Where I Was When

C. 1984: The Paulsen family brought home the Apple II, our first home computer. This was important because I could then play killer games like Lemonade Stand and Lode Runner most of my childhood, enabling me to be part of the generation that can multitask and figure out Microsoft Excel with no prior instruction.

January 28, 1986: I was in Mrs. Bush's first grade class. We had studied about how we were the space generation and I set a goal that lasted at least 24 hours to be an astronaut. The television was rolled in on its rickety cart and 30 six-year-olds watched as the shuttle magically rose from the ground and we waited for the rocket to fall off the shuttle, as Mrs. Bush assured us would happen. But the rocket didn't fall off. And the shuttle stopped rising. It fell into a big cloud of smoke and Mrs. Bush shut off the TV, informing us with tears in her eyes that we were moving on to more mundane educational tasks.

November 9, 1989: Mrs. Harward's fifth grade class. Again, a rickety TV stand--probably the same one from first grade--was wheeled in. Mrs. Harward attempted in 15 minutes to summarize the Cold War and the civic importance of the Berlin Wall falling down. We watched it for at least an hour, and I remember thinking that everything seemed dark and noisy and dirty.

C. 1994: Teachers in junior high were excited about the Information Super Highway and that you could read a book located in France for your research in Utah. Can you even imagine the research possibilities? (Now I just ban the internet from my student's academic research. So much for the research dream.) But the World Wide Web really became exciting when I opened my first email account, shelleyfanclub@hotmail.com. In honor of my best friend Shelley, OF COURSE. That night I wandered into a chat room for the first and last time. I spent three hours talking to someone in Australia. That was also my first introduction to the incredible time sucker the Internet can be.

October 3, 1995: This time the TV was mounted in the classroom. I was in Mr. Stokoe's history class my sophomore year of high school, and we stopped education to watch O.J. Simpson's acquittal. The boys were very vocal and had apparently strong opinions on the case, but I just wondered why this was so important.

September 11, 2001. I was on my mission. We had just come home for lunch and I answered the phone when Elder Yazzi, the District Leader's companion called me. He told me to sit down. He told me that the Twin Towers were gone, that the White House was gone, that the Pentagon was gone and that 2 million Americans were dead. Maybe more alarming and indicative of the removed-from-the-world and a little bit fanatical state you get in on your mission, it wasn't until Elder Yazzi told me that missionary work was on hold that I really started to grasp the magnitude of the situation. I had been tracting in negative forty degree weather, for heaven's sake. Nothing stopped missionary work. My companion and I spent the rest of the day in our apartment, looking up scriptures about the Apocalypse.

November 4, 2008. I was teaching Tuesday night, and my stalwart students were a little distracted. One of my students gave us an update every twenty minutes on which presidential candidate had won which state, and at the end of the evening (near 10:00) three students received the text "Obama won." I was exhausted when I got home, but Tyler and I watched the news together for another hour.

While I didn't vote for Barrack Obama (I didn't really like McCain, but Obama's health care plan kind of freaks me out) I am overwhelmed at what a historic juncture this is. In my Writing and Rhetoric class we watch Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and I am always amazed at how recent the civil rights movement was. I am proud and a little amazed that the American populace was ready to judge someone "not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character."