Now we are 44

I admit, having a workday birthday is a bit of a let-down. (I feel like I already "celebrated" - by taking Saturday off to sew. Depending on my results of the additional analyses, I may take this coming Saturday off as well, as I'm becoming very close to being DONE with the rewrite)

It's strange, I don't FEEL 44. I don't even know how 44 is SUPPOSED to feel. Times are changing so much that there's no real script....in some ways that's a good thing (in that my taking a "different" path from the median American woman - that of marrying and having kids - isn't quite as weird as it used to be) but in other ways it's confusing because it's hard to know how to act or dress (I have a fear of being pegged as "mutton dressed up as lamb") or what's expected of you or anything. (I actually believed, as a child, that you were given something like a Manual to Adulthood on your 18th birthday, which explained how you managed things. I admit I was disappointed when I realized one was not forthcoming....)

There was some story making the rounds the other day claiming "72 is the new 30" which makes my bunk detector go off. Even as a fairly healthy 44, I am not as strong or as flexible nor do I have the endurance I had at 30....and I'm sure 28 more years isn't going to improve things. (I expect it's a ruse to trick Gen Xers into never retiring...and continuing to pay into Social Security....)

There's an ongoing discussion on ITFF about "what historical events we remember" (it somehow grew out of a discussion of the Oscars). Now, a lot of the comments make me feel OLD. ("I was in grade school when the first Gulf War started, I used Saddam Hussein as an example of two syllable words in my first grade class")

But I got to thinking - how far back does my memory go?

- three or four years old - seeing the giant pandas at the National Zoo. (My family had taken a trip to Washington DC, and I remember the pandas being a big deal. That probably would have been 1972 or early 1973; there were no rumbles of a little sibling on the way, and that happened in 1974). I think the pandas arrived in 1972? Which would have meant they were still a REALLY big deal when we were there. I know my parents were excited about them.

- on the same trip, sitting somewhere in some park with my mom, and her pointing off into the distance and saying, "That's Watergate. That's a dirty word to your father." That's one of my early memories because it was so puzzling to me. I thought it was a literal gate that water came through. (That means the trip would have had to have been some time after June 1972, if the timeline I looked up online is correct). It wasn't until years later that I figured out the fuller implications of Watergate and Nixon resigning and all that.

Then there's a long gap. I remember the Bicentennial, I remember it being a big deal. I think that year's Memorial Day parade was the one where my Brownie troop marched and carried small flags. I remember that as being a really big deal - we went out and bought white gloves for me (flag etiquette apparently dictated it, or maybe the troop leader told us to). Back then, WWII veterans were still fairly young men and there were even some WWI veterans in good enough condition to march in the parade.

I think the next historical event I remember is the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption. I use this as an example of primary succession in my ecology class, and I admit considerable dismay one year when a student piped up, "That happened before I was born!" I really didn't need to know that. I remember watching the eruption on television; my dad, being a geologist, made a big deal of it. (There were also a number of eruptions of Kilauea that happened throughout my youth, and I remember watching those, as well).

At some point - I think it was after Mt. St. Helens - was the Jonestown disaster (massacre? I don't know what to call it.) This is where Jim Jones took his followers and they all drank poisoned grape Kool-Aid in a demonic (I suppose in Jones' twisted mind, it was not that) parody of the Eucharist. (And to this day, I REALLY hate the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" - because this was the first big, sad, scary, confusing news story my parents weren't able to adequately protect me from hearing about, and I remember just being really unhappy and creeped out by it)

I remember Reagan getting shot in 1981. I know I was home from school. I thought it happened on a day I was out sick (1980 through 82, I had lots and lots of respiratory infections for some reason and missed a fair amount of school). But one person on ITFF commented it happened in the afternoon, so maybe I was just already home for the day. I remember watching it on the little tiny black and white tv we used to keep in the kitchen (mainly so we could watch a morning news-and-talk show....Tom and Dell, maybe? The biggest thing I remember was one year Tom brought in a "sponge" cake for Del's birthday that was literally a sponge coated with frosting, and the next year it was a "marble" cake filled with marbles....and I remember how they'd get to laughing and Would. Not. Be. Able. To. Stop. and whatever it was seemed that much funnier for it. You don't have morning television like that any more....)

Anyway, I remember seeing Reagan being shot, and the tense time afterward (Regardless of what your politics are, I think an assassination attempt is a big disruptive and upsetting thing. In this country, we get our politicians out of office by voting them out. Or that's how it should be.)

I sort of remember the Tylenol scare of 1982. I admit to this day I curse the person who did that, when I am struggling to open a package of analgesics or antihistamines and having to fight my way through five layers of "protective" packaging to do so. Or seeing the "sealed for freshness!" caps on things like peanut butter and knowing that they're putting a good face on it instead of saying "Sealed so some crazy person is less likely to poison you!"

I think the next thing I remember was when I was a junior in high school, the Challenger disaster. I remember one of my friends came up to me in the hall and said that the space shuttle had blown up. I looked at her in disbelief, and, picturing something like the old Apollo-era rockets where there were fires on the launchpad, I said, "But they got the astronauts out okay, didn't they?" and she just sadly shook her head. It was later on that I found out it exploded IN FLIGHT....I remember they did a moment of silence at lunch that day.

(Back in 2003, I remember the Columbia disaster. I mainly heard about it on the radio; colleagues and I were going up to Chickasaw National Recreation Area that morning. I remember the two rangers up there talking, and one of them answering the phone, and saying, "It's official. We need to put the flag at half-staff")

In 1995, there was the Murrah building bombing. I lived in Illinois at the time but I remember the horror of it coming out as the day wore on - again, initially, I thought it was something comparatively small (like the 1993 WTC bombing) with few people killed - I was really wrong on that. (I guess I tended to assume most disasters were less disastrous than they actually were until I learned; either hope springs eternal or it was some kind of defense mechanism to keep from being to sad right off)

Of course, the big one that most of us remember was the 2001 World Trade Center attack (and the attack on the Pentagon, and the plane that the passengers took over and plowed into a field in Pennsylvania, so that whatever the target was for that one would not be hit....and thinking of that still gives me chills, knowing you are going to die, realizing that by hastening your own death you might save other lives, and having the fortitude to do it.). I think that's the one that really wiped out the innocence for me of being able to assume that disasters were low-grade until I heard otherwise.

Since then, I don't know if it's the result of being a tired old adult, or the fact that there are stations that show nothing but news now (that's a big change from my childhood; there were a few all-news radio stations but no television stations that were all-news channels) or if it seems that the disasters are multiplying and accelerating, but it does seem some weeks that there's nothing but bad going on in the world - school shootings, riots where civilians get killed, tainted food....

But anyway. I don't know how I went down such a sad path on my birthday but there you have it - the history of the last quarter or so of the 20th century (and the first dozen years of the 21st) as I witnessed it. And I think of how many people I interact with on a daily basis who weren't around yet when most of this happened.....