this sucks. not much else to say about it, really. i mean, there are a million things one could (or should or whatever) say, but...i'm too old, this time around, and have seen too many news stories about military incursions and suicide bombings, to have that same crushed-dream feeling i had when i was an almost-kindergartner and the challenger exploded. things fall out of the sky, and i'm more inclined to be glad there were so few people on the columbia than to wring out a few irrational tears over it. but.

but coming home this evening certainly made me more aware than ever of the fabled "swat bubble." i had had a great day -- there was lunch with grapevine girls and the fun rehearsal i wrote about earlier today and cooking and chai at the weinstein house and a surprise party and...um, clean socks -- but i hadn't read the newspaper or checked any of the news blogs, and i certainly hadn't turned on a television. no one knew at jenny's party; we told stories about small children swearing. leonard, who drives the shuttle, knew, and he told me to check the news. having him tell me in the dark, in the overheated shuttle, after that day, and after all of it finding out that it had happened before i even woke up this morning...that was odd.

and also: who else remembers where they were or what they were doing or the general circumstances of their life when the challenger exploded? it made me feel extremely old when i read in the article that that happened 17 years ago. at first i thought, "it couldn't be seventeen years ago! i remember it!" and then i realized for the umpteenth time in the last year or so that i am quite definitely not a teenager any more. i remember the tone but not the substance of the talk i had with my parents about it; i remember the punky brewster episode about the challenger that aired the next year. and i remember the way the image of the shuttle exploding played and played and played on every TV i saw for what seemed like months.

sometimes (not often, i suppose) it seems like we have explosions of various sorts for the "where were you when" moments of our growing up rather the same way our parents talk about the shootings in the '60's. challenger, and then those grainy, hazy, green images of baghdad being blown up, and then the world trade center. i don't think this one is going to make the list, but perhaps that's just some sort of sad testament to the times we live in? after all, we may see those night-vision-goggle views of iraq again some day quite soon.