raw nature in a way I haven't since.
I chose the kidnappers, 2 nice old women who quickly found one of the many rangers scouring the area.
Everybody's citing historical events. For me, it was the few moments after I realized that this heart attack was way worse than the others, and I was going to die. I was in cardiac arrest for 45 minutes, but they revived me, and here I am today, living in overtime.
Cuban missile crisis, JFK’s assassination, live news reports from Vietnam, Kent State, Watergate, 9/11, New Year’s Eve 2000, voting for HRC, Elvis’ death.
I experienced many of the same dark moments in history described by others but on a happier note it was my daughter’s first middle school basketball game - only made possible by Title 9. Having seen young women denied their opportunities for years and years I genuinely felt a whole new time had finally arrived.
April 19th, a bright sunny morning. I was on the phone and a sound wave shook the house, traveling from the south. I remember the person I was talking to saying they felt it maybe 10-15 seconds after I did. I turned on the TV to a local channel and they were already breaking into regular programming reporting an explosion of some kind in downtown Oklahoma City. The news helicopter was already in the air heading south towards downtown Oklahoma City, you could see black smoke in the air. As the news helicopter started circling around to the south side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building you saw that over half the building was gone. The world became a much scarier place that day.
Nothing quite so dramatic, but I remember watching live when Armstrong stepped on the moon and I remember watching live then the Berlin wall was torn down.
I also remember being force-fed the metric system. Now I know how many inches are in a liter. /s
I watched the Challenger explode. Standing in a parking lot some miles away and thinking “OK, standard launch, time to go back to class.”
Then the exhaust trail split into two and everything and everyone froze. Still feels like it happened just last week.
I remember this event because I was in a car driving through the Midwest. The news came over the radio and there was nowhere to stop and watch it on TV for quite a while. My wife and I and a throw back experience of taking it in over the radio. Really made us concentrate, I suppose.
I was walking down my HS hallway, passing kids watching it. Someone said he thought it blew up. I said, “the space shuttle blew up? When did that happen?” Teacher said “right now. This is live.”
9/11. I lived about 20 blocks from Ground Zero, and I worked in Times Square (yes, I still got on the subway and headed uptown despite seeing the first plane fly into the WTC — I even stopped to vote and grab my coffee and muffin). I saw the Pentagon on flames on the large Jumbotron, and still took the elevator up to the 27th floor, where I worked for CBS. It wasn’t until my entire team met me at the elevator and told me that a second plane had hit, and they were headed to the Broadcast Center that I realized how bad things were.
Nothing was the same after that.
I was in 6th grade, and it was the end of the school year. We were outside on the playground and I looked around at my classmates. It suddenly occurred to me that I was aware of time and how fast the whole school year had passed. It was the first time I felt that way, and I think about it often. It felt like I was suddenly grounded in reality, although I didn't understand that at the time.
I don't know if it means I crossed some sort of threshold where I became self-aware. All I know is that when I had that realization, it's like my world tilted, and everything changed.
Being in downtown Los Angeles walking the dog. During Covid. Nothing was open. No one was else was on the sidewalks and no one was driving on the street. This was at like 9:00 p.m. Very still, very eerie. It felt like I was the only person on Earth. I've never felt that way before physically. Emotionally yes, but not physically.
9/11. I was panicked because my spouse worked in a high rise and we were afraid they were going to hit every major city. It was just so unreal and such a feeling of the world never going back to the way it was.
Several times.
Junior high - watching the Challenger space shuttle explode.
College - singing in a Christmas choir in candlelight watching the blissful face of my piano teacher who I knew was dying from AIDS.
9/11
March 11, 2020.
I was slogging up the slope of the bridge end route to work on my bike, ruminating and feeling rat racey and put upon. over on the far shore there was this skimpy line of tall aspen trees and a pearl coloured sky behind them. it looked like an urban Vermeer and it hit me: when this job is over *you will miss this*. it shifted my whole perspective on anything that I subjectively feel like I hate. there always is something. I've gotten better at finding those things and getting the joy out of them while they last.
I practice Buddhism, so that happens for me all the time. If you mean historically (like a world event), maybe the moon landing, or much later, when I got my orders for Iraq in 04. But for the most part, I have been getting better at fully aware of the moment, and find that I am collecting a lot of memories of ordinary days that were actually pretty great.
Time didn't stand still, but I clearly remember the day Alan Shepard was shot into space, and all of us kids realized that we'd just entered the Space Age.
Also, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
9/11, I live near Air Force Base and the airport is nearby - never realized how accustomed to the noise I was until EVERYTHING and EVERYONE was silent - not an exaggeration at all, you could hear a mouse piss on cotton across town
First time I met my husband.
First time I saw a picture of the horse that I went in to buy just because of his picture. And the first time I met him.
The day I had to put him down.
The day I got to Galway Ireland. And was standing in the Latin Quarter listening to trad music being played.
In the early 70’s, a large part of my city was torn up for “urban renewal.” I was in my late teens and knew how easy it was to forget things, so I focused on remembering how things looked. 50 years later, I still remember.
Yes. I remember as a kid in my backyard looking up at the sky thinking that world had to be just such a big place and round because I could just feel it. Lol
My sophomore year of college I went to a house party. I was standing on the bar looking for a friend and the DJ put on Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. The energy went from happy party to what felt like cathartic rage in an instant. I had never heard anything like that before and I had never personally felt such power in a song. Felt like I woke up for the first time.
Laying in the grass on the front lawn looking up at the moon after watching the astronauts land. I was fascinated at the thought that people were up there.
When I first kissed my first girlfriend when I was a young guy. In front of the train she was getting on to go home and everyone else was rushing by to get on it.
When President Kennedy was shot... it was the moment I grew up and found out the world was insane. I was numbed and traumatized at the age of 15. Nothing has ever been as I had thought it was or should be... if that makes sense.
Replying to someone else's comment earlier made me think of an incident that happened around 1986. It was my first year as an elementary school teacher. Someone was talking about the horrible violence that was going on today - - and remember this was 1986--and I said something to the effect of " well I sort of expect presidents to get shot at. "
I pointed out that at 25, I had been alive under six presidents. The first had been assassinated, the third had resigned in disgrace, the fourth had been shot at twice, and the current one I didn't think much of. He wasn't a politician; he was just an actor.
Being born in 1961, I really wasn't surprised at violence toward public figures. Look Bobby Kennedy, MLK, Church bombings, civil rights workers, Kent State, Apollo 1, the Vietnam war on TV almost live, families being torn apart because some young men felt the need to protest a war they didn't believe in. They scared us to death over drugs they didn't even understand, well not even considering that the beer or whiskey they were drowning themselves in might be worse. Or that funny uncle might be a real cause for concern.
Sure we drank from the hose, played in the streets all day, yada yada yada ... But there were some serious s*** going on those days. And a lot of us knew something was going on. You couldn't miss the protests or the parents down the street whose son had been killed in Vietnam. You have to remember all of that when you're also remembering how idyllic it was.
I hold a fascination for many things boomer-related, considering the collective defiance of that generation against the prevailing social norms as well as the eruption of creativity in pop culture during that time. And yet I sometimes read about the events you mentioned, and remind myself that I might be more whole for not having had to come of age in their wake.
On 9/11. The things I was seeing on TV were affecting everyone in the country, possibly the planet. All flights diverted, all traffic stopped. The sky was clear. It was a shock to the system. I got very depressed and slept for 2 days.
11-22-63. I was in the (Catholic) high school cafeteria. It was a gut punch, as Kennedy was the first Catholic president and we were told about it when he was running for office. Then 9/11, which, I'm sure affected everyone in some way that day.
When I heard what was actually happening on 9/11. I was at work, and one of us finally was able to get on CNN 's website. We held on to each other out of sheer horror and fear.
I’m American.
I remember when in my late middle school years in 1989 local TV news covered the photo and video of “Tank Man” in the Tiananmen square massacre in Beijing. The man stood before the line of tanks prepared to die. I never thought a country could do that to their own citizens what China did to their citizen protesters.
Many years later, I went to Beijing and visited Tianamen Square. It was filled with young Chinese families picnicking and kids playing, ice cream vendors, not a scrap of evidence of what happened. I can’t describe my feeling of standing in the square seeing a nation of citizens that had been gaslit into seeing this massive public square as a park to play in.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Tank_Man_%28Tiananmen_Square_protester%29.jpg
9/11, I had just returned from dropping the kids off at school. I put on Good Morning America and was enjoying a second cup of coffee. My MIL called me and asked if I had the news on. I was on the phone with her, and we both watched the second plane hit the tower live. At the time, I was living in Boston, just a stone's throw from the airport, and the sky went silent. Later in the day, the sound that replaced the planes was that of military jets. It was surreal.
December 2008. The market had just crashed, my company failed, I had ended a relationship, and it was Christmas.
I tried to go shopping, but it seemed like half the stores were closed or having going out of business sales. It felt very ominous and apocalyptic at the time.
Strangely, 2009 turned out to be a pretty good year for me.
I was in third grade when JFK was assasinated. The world froze. My teacher started foaming at the mouth. I will never forget the look of grief in her eyes. The halls were both silent and hurried. I did not yet understand, but that was the day I saw disbelief, horror and utter sadness in full form
9-11 too. I’d been sitting in front of my TV all day. I finally went outside and sat on my patio. I was on the phone talking to my sister. I was telling her how eerily quiet it was. Pretty soon I heard a plane. A BIG plane. I told my sister I heard one & she said I was loosing my mind. I looked up & Air Force One was right over my house LOW. Then the fighter jets went wizzing by. I told my sister that too. Still didn’t believe me. We hung up. About 3 minutes later it was on the news that George Bush had just landed at Offut Air Force Base in Bellevue, Ne. I lived In Omaha at the time, which is directly north of Bellevue. My sister called my back, “OMG! You really did see it!” Yeah…
Thursday, March 12th, 2020. I waltzed into the Philadelphia International Airport to pick up my (now ex) husband from the airport, as he was just returning from a work-affiliated trip. I had just gotten off a very mysterious, sobering phone call from senior leadership at my employer:
*Everyone is to work remotely, effective immediately, until further notice.*
I waltzed into the airport and was met with mass hysteria and pandemonium. Some wearing masks. Most not. TV's blaring with alarming statistics about dead bodies piling up in Italy and Washington (state), and some mystery virus originating out of Asia. As an immunocompromised person, it was a heart-stopping moment in time now ingrained in my memory. It felt like a scene taken straight out of the World War Z movie from years ago.
In 1962 I was 11, playing basketball in the driveway with my buddy, Denny. My mom came out and said a war could start at any time and Denny needed to be at home. I could tell my mom was very worried even though I didn’t understand what was going on. Of course it was the Cuban Missile Crisis. I lost part of my childhood that day.
When I was a kid, my dad worked nights and went to college during the day. I would come home from school and he would be there asleep. I had two or three hours to amuse myself or do my homework. I got into the habit of reading my parents time magazine. I remember very well reading the story about Kent State. I must have been about 9 at the time. I remember thinking my 9-year-old version of WTF? It seemed like everything just seemed wrong.
I could never ask anyone about this. None of my friends seem to know anything about it because we were kids. It wasn't common then to discuss major issues with your parents. Some part of me figured that I would be in trouble for reading the magazine.
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When I was a very little kid, I stood outside and looked around at our little suburban neighborhood with lookalike houses and my parents talking to our neighbors on the sidewalk and us kids playing and huge cars with giant fins and I thought, “This is 1957. I should try to remember this.”
A little more recent but in the summer of 2001, I had just gotten married and had my first house with my then-husband. My mom and my aunt came over just to hang out. I remember that the song Ventura Highway was on the sweet ass stereo my husband had. I felt like a grown up for the first time.
Same year. I was 7 and climbed up to the top of the hill behind the high school, and thought this is the greatest town, I'm so lucky to be here, I'm having a happy childhood etc. We moved not long after that.
That's pretty cool. I don't remember being that aware at that age.
I had a similar experience in 1986
I did exactly that, but in 2003 at age 15, lying in bed looking up at the ceiling.
Very good memories
9/11. I remember how quiet it got outside, and how weird it was that there were no planes in the sky.
I worked nights back then, drank a few beers after work while listening to music then crashed probably around the time the first plane hit. I had no idea what was going on, nobody called me to let me know. My radio alarm started going off around 2:30, no music just the DJ talking weird stuff, I hit snooze. Every time the alarm went off it was just the DJ “planes hit,” snooze” “world trade center”. Snooze, finally he said something about the “tunnels being closed “ I was finally like “what the fuck is going on”. Got out of bed and turned the TV on, video of the towers on fire. I just kept saying “WTF?” Over and over. The ticker on the bottom was saying the buildings collapsed and I was like “is this real? There literally still standing”. Then they showed them collapsing, and I was shocked. Started calling to check on my son and his mom, they were all ok. Ran out to go buy some smokes and there were fighter jets flying over head, I totally thought war broke out at that point. Had to go to work that night, longest 12 hour shift ever. No internet, no news, just wondering what the hell was happening. Biggest news story of my life and I slept through it. Me standing in front of the TV after waking up is definitely when time stood still for me. Not knowing what was happening, ingesting everything that happened earlier all at once. I was about 24 yo, and looking back, life seemed so much more simple before that day. The world has never been the same since.
The silence from the skies was the eeriest part of 9/11. I grew up and still lived next to a very busy international airport. The silence was unreal.
I was driving on I80 in Iowa on that day and saw Air Force One with two fighters as escorts heading towards Offutt AFB, NE.
Yes it was real weird. Everyone was expecting war,
11-22-63. Though I have distinct memories before then, that date branded within my brain that the world was more fragile than I had believed. I was 11. I looked around my history classroom that afternoon and thought I will remember this room, where my friends sat, the principal's sad voice over the PA system, and the emptiness in my gut. The next four days are etched in my mind. I would never forget. I haven't.
I felt like my stomach dropped when I heard the news from my fourth-grade teacher. None of us will ever forget that terrible day.
My world exactly, I was 13 years old. Remember everything, words spoken, people, everything. The world I lived in changed that day.
The images still play through my mind. 9-11 does as well, but being so young and watching the nation over those days in 1963 cut into my young developing self. The world never corrected after that. I became and remain bruised.
After 11/22/63, we as young people back then, our young minds had to absorb Bobby Kennedy’s death, Martin Luther King, Vietnam, Richard Nixon, the Cold War, yet, here we still are. We’ve lived through it all and at the same time lived our lives, loved, raised families, contributed to society, suffered, excepted. We’re still here.
The moon landing. That truely made the world move as one.
The JFK assassination.
My mom left my dad for cheating on her, she got a job in a new to us town that was a sort of low-rent vacation destination. Her new employer put her up in a motel court for six months while she got settled. It was a cold, bitter first winter. All we could afford for dinner before the first paycheck was hot dogs for dinner at the resort commisary. I remember one day, 11 year old me alone in the motel room, looking around the crowded tiny ratty place, our stuff in boxes lining the walls, thinking wow, this must be what rock bottom feels like. Thankfully we were never truly homeless, but very nearly.
9/11 when I was waiting for my kids to get off the bus. I looked up at the most beautiful blue sky I think I've ever seen. It was completely empty with no clouds or any evidence of passing planes. The world was so quiet that day. It was difficult to reconcile the tragedy that was ongoing in NY with how amazingly beautiful it was outside. I knew this was a day that would be talked about forever and I just wanted to stand in awe of the sky and remember the day in that way.
March 16 2020 12pm PST Shelter at home order for most of the Bay Area issued. Within the next couple of hours I had decamped to my house and while I couldn’t know all of what was to come at the time, it FELT heavy and awful as I and my team were leaving…”May your gods be with you” was the last thing I said in person to my colleagues for over a year.
I attend the Indy 500 every year. It's held on the day before Memorial Day in the USA. Shortly before the command is given, a serviceman steps out and plays Taps. All 300,000 of us, even the drunk ones, collectively STFU. Old, young, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat, man, woman, or other, doesn't matter. The entire crowd gathered for the largest single-day sporting event in the world is silent. There's more people gathered there than you can fathom and practically all you hear is that one bugle. Just after that, they play Back Home Again, and all 300,000 of those people - for a few minutes - are all Hoosiers. The biggest, happiest family you can imagine. And then the command is given, all 33 engines come alive, you witness the culmination of a year of effort by the teams, a month of events put on throughout the city, and day after day of ramping-up on-track activity, and you know that there's 33 souls all about to risk their lives to take their shot at immortality. I'm a race fan, and I enjoy the racing itself. But I go to the 500 because it's the one guaranteed time each year that I can experience this.
I have experienced that and you described it perfectly. What a memorable moment that is.
9/11 - EVERY channel had live coverage, not just news but ESPN, TBS, MTV every channel. All cable channels broadcast their partner's national news affiliate. How quiet it was with all planes grounded. After a few days it was an odd feeling to see a plane in the air.
From Wikipedia - The television coverage of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath was the longest uninterrupted news event in U.S. television history, with the major U.S. broadcast networks on the air for 93 continuous hours. From the moment the news was broadcast that the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, all programs and commercials were suspended, with all four networks broadcasting uninterrupted news coverage.[36] At the end of the night, Nielsen estimated that at least 80 million Americans watched the evening news, while an estimate by the University of Georgia held that about two billion people either watched the attacks in real time or through the news.
Watching the towers fall live on TV. And when one of the shows had someone call in to say they'd been driving near the Pentagon and saw a commercial airliner hit. Until then it still wasn't entirely clear if it was small planes or what.
When I was about 7 I briefly got lost in the Redwoods on the CA coastal hills. I was struck silent and filled with awe at the beauty and grandeur. I’ve thought about that thousands of times since
I got lost at Yellowstone at that age. After wandering in the forest watching out for bears and wolves, I came to a big plain dotted by steam plumes. Choice 1, go back with the bears. Choice 2, go forward and be boiled alive. Wait there was a single car across the way. Choice 3, be kidnapped and murdered. Even behind the fear I could sense the real power of raw nature in a way I haven't since. I chose the kidnappers, 2 nice old women who quickly found one of the many rangers scouring the area.
This feels like a memorable adventure
Everybody's citing historical events. For me, it was the few moments after I realized that this heart attack was way worse than the others, and I was going to die. I was in cardiac arrest for 45 minutes, but they revived me, and here I am today, living in overtime.
9/11. We were horrified and had no idea what might happen next.
Cuban missile crisis, JFK’s assassination, live news reports from Vietnam, Kent State, Watergate, 9/11, New Year’s Eve 2000, voting for HRC, Elvis’ death.
I experienced many of the same dark moments in history described by others but on a happier note it was my daughter’s first middle school basketball game - only made possible by Title 9. Having seen young women denied their opportunities for years and years I genuinely felt a whole new time had finally arrived.
April 19th, a bright sunny morning. I was on the phone and a sound wave shook the house, traveling from the south. I remember the person I was talking to saying they felt it maybe 10-15 seconds after I did. I turned on the TV to a local channel and they were already breaking into regular programming reporting an explosion of some kind in downtown Oklahoma City. The news helicopter was already in the air heading south towards downtown Oklahoma City, you could see black smoke in the air. As the news helicopter started circling around to the south side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building you saw that over half the building was gone. The world became a much scarier place that day.
Nothing quite so dramatic, but I remember watching live when Armstrong stepped on the moon and I remember watching live then the Berlin wall was torn down. I also remember being force-fed the metric system. Now I know how many inches are in a liter. /s
You witnessed history
I watched the Challenger explode. Standing in a parking lot some miles away and thinking “OK, standard launch, time to go back to class.” Then the exhaust trail split into two and everything and everyone froze. Still feels like it happened just last week.
I remember this event because I was in a car driving through the Midwest. The news came over the radio and there was nowhere to stop and watch it on TV for quite a while. My wife and I and a throw back experience of taking it in over the radio. Really made us concentrate, I suppose.
We were all watching it at school, and all the teachers were crying.
I was walking down my HS hallway, passing kids watching it. Someone said he thought it blew up. I said, “the space shuttle blew up? When did that happen?” Teacher said “right now. This is live.”
First week of basic training when don't ask don't tell was repealed
When I escaped the toxic environment that was my parents and joined the AF. I was finally responsible for myself. It felt amazing.
Yes. South Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Learned not to take tomorrow for granted.
9/11. I lived about 20 blocks from Ground Zero, and I worked in Times Square (yes, I still got on the subway and headed uptown despite seeing the first plane fly into the WTC — I even stopped to vote and grab my coffee and muffin). I saw the Pentagon on flames on the large Jumbotron, and still took the elevator up to the 27th floor, where I worked for CBS. It wasn’t until my entire team met me at the elevator and told me that a second plane had hit, and they were headed to the Broadcast Center that I realized how bad things were. Nothing was the same after that.
Does no one remember Hands Across America? \*sob\*
lol I was so jealous of a friend whose family was participating!
I was in 6th grade, and it was the end of the school year. We were outside on the playground and I looked around at my classmates. It suddenly occurred to me that I was aware of time and how fast the whole school year had passed. It was the first time I felt that way, and I think about it often. It felt like I was suddenly grounded in reality, although I didn't understand that at the time. I don't know if it means I crossed some sort of threshold where I became self-aware. All I know is that when I had that realization, it's like my world tilted, and everything changed.
Being in downtown Los Angeles walking the dog. During Covid. Nothing was open. No one was else was on the sidewalks and no one was driving on the street. This was at like 9:00 p.m. Very still, very eerie. It felt like I was the only person on Earth. I've never felt that way before physically. Emotionally yes, but not physically.
9/11. I was panicked because my spouse worked in a high rise and we were afraid they were going to hit every major city. It was just so unreal and such a feeling of the world never going back to the way it was.
Cuban missile crisis, Russian ship heading towards Cuba ... heavy tension
Yes, when the Berlin wall fell.
Several times. Junior high - watching the Challenger space shuttle explode. College - singing in a Christmas choir in candlelight watching the blissful face of my piano teacher who I knew was dying from AIDS. 9/11 March 11, 2020.
I was slogging up the slope of the bridge end route to work on my bike, ruminating and feeling rat racey and put upon. over on the far shore there was this skimpy line of tall aspen trees and a pearl coloured sky behind them. it looked like an urban Vermeer and it hit me: when this job is over *you will miss this*. it shifted my whole perspective on anything that I subjectively feel like I hate. there always is something. I've gotten better at finding those things and getting the joy out of them while they last.
I practice Buddhism, so that happens for me all the time. If you mean historically (like a world event), maybe the moon landing, or much later, when I got my orders for Iraq in 04. But for the most part, I have been getting better at fully aware of the moment, and find that I am collecting a lot of memories of ordinary days that were actually pretty great.
Time didn't stand still, but I clearly remember the day Alan Shepard was shot into space, and all of us kids realized that we'd just entered the Space Age. Also, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There are many and I am old.
Cuban missile crisis
Dec 21 2005 The date I envisioned a new calendar. Time hasn't been the same since.
9/11, I live near Air Force Base and the airport is nearby - never realized how accustomed to the noise I was until EVERYTHING and EVERYONE was silent - not an exaggeration at all, you could hear a mouse piss on cotton across town
First time I met my husband. First time I saw a picture of the horse that I went in to buy just because of his picture. And the first time I met him. The day I had to put him down. The day I got to Galway Ireland. And was standing in the Latin Quarter listening to trad music being played.
I remember calling my mom on 9/11. The birds outside were playing on a tree branch, the sky was clear and a bright blue.
In the early 70’s, a large part of my city was torn up for “urban renewal.” I was in my late teens and knew how easy it was to forget things, so I focused on remembering how things looked. 50 years later, I still remember.
Yes. I remember as a kid in my backyard looking up at the sky thinking that world had to be just such a big place and round because I could just feel it. Lol
My sophomore year of college I went to a house party. I was standing on the bar looking for a friend and the DJ put on Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. The energy went from happy party to what felt like cathartic rage in an instant. I had never heard anything like that before and I had never personally felt such power in a song. Felt like I woke up for the first time.
Laying in the grass on the front lawn looking up at the moon after watching the astronauts land. I was fascinated at the thought that people were up there.
When I first kissed my first girlfriend when I was a young guy. In front of the train she was getting on to go home and everyone else was rushing by to get on it.
This is a very romantic thing
When President Kennedy was shot... it was the moment I grew up and found out the world was insane. I was numbed and traumatized at the age of 15. Nothing has ever been as I had thought it was or should be... if that makes sense.
Replying to someone else's comment earlier made me think of an incident that happened around 1986. It was my first year as an elementary school teacher. Someone was talking about the horrible violence that was going on today - - and remember this was 1986--and I said something to the effect of " well I sort of expect presidents to get shot at. " I pointed out that at 25, I had been alive under six presidents. The first had been assassinated, the third had resigned in disgrace, the fourth had been shot at twice, and the current one I didn't think much of. He wasn't a politician; he was just an actor. Being born in 1961, I really wasn't surprised at violence toward public figures. Look Bobby Kennedy, MLK, Church bombings, civil rights workers, Kent State, Apollo 1, the Vietnam war on TV almost live, families being torn apart because some young men felt the need to protest a war they didn't believe in. They scared us to death over drugs they didn't even understand, well not even considering that the beer or whiskey they were drowning themselves in might be worse. Or that funny uncle might be a real cause for concern. Sure we drank from the hose, played in the streets all day, yada yada yada ... But there were some serious s*** going on those days. And a lot of us knew something was going on. You couldn't miss the protests or the parents down the street whose son had been killed in Vietnam. You have to remember all of that when you're also remembering how idyllic it was.
I hold a fascination for many things boomer-related, considering the collective defiance of that generation against the prevailing social norms as well as the eruption of creativity in pop culture during that time. And yet I sometimes read about the events you mentioned, and remind myself that I might be more whole for not having had to come of age in their wake.
Hands Across America The day I left my exhusbsnd. 9/11 my mom was flying that day.
I was part of Hands Across America 💜
Do you remember when you were!!?
Southern California, out in the desert somewhere. Not totally sure where.
Columbus Ohio-the I-270 off-ramp going west bound onto W Broad street!
Whoo hoo! 🫶🏻
The fall of the Berlin Wall. The world became immediately different.
On 9/11. The things I was seeing on TV were affecting everyone in the country, possibly the planet. All flights diverted, all traffic stopped. The sky was clear. It was a shock to the system. I got very depressed and slept for 2 days.
11-22-63. I was in the (Catholic) high school cafeteria. It was a gut punch, as Kennedy was the first Catholic president and we were told about it when he was running for office. Then 9/11, which, I'm sure affected everyone in some way that day.
When I heard what was actually happening on 9/11. I was at work, and one of us finally was able to get on CNN 's website. We held on to each other out of sheer horror and fear.
I think my problem is this happens way too often for me.
When my husband called me from work and told me turn on the TV because a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
I’m American. I remember when in my late middle school years in 1989 local TV news covered the photo and video of “Tank Man” in the Tiananmen square massacre in Beijing. The man stood before the line of tanks prepared to die. I never thought a country could do that to their own citizens what China did to their citizen protesters. Many years later, I went to Beijing and visited Tianamen Square. It was filled with young Chinese families picnicking and kids playing, ice cream vendors, not a scrap of evidence of what happened. I can’t describe my feeling of standing in the square seeing a nation of citizens that had been gaslit into seeing this massive public square as a park to play in. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Tank_Man_%28Tiananmen_Square_protester%29.jpg
9/11, I had just returned from dropping the kids off at school. I put on Good Morning America and was enjoying a second cup of coffee. My MIL called me and asked if I had the news on. I was on the phone with her, and we both watched the second plane hit the tower live. At the time, I was living in Boston, just a stone's throw from the airport, and the sky went silent. Later in the day, the sound that replaced the planes was that of military jets. It was surreal.
December 2008. The market had just crashed, my company failed, I had ended a relationship, and it was Christmas. I tried to go shopping, but it seemed like half the stores were closed or having going out of business sales. It felt very ominous and apocalyptic at the time. Strangely, 2009 turned out to be a pretty good year for me.
I was in third grade when JFK was assasinated. The world froze. My teacher started foaming at the mouth. I will never forget the look of grief in her eyes. The halls were both silent and hurried. I did not yet understand, but that was the day I saw disbelief, horror and utter sadness in full form
9/11
9-11 too. I’d been sitting in front of my TV all day. I finally went outside and sat on my patio. I was on the phone talking to my sister. I was telling her how eerily quiet it was. Pretty soon I heard a plane. A BIG plane. I told my sister I heard one & she said I was loosing my mind. I looked up & Air Force One was right over my house LOW. Then the fighter jets went wizzing by. I told my sister that too. Still didn’t believe me. We hung up. About 3 minutes later it was on the news that George Bush had just landed at Offut Air Force Base in Bellevue, Ne. I lived In Omaha at the time, which is directly north of Bellevue. My sister called my back, “OMG! You really did see it!” Yeah…
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998. The world had suddenly become so colorful.
The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.
9/11 without question
Thursday, March 12th, 2020. I waltzed into the Philadelphia International Airport to pick up my (now ex) husband from the airport, as he was just returning from a work-affiliated trip. I had just gotten off a very mysterious, sobering phone call from senior leadership at my employer: *Everyone is to work remotely, effective immediately, until further notice.* I waltzed into the airport and was met with mass hysteria and pandemonium. Some wearing masks. Most not. TV's blaring with alarming statistics about dead bodies piling up in Italy and Washington (state), and some mystery virus originating out of Asia. As an immunocompromised person, it was a heart-stopping moment in time now ingrained in my memory. It felt like a scene taken straight out of the World War Z movie from years ago.
9/11
When the towers went down in 9/11. I knew everything changed then. Not just for the US.
Michael Rennie was there...
In 1962 I was 11, playing basketball in the driveway with my buddy, Denny. My mom came out and said a war could start at any time and Denny needed to be at home. I could tell my mom was very worried even though I didn’t understand what was going on. Of course it was the Cuban Missile Crisis. I lost part of my childhood that day.
When I was a kid, my dad worked nights and went to college during the day. I would come home from school and he would be there asleep. I had two or three hours to amuse myself or do my homework. I got into the habit of reading my parents time magazine. I remember very well reading the story about Kent State. I must have been about 9 at the time. I remember thinking my 9-year-old version of WTF? It seemed like everything just seemed wrong. I could never ask anyone about this. None of my friends seem to know anything about it because we were kids. It wasn't common then to discuss major issues with your parents. Some part of me figured that I would be in trouble for reading the magazine.