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02/01/2003 Entry: "Deja Vu" Sadly, today, a vivid memory came back to me. January 28th was a Tuesday in 1986, and I was home from school because it was a "Teacher Workday, Student Holiday." That meant grades were coming soon. I was a bit worried, but no more so than usual. My mother was drunk, passed out in bed, and had been since I managed to get her there Sunday night. My father was away, and blissfully, this meant I could have some "alone time" where I didn't have to care for anybody. I found some old ground meat in the freezer, and cut me some hamburger squares. Why did I not thaw them? We never owned a microwave, even though almost everyone had one by that point. My father didn't care much for new technology, something that baffled me for years, since his job was a technology consultant. He worked with computers, but forbid one in his house. He also forbid microwave ovens, VCRs, large TVs, and any large an technological gadget. Some said it was BECAUSE he worked with them that he didn't want to also see them at home, but now I think it was for two reasons: one, he was a cheapskate who didn't want to spend any dime more than he was forced to for his family unless it made him look good. Two, he probably was afraid of being confronted with any new technology that he didn't understand. Anything that made him look humble was out of the question (which is why he hates professionals). So we only had two TVs... a portable color one in the bedroom, and a small black and white one in the kitchen. I was now in that kitchen, "thawing" frozen burger chunks by frying them, while watching TV. I wasn't allowed to watch TV, either, except "approved" PBS shows. Luckily, when my father was away, my mother let me watch what I wanted, and when she was drunk and passed out, the house was mine. So I was flipping the channels, finding the usual crap in the early afternoon. Then I found local Channel 66, which showed live NASA stuff for some reason. Hey, a shuttle launch. I recalled this was launch #25, and a school teacher who used to teach in my district was onboard as the first space civilian. Launch time in just a few minutes... I kept it on that while I searched for stuff to go with my burger. Yay, there is some cheese left! And some burger buns, too! I ate a lot of scraps in my house because sometimes that's all there was. The cheese was hard, but I knew it would melt fine. The buns had a little mold on them, but it was easily scraped off. I made a mental note to go to the store later and get some frozen dinners for myself. The burgers finally cooked through, and while they were dry and slightly burnt (symptom of cooking frozen beef right from the freezer), I applied the cheese, and while I was setting my food up at the table across from the TV, the shuttle launched on my screen. "Yay!" I recall saying, putting the buns on my burgers, "Russia, see if you can beat THAT!" I'll never forget what happened next. About few seconds later, after I took my first bite and felt the center was still cold, I glanced at the screen and saw the chase plane view of the shuttle. A voice said that booster separation was going to happen soon, and then there was a puff of smoke, and then the whole shuttle vanished under a boiling white cloud. Flight time: one minute, thirteen seconds. "That didn't look good," I said. The Voice of Mission Control continued normally. It said the altitude, temperature, and so on... like everything was going normally. It did it again. I thought, "Okay... maybe it normally looks like that." Then they panned back, and you could see this evil looking devil's horns forming from the single column of smoke. The shuttle exhaust had forked. "That really doesn't look normal," I said to my burgers. I scanned my brain to see if I had seen this in a previous launch. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Mission Control computer techs were seeing nothing but XXXXXXXXXX on all their screens. Total signal loss. "We have an apparent major malfunction," Voice of Mission Control said. By this time, it was apparent things were falling in the air, and there were wisp-like trails of things drifting into the Atlantic. You could hear people crying out gasps of disbelief and horror. The transmission just showed this for a while, so I grew bored with no new information, and turned to see what else was on. All the major networks had "Breaking Bulletins." I called my best friend Kate and told her the Challenger had blown up. "No way!" she said, and turned on the TV. We talked on the phone for a while, until she suggested I come over and watch it with her. So I did. That's when life sped up to a normal speed again. The next event I recall was hearing how all of teacher citizen Christa McAuliffe's students were at school, watching the launch live from their school auditorium. I thought, "How grisly." Then, many months later, my hero Richard Feynman dunked an O-ring in ice water, said his speech, then at the end, pulled out the O-ring, and snapped it in half. There were talks of naming the seven stars in the Pleadaes cluster after the seven astronauts. I was a student assistant to someone who worked with Christa, and he was quite devastated; he spoke of her quite often for the rest of the term. Then in astronomy class, we had a whole day dedicated to it. Then... it faded in my memory. Until this morning. I got out of the shower, hearing the what sounded like the news playing in the bedroom. Christine never watches the news unless it's some tremendous event. I kept wondering if it was some home design show where some designer talked like a news anchor, and my deafening ears were just garbling the translation. But as soon as I stepped out of the bathroom, Christine told me about Columbia. I didn't know what to say or respond. I still don't. Part of me feels like, "Well, that's the risks of space exploration... shit happens." Then another part of me thinks that's callous and whatever happened to my uber-caring go-space-go attitude? I don't know. I want to feel upset, but I just don't have the energy. Am I numb? Am I even affected? Am I more affected by realizing I don't feel affected? Maybe after 9/11, I burned out. Maybe it's because I am still sick with sinus pressure, clogged ears, and now a wet cough (aren't I supposed to be getting better?). As I watch the replay over Dallas over and over, I still feel, "Well, that sucks," like some guy getting hit in the testicles with a stair rail due to a poorly-planned skateboard stunt. I even feel more bummed that Israel's first astronaut and a ton of scientific data was lost than the loss of the crew, which I think is REALLY wrong... why am I so unfeeling? This doesn't look good...