Challenger — 1/28/86

I remember this like it was yesterday. I was nine years old, in Mrs Faling's fourth-grade class. It was the year I wrote the love note that was intercepted and read in front of the entire class; the year I won the city-wide spelling bee; the year I was a "millionaire monster" for Halloween; the year I got real nerdy. We all knew about the shuttle launch because the teacher was on board. Right before lunch, we were told the news of the explosion and from the first row, Keith P. said... "awesome". Our teacher wasn't happy. Ten minutes later, our student teacher rolled in the TV cart and while Mrs Faling was out of the room, we watched and he told us that it was in fact kind of an "awesome" event. Then he explained what the word meant. He always leaned on the podium almost bent in half. It seemed like he was always tired. I think he was even a little bit mean, but he tried to turn everything into an opportunity to teach something.