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It was my senior year in high school. I stayed up all night that night to write a research paper that was due the next day. (Procrastinate? Me?) Earlier in the evening my mom poked her head in to tell me that my cousin E. had just been born. I heard the news about John Lennon a few hours later on the radio. Oddly, I don't remember anymore talk about it on the radio that night though I'm sure there was plenty.
The next morning, as I was walking through the halls to class I heard a couple of kids talking. "Who was it?" "I don't know, some guy that was in some band a long time ago." That shocked me. My parents didn't listen to rock music (or much popular music for that matter) and none of my cousins, aunts, or uncles had really been Beatles fans to my knowledge. They'd split up when I was 7, but even I knew who John Lennon was, especially since songs from his latest album had been receiving lots of airplay in the previous weeks. I talked with my best friend, who was a freshman at Western Michigan University. She told me that earlier on December 8, she'd accidentally broken her copy of The White Album. A few hours later, John Lennon was shot and when she heard the news, it made her feel creeped out as much as sad, as if breaking that particular album had been an omen.
It wasn't, I think, as defining an event as the Kennedy assassination, the first moon landing, the shuttle explosions, or 9/11, but it was still a huge and horrifying moment, still one of those things that, I think, you can ask people about and they'll remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.
Where were you 30 years ago? What were you doing when you heard?
(Some things never change - 30 years later, I'm procrastinating on a paper that's due soon.)
The next morning, as I was walking through the halls to class I heard a couple of kids talking. "Who was it?" "I don't know, some guy that was in some band a long time ago." That shocked me. My parents didn't listen to rock music (or much popular music for that matter) and none of my cousins, aunts, or uncles had really been Beatles fans to my knowledge. They'd split up when I was 7, but even I knew who John Lennon was, especially since songs from his latest album had been receiving lots of airplay in the previous weeks. I talked with my best friend, who was a freshman at Western Michigan University. She told me that earlier on December 8, she'd accidentally broken her copy of The White Album. A few hours later, John Lennon was shot and when she heard the news, it made her feel creeped out as much as sad, as if breaking that particular album had been an omen.
It wasn't, I think, as defining an event as the Kennedy assassination, the first moon landing, the shuttle explosions, or 9/11, but it was still a huge and horrifying moment, still one of those things that, I think, you can ask people about and they'll remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.
Where were you 30 years ago? What were you doing when you heard?
(Some things never change - 30 years later, I'm procrastinating on a paper that's due soon.)
