It happened on a Tuesday in late January, 1986, just before noon, so before lunchtime. I remember being home sick, and seeing the footage interrupt my usual si

It happened on a Tuesday in late January, 1986, just before noon, so before lunchtime. I remember being home sick, and seeing the footage interrupt my usual sick day routine of watching daytime TV. At that hour, I’d normally have been watching The Price is Right, with Bob Barker on CBS or possibly I Love Lucy reruns on another channel. I didn’t watch it live, but I remember it being all over TV once it happened. When my sister got home from school, I had to explain that something weird was going on, and I was watching that instead of cartoons. I was too young to really grasp the gravity of what had occurred. She paused, watched warily, looked concerned, said Oh Man! and then went about here after school tasks, and then ran back out to meet friends. For what seemed like weeks after, elementary school projects were devoted to understanding the disaster. They sat us in the gymnasium we watched a VHS recording and then talked about why this event was both unfortunate and significant. After questions and answers, we were then tasked to make cards that would be collected and sent to Nasa, as an expression of sympathy.