Now, remember, I’m not old enough to remember when Elvis died (in fact, he died before I was born), or, quite obviously the JFK assassination. So, my list is a little more modern, and I’m quite sure I left out some big ones. But feel free to play along in the comments.
Let me be honest, I don’t remember this. It was in January of 1986, I was still in kindergarten. I think I remember being in a big room where all of us were watching TV, but I’m really not sure. I do know that in kindergarten, I just didn’t care about a space shuttle.
I do, however, remember doing a project on it in the eighth grade for my Gifted class. Does that count?
Speaking of eighth grade, that’s when this one happened. But I’ll be honest, this story doesn’t revolve around exactly when I found out about it, but what I did after I found out about it.
I had Civics after lunch. Every week we had a “Current Events” story due. It’s where we found something in the news and we summarized it and then decided if it belonged in the Hall of Fame or Hall of Shame. It should come as no surprise that many of us who had Civics after lunch spent our half hour of lunch scrambling to finish this assignment. That day was no different for me. Kurt Cobain’s suicide just made the news, and, my pathetic obsession to find any excuse to flirt with Josh Vickers apparent, I decided to write about Cobain’s suicide for my Current Events project. Why? One, because I got to sit down and talk to dumbass Josh so I could pump him for information about Cobain. Two, because then dumbass Josh wouldn’t think I was such a loser since I obviously “cared” about Nirvana.
Looking back, I still don’t know what I saw in him. He was cute, but that’s about it. I probably should follow this up with, “Where were you when you found out Jennifer dated dumbass Josh Vickers?” (I still love you, Jennifer. Joke’s on you, he’s your ex, not mine!)
My obsession with all things Paris and France is well-known. What’s not as well-known is that I have an accomplice in that obsession, her name is Rachel. We don’t really talk anymore, but the point is, if you saw the two of us together, we were a) talking about France, b) talking in French, c) talking about how much we longed to go to France or d) all of the above.
That Saturday, Rachel and I decided I’d spend the night at her house. We went out to rent a couple movies and headed back to her house. As we walked in the door, her mother was frantic, “Did you hear about Princess Diana’s crash in Paris?” We had not. So we sat down, glued to the TV, to see what happened. (Typical teenagers, once we got the gist, we watched the movies we rented. Once of which was “Pulp Fiction” which made no sense to me then … nor does it now, but I can appreciate it a lot more now. Especially since I’ve had a $5 shake.)
The next morning, she and I were getting ready for church, when her dad walked upstairs reading the headline of the paper. Obviously the fact Princess Diana died in Paris was splashed above the fold, so we yelled through the door that we had to see the paper, whereupon he shoved it under the door.
I was home for the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college. I worked graveyard shift at Taco Bell by the mall (you know you’re jealous), so I got to hang out with my mom during the days. We were sitting there watching TV and they broke in with the fact JFK Jr.’s plane went down and it was a “search and rescue” mission. They kept saying it for days. Every day they’d reiterate that it was a “search and rescue” mission, and my mom was like, “Um, no, they are fish food by now.”
Guess what? Mom was right.
I know I’ve told this story before. I think on Facebook when someone had some status on the anniversary of 9/11 asking you to remember and “what were you doing?” kind of thing.
Anyway, here’s the short version. I was working at the bookstore on campus. Some guy walks in and informs me a plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I didn’t believe him. It wasn’t until more and more people came in who corroborated this crazy story did we start to believe it.
I logged off my register, tried to get online. Nope, internet traffic was INSANE (big surprise), so we couldn’t get online. Pleaded with our boss to change the station to a news station, nope, no go. (Hypocrite that she was, she was watching television news upstairs because her niece worked at the WTC. She didn’t come down again until she talked to her niece to verify she was alright. Turns out she was running late because of a flat tire, so she didn’t make it to work before everything went down.)
Of course, my being in Kentucky, and my mom being in Virginia Beach, I flipped out. Wouldn’t you? So I call my mom and I’m like, “Get in the car and head inland, quick. Norfolk’s next!” Overreact much? Mom’s like, “Where are we going to go? Your apartment?” Of course my logical mother had a point, where the hell would she go? Then she’s like, “I have to go get Jesse from the base.”
I was living in my crappy-ass townhouse off Richmond Road at the time. This really isn’t important to the story. I just figured I’d throw it out there.
I was running errands that morning, and, as always, I had the radio on in the car. I cannot drive without the radio on. It’s like my car will not function without my radio receiving power. They break in with the news. I immediately call my mom. Or mom called me. Either way, I was talking to my mom.
I don’t remember much about our conversation besides my last sentence, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go home and watch the news.”
This one breaks my heart. I love Mitch Hedberg. I was working at Lexmark at the time, and I had nothing to do (as happened a lot in my early time there), and I was reading the Pop Candy blog on USAToday.com. I saw something posted about Mitch Hedberg’s death. I immediately e-mailed the author of the blog (Whitney Matheson, God love her) with the subject line of “Say it ain’t so!” She e-mailed me back very quickly stating that it was, in fact, true, and she had confirmed with his publicist.
Sad times indeed.
This one will just prove I’m psychotic, but if you’re on this blog, you know that already.
I decided to surprise Scott the weekend of his birthday with a trip to Nashville. It took a lot of work to pull this off without his knowing, but I managed to do it. Yay me.
Once we got to Nashville, I was so fried and the driving was so terrible (road construction everywhere), we just sort of crashed in the hotel room and turned on the TV. Heard news of Pope John Paul II’s failing health.
Scott, being the sick and twisted individual he is, walked over to the window of the hotel, looked out and informed me he was “looking down at his peoples.” Then he did the Pope Scotty bit and stood there, trying to “calm the masses.” It was sacrilegious as hell, but, you know, we’re not Catholic.
The next day we headed out to Opry Mills Mall. We wandered around, we got bored and I was like, “Let’s go back to the hotel, I want to know if the Pope died yet.” Yep, it was a sick thought, I’m well aware. But yes, my entire vacation to Nashville was mostly remembered because of the fact the Pope died that weekend.
I scour the news sites regularly. So it was more than a shock to me when Janet walked up to me that afternoon and said, “Did you hear Anna Nicole Smith died?” Umm, no.
Immediately, onto the internet I went to verify that she did, in fact, die earlier that day. Was I mortified because Anna Nicole Smith died? No, that trainwreck was bound to happen (though it was especially sad since she just had the baby a few months before). No, I was mortified because someone else beat me to the announcement of crazy pop culture junkie news.
Yeah, not that any of you can share this particular story (at least about me), but it bears repeating. Because, quite frankly, I’m immature and the idea of waving urine-soaked sticks in someone’s face is humorous to me. Well, and the fact it’s my blog and I can.
So, it was late one Saturday night. Jolynn came over for awhile, we played Karaoke Revolution for awhile, and my very talented friend kicked mine and Scott’s tone-deaf asses. It was 3 a.m. and, although I drove to Midway to pick her up, I was starting to feel nauseous and had no desire to drive her home. I roped Scott into it.
I hadn’t been feeling right for days, and I suspected I was pregnant – so much so that, despite all the negative tests I’d been getting, I was still on a pregnancy board comparing my symptoms with those of the people who just received their positive tests. I knew, despite the fact home pregnancy tests and Scott disagreed, I was pregnant. (Scott said that, because of my level of bitchiness, I was definitely PMSing.)
After Scott and Jolynn left, I took a pregnancy test. Finally, for the first time in like a week and a half’s worth of testing, I got a very faint line. Did I really want to be pregnant at this point? No, not really. I just didn’t want to be crazy anymore.
When Scott got home, I showed him the pregnancy test (which, seeing as how it was one of those internet cheapies that Laura gave me that you get five for $1 off eBay, was just a flimsy piece of wet paper at this point), and he said, “Well, I can see where there might be a line. I guess you might have to go see the doctor, huh?”
I could hardly sleep that night. I woke up at like 8 a.m. and snuck out the door and headed to Wal-Mart and bought two pregnancy tests, an EPT with the plus sign and a digital. I opted to go with the plus sign one first. Took the test, and three minutes later, plain as day, there was a second pink line. There was no denying that line. What did I do? What any insane woman would do. I went and bounced on the bed, waking Scott up, shoved the second pee-stick in less than 12 hours in his face and said, “Do you see a line now?”
Yeah, I know, I’m not right.
If you follow the dates, you can do the math and figure out I was pregnant when this happened. This actually plays a role in this story.
I was home, and I propped my pregnancy-induced-swollen-cankles-from-hell up on the loveseat, and was playing around online, watching some crappy sitcom rerun on TV while waiting for Scott to come home. In the midst of this amazing multi-tasking of creating a lung (thank you Henry Cho), trying to get my ankles to go back to normal (that took a few more months), surfing the web and watching TV, I was also texting Jason. He mentioned something about Heath Ledger. WHAT????
Immediately, onto Google News I go to find out he died. I am shocked. I am horrified. I actually start to cry. I cried. Over a celebrity’s death of a drug overdose. A celebrity I didn’t know. But I cried over his death nonetheless. I felt like I knew him.
Why so serious?
This was one that happened during my days of unemployment. So, of course I was home, watching TV and spending my days online scouring job sites. And playing on Facebook. I was on Facebook and Susan posted a link to a story about MJ being rushed to the hospital. This, of course, peaked my interest, and thus started the “tune to CNN on TV, hit Google News online and continually refresh, and heaven help you if you interrupt me while I’m trying to keep up with the latest celebrity disaster” news.
Of course, there were so many erroneous posts regarding MJ’s death, it was hard to keep up. He was dead, no, he wasn’t. He was in ICU, no, he was dead. Wait, there’s going to be a press conference in front of the hospital … yep, he’s dead.
Strange as he was, growing up with his music, it was a little surreal to realize he was gone.
As if Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009 – and hearing about it on Facebook wasn’t enough, I also learned of Billy Mays’ death on Facebook when Lori posted a status update about it. Yay Facebook. Where would we be without it? (Yes, I’m well aware how freaky it is that I remember exactly whose Facebook post it was. Have you met me? I remember the weirdest stuff.)
Sad to say, but I only had two thoughts:
Thank you for being a friend ... and ... look out Betty White, next year's not looking so hot for you.
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