Post your biggest "Flashbulb Memory."

I think everyone probably has one. An incident which is so crystal clear in your memory that you remember what you were wearing, what you had for lunch that day, who you were with, where you were sitting, what you said....

Examples:

~ When Kennedy was assassinated

~ When the Northridge Earthquake hit

~ When the Challenger exploded

I'll post mine later.

Yours?

Nixon's resignation. My family was glued to the color TV in the den, and my mother was crying. My younger brother didn't quite understand what was going on, but the rest of us did. Mom had been ironing, and she stopped right in the middle of it.

The Challenger explosion. My boyfriend (now husband) had picked me up from work to eat lunch at a pizza place, and he told me the news when I got in the car. We sat glued to the wide-screen TV at the pizza place, and I didn't want to go back to work.

Hurricane Hugo. :scared:

The election of Ronald Reagan and the release of the hostages in Iran.

Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. I watched it live on TV.

First Space Shuttle launch---we watched it live at school.

Many, many others...

;) thank you, NWC

BTW - was your mother crying at the enormity, the history of the resignation, or was she crying because she liked Nixon?

I heard her change her tune when Watergate happened. She was sorry she ever voted for him. She was crying because of the shame he'd brought to the office of President.

1. September 11- I remember how I found out, where I was standing, what I was wearing, who I was with... everything.

2. The Challenger explosion- I was in 8th grade History class watching it live.

3. My grandmother dying- Laying on my bed listening to Chris Isaak's "Forever Blue" (oddly fitting lyrics) my grandfather called and told me. I know what I was wearing, what I had eaten for dinner and how I had to go tell my mom.

4. My grandfather dying- I was asleep. My mom kicked open my bedroom door and just started yelling "Dads dead dads dead dads dead"


5. The night my cousin was born- I was in the delivery room. It was a really moving experience- changed my life.

thanks for weighing in

Had the TV on down stairs, tuned to CNBC, the stock market channel. I had just taken a shower, walked downstairs to eat breakfast....walked quickly by the TV and noticed that the stock futures were down HARD making me go :wtf:

I turned up the sound, started flipping through the channels, then started to try to get a hold of my niece who works in Manhattan.

:scared:

could not get through to her cell...signals were all jammed up....turns out she was in process of walking home to Brooklyn.

how long was it before you finally spoke to her?

about mid-day.

:hug:
I did not know anyone that died in 9-11
at first
then I read a tribute to my very first boyfriend....
all I could remember about him was how sweet and what a gentlemen he was
He was Lebonese.... so foreign to me, such a beautiful soul.....
his mom, AWESOME!!!!


lost

I'm so sorry...:hug: :hug:

roof in Saigon. would be my biggest one.

Of course JFK, Challanger, and 9/11 but none of those really affected me as much as being part of retreating from the NVA.

holy fucking crap.

and i thought it was big when a friend gave me a chip off the Berlin Wall.

glad you're with us.

:hug:

wow
I remember seeing this.....
GLAD YOU ARE OK!!!!!



lost

it was a day before my birth day.....
I was like 4

Challenger..... my son was devastated.... could not understand how it happened....
his teacher applied to be on the shuttle

the Berlin wall coming down
I cried like a baby

the bomb at the Olympics......


Mount St. Helens....
I will never forget any of these

Oh yeah

never in my life ever
will I forget
Columbine
my daughter was in high school when this happened,,, she was breaking up with her then boyfriend

:cry: :cry:


9-11
my daughter was in school...called her to come home......
did not want to let her go
my son went toward it.... he was there....... he could not talk about it
all I remember is
how quiet the world got that day..... still haunts me...

(shiver)

lost


I remember ALL these events that have been posted

shit

:hug:

:hug:

lost

such sharp detail that my heart still races to think about them . . .

my sharpest memory is of the day my mom died. These memories are so very strange: I can remember things from before I was aware that my attention was required anywhere but on the ditto I was coloring for a Christmas card. My ditto was of a candle, in an old-fashioned candle holder with holly on it. I made my candle red and was filling in the green of the holly when the classroom phone rang. Strange that I should remember that, and seeing Mrs. Maurer walk across the room and knowing she was coming to me. She was wearing a white, red and green plaid maternity jumper dress. The strap on one of her shoes was held on with a safety pin. She told me to go to the office.

Of all the things that happened that day - that were horrifying, sickening, strange, unfathomable, unreal, frightening, and evil - this is what I remember most: walking behind my stepfather as we left the school office, walking several steps behind him as he didn't even try to wait for me, walking to the car, walking in the hot sun. And thinking: "Maybe mom's dead.... no, she's just probably in the hospital again."

I worked in the World Financial Center across the street from WTC.

Do i need to say more?

I guess i am still dealing with that day.

:hug: :hug:
so glad you are ok....

really......
in a million years
I could NEVER imagine


lost

how're you and the family and the kitties?

I didn't know you were there - is that one of the reasons you moved? I was about 10 miles from the Pentagon that morning, turned around and just came home. One of the partners where I worked died in the plane that hit the Pentagon.

The cats are doing fine. Sonia is very happy and has gotten in shape, now that she has two brothers chasing her. Sonia is the smallest by weight, though given all of her fluff, she looks the same size as her brothers, who are at least 15 lbs.!

9/11 I cried every morning for months.
The Challenger disaster.
The Wall falling.
My first baby's birth
The tornado

when/where - were you hurt?

a tornado to.....
I NEVER EVER EVER EVER
want to do that again

never

you know



:hug: :hug: :hug:

lost

I was in grade school when our principals voice came over the school-wide PA system announcing the JFK assassination. We were all sent home for the day.

This next bit is a longish but something I shall NEVER forget:

I had just recently camped within a mile of Mt. St Helens, well within the red zone and directly to the North-Northwest. The very next weekend, the weekend of the famous May 18th Eruption of Mt St Hellens, I changed our plans: instead of going back to that campsight, I took my girlfriend up to Mt. Rainier because it was closer to our home. We camped out that friday night on the southern slope of Rainier, a couple of miles from Longmire and and perhaps around 50 miles from Mt. St. Helens. That morning as I got our gear all packed away to continue on we got clobbered by the leading edge of St. Hellens's ash plume. I saw it coming but figured it to be just some freak mountain storm sure to pass by quickly. When the ash first hit, it came down as warm marble sized pellets which blew up into grey talcum powder upon impacting with the ground, my tent tarp and us. I quickly put two and two together and figured either Mt. St Helens had just erupted or the Russians had launched WWIII! I was quite elated about the eruption, jumping up and down cheering at first but all too quickly we were enveloped in a grey fog of ash. It silenced everything and rapidly limited our view. Getting back to Longmire and out of the thickening ash-cloud was tricky, the trail was gone, the air was somewhat difficult to breath and my girlfriend was busy blaming me for this nightmare! Sheesh, imagine if we would have stuck to "Plan A" and chosen to camp at my campsight from the prior weekend...then she would have REALLY had somethin to complain about...of course if we had done that, she and I would still be there to this very day...looking like those folks from Pompeii.

The rangers at Longmire Lodge herded us unhappy campers into the restaurant and made us aware of what had happened. They gave us the option of staying put or driving out. We chose to join the caravan of perhaps 20 or so cars which drove out. A ranger vehicle led that caravan with a ranger walking in front. Each car was almost bumper to bumper. Even though we were driving a VW van, I could barely make out the taillights of the vehicle we were following. I had my girlfriend drive while I walked alongside her hanging on to the mirror. Though around noon, everything was pitch black, our world had shrunk to our van and the back of the car in front of us. I could not even see the sides of the road perhaps a dozzen or so feet away! Eventually as we came closer to the Park boundary, the ashcloud thinned enough to drive through, slowly, and at the Park Entrance we were turned loose to manage on our own. The van's engine was ruined, my girlfriend of course blamed me for that too...but we survived and she blamed me for a great many other issues until we parted company a decade later.

Yes I remember that day VERY distinctly, the warm feel of those first ash pellets hitting my skin, the poof poof poof sounds they made as they hit my ground tarp, that eerie silence which we walked through to get back to Longmire Lodge, those dieing mosquitoes who struggled to fly through the thickening ash/fog which enveloped us, the fear of being lost and the relief when I found the main road, that first ranger we came across who had on an army style gas mask and was calling out to us with a megaphone...I wore a grey t-shirt with a back-packing hippie on the front, blue jeans and I had my blue bandanna wrapped around my nose and mouth. My girlfriend had on her bib overalls, a pinkish/reddish t-shirt, and a red bandanna over her frown which never quite covered her anger at me. Not exactly a survival story but those hours will stay with me always.