Remembering Challenger

Every December 7th, my grandfather would make weepy mention of the bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor. That event has never moved me. It is simply a fact, something to read in a history book. I have imagined my mom as a young woman living in Dallas in the early 60s, hearing for herself the horrifying news that President Kennedy had been assassinated, not so far from where she was working at the time. That event has also never moved me. It, too, is just a fact in a history book. But January 28, 1986, I was moved, and I remember.

It was a Tuesday morning. Just an ordinary Tuesday, except that I was home from school. My third-grade classroom had one empty chair that day. I can't remember actually being sick, so I wonder in retrospect if I had really faked a stomach ache because I wanted to see the rocket launch. While all my friends were sitting as quietly as eight-year-olds can, listening to Miss Curtis blather on about multiplication tables or spelling words for the week or something, I was at home getting an education of my own--an education in loss, finality, and national tragedy. It was the first national tragedy for Generation X, and I witnessed it right there on my grandparents' big-box, furniture-style Zenith. I'm pretty sure I tuned in for the big launch, as I ordinarily would have been watching Cartoon Express on USA network or Pinwheel on Nickelodeon. They were sending a teacher into space that day! I had a teacher...I could relate to that, and it seemed really cool. I remember how Krista McAullife looked with her permed brown hair. She seemed like a nice lady. I thought she was probably a nice teacher. I wondered how she got to be the teacher chosen for such a cool thing.

I was sitting on the end of the coffee table, two feet in front of the television. The room was dim. The only lights on were in the adjacent kitchen and dining area, and it was overcast that day, so there wasn't much window light. I watched. I waited with thousands of other Americans. The house was quiet. Dandy was in his bedroom making usual noises like swishing his keys or rattling change. Mema wasn't around; she must have been in the back room piecing a quilt. I was all alone in that dim room watching excitedly. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, lift-off!" I think I even said it out loud. It was thrilling! There it went up, up into the blue sky! And then... It blew up? It's not going up anymore. And part of it is going over there. There was sudden fire and white smoke, and then just falling debris and the stammering voices of stunned reporters. My heart was pounding as I ran to extract Dandy from his monotony. "It blew up!" I called. "The Challenger exploded!" Dandy came with me back to the den, telling me that the fire and smoke are just what happens when they launch a rocket. No, it didn't blow up. But I had seen it with my own eyes. I knew it had in fact blown up, and those people were dead. Instantly. And there were their children and wives and husbands and parents standing right there watching when it happened. I had family members. I could relate to that. What if Ms. McAullife had been my teacher...or worse, my mother?! I knew something terrible had just happened, and I heard words like "tragedy" make tangible sense to me for the first time in my short little life. National tragedy. And then I sort of understood, young though I was, why Pearl Harbor day may never move me, but it will always make Dandy's voice crack.