Where was I when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded? Eighth-grade geometry class—or was it 9th-grade algebra?—at Summit Jr. High. This was a gothic brick building, major curb appeal, tall and steepled-looking, and inside it did not disappoint. Classic U-shaped—or was it H?—with endless hallways running at right angles to each other, no nonsense, the way schools used to be. One half block from the Summit train station, where commuter trains left every hour for New York City. The halls were lined with lockers that clanged when you opened and closed them, and except for Mme Delby’s 7th grade French class and Mr. O’Neill’s 8th-grade drama class, all of junior high was a blur. As it should have been. That horrifically awkward period when your hair was either too short or too long, all the familiar landmarks of youth had fallen away, replaced by corridors of lockers, gym teachers with nylon pants and expectations, and a phone booth out front where so-and-so, the class bully, with boobs and facial hair at 13, tried to beat you up one day after school. She asked: What are you looking at? You: Nothing much. Yes, with sass. Then-best-friend Blake snorted with accidental laughter, then read the look in the bully’s eyes and yanked your sweater (monogrammed no doubt): Come ON. The day the space shuttle exploded, you were one of a million kids watching the very same TV broadcast on a wide brown TV wheeled in on an A.V. cart for the occasion. The blinds were down, the room dark, exciting, and movie-like. Elbows propped on desks, chins propped on wrists as history was made, much better than the usual filmstrip or chalky equation on the board. It was shortly after 1, or just before 11, and the puff of smoke looked so right at first. Of course it would be that way: engine thrusts sending the rocket ship into space, sort of like exhaust from a muffler when the car starts cold. What gave it away, then? Surely not our shocked classroom; we were in awe, detached as adolescents will be. It must have been the announcer, the shrieking TV crowd—did the math teacher turn off the TV, or did we want the capsule fall, looping and spinning?
I was in Mrs. Eng's Music class singing. What song, I can't remember. Just like that I was back there again tonight as I shadowed F. at his open house at the same school I attended, in the same music room I sung. Same, but remodeled with drums that lined the walls. I was back to fourth grade, my only real memory of that room, singing, when the time came to watch the Challenger take off. Mr. Greisgraber, our principal, came on the scratchy loudspeaker, to announce the moment. We paused our class to watch it on a tv that had been rolled in for that purpose. The count down, the blast off, the explosion, and then the deafening silence that followed as we tried to comprehend what we had just watched. Our school stunned silent, Mr. Greisgraber, fumbled his words to break the quiet. A response I can not recall but his tone and stutter.
ReplyDeleteI just felt my world shift on it's axis, as shots of her curly, full head of hair flashed on the screen, and commentators began to share thoughts of her children, her students, her husband. My world became all the more scary, like at any moment I could be engulfed by space defying gravity into an abyss.
Mrs. Eng recomposed herself, and led us in singing some national hymn that was laced with melancholy and sweet prepubescent voices-it salved our souls. I wanted to be at home, not here in the folded medal chairs, in my mom's arms, secure; even if my house was not the safe haven others homes were. It was filled with anger and violence and unexpected explosives between my parents, and often spilling onto my oldest brother. Neither of my parents exploded into pieces in space, just a constant expansion and contraction like a brewing volcano waiting to burst. Yes, I was in music class, in the cellar of my Catholic school, that winter day the Challenger launched.