It was sparked by something I had read about certain memorable moments in people's lives. Everyone in my parents' generation remembers where they were when they heard about Kennedy being shot; in the article I read, it said that my generation's equivalent was the Challenger explosion, and that got me thinking about other things I remember.

"So, Grace, where were you when you first heard about...

the Challenger explosion?" I was in ninth grade, on my way from 3rd hour French to 4th hour Social Studies. The guy who had the locker next to mine first said something along the lines of "Have you heard the shuttle blew up?" I don't know how schools are now, but back then, there wasn't a TV in every room. I happened to be going to a class where there was one, and they brought two or three other classes in with mine. We spent the entire hour watching the news, and it was absolutely extraordinary. I'm sure that never before had there been a room full of 14-year-olds that were as silent as we were for one full hour. We couldn't take our eyes off the television.

the Oklahoma City bombing?" In an elevator at Cannell. Some woman from my office was riding up with me, and said something like "Did you hear about the explosion in Oklahoma?" Once again, everyone in the office did nothing but watch television all day. By the time I got home I was so exhausted and overwhelmed that I couldn't watch any more coverage. I ended up going to bed at 7:30.

O.J. Simpson?" Once again, at Cannell, goofing off in the mailroom, when the casting assistant came in and said, "Did you guys hear O.J. Simpson shot his wife?" (I guess that was the initial story.) Details were still fuzzy about whether or not she was actually dead, and I remember thinking at the time that it was no big deal, another football player being violent, whatever. Four days later I'm watching half a dozen helicopters circling his house from my apartment window.

Monica Lewinsky?" This was another thing I thought was going to be no big deal. I actually saw it on the Drudge Report the morning that it broke, completely by chance. I had never visited that website before and had just heard something about it, so I happened to link to it that morning, just out of curiosity. I even saw the headline and didn't read anything else about it, thinking again, "Yeah, Clinton's screwing around, whatever." I guess it's a good thing I'm not a journalist, because I'd never go after the right stories.

Diana's car crash?" At home, alone, on a Saturday night, watching "Early Edition." CBS put a crawl across the bottom of the screen saying something to the effect that there had been an accident, Dodi al-Fayed was dead and Diana severely injured. I found out later that CBS had been dropped the ball in a serious way, and that all the other networks were already covering it. NBC eventually picked up MSNBC's coverage (I didn't have full cable back then), and I stayed up watching until Brian Williams came on confirming that she had died. Got up the next morning and they were replaying BBC reports about her death. I have to admit that I was very sad that day.

John Lennon being shot/Reagan being shot?" I put these two together even though they happened like a year apart, only because I happened to be home sick both days. Fortunately, that little streak ended, and people stopped getting shot just because I was throwing up.