Where were you when the Challenger exploded?  I was in college then.  I guess like so many others I was pretty complacent as far as space travel.  When I was young there was talk about people flying around in space ships rather than cars.  As a little girl we would sometimes watch rockets launching on TV in school.  I remember looking up at the moon with my whole family the day we landed on the moon and because I was so young I was really trying hard to see the space craft.

I guess we as a nation and NASA in particular had become pretty complacent about the safety of space travel.  I say that because the challenger had a different kind of a passenger that day.  It carried a teacher.  She was an English teacher and was going to keep a journal like pioneer women did.  She was to be a pioneer of sorts.  A non-scientist headed to space. 

I remember getting out of my English class and I had to kill some time before my next class.  I had been pretty depressed that week.  My youngest son had been in the hospital and I just felt so alone.  My (ex) husband was off living with the "woman of his dreams" and not sending us one thin dime.  I was working two jobs and going to college and I was like everyone else, I wanted someone to love me, to care about me.  I just felt overwhelmed and I was walking in a haze of melancholy.  I was wondering if I shouldn't give up college, get a real job and that way I could get on with my life.  I passed by the big screen TV and saw some students gathered around.  I knew the Challenger was launching that day but I'd seen so many rockets launch.  I was in my mid 20s then and didn't really feel part of the college crowd.  I walked by totally out of touch not looking. 

I headed for the cafeteria.  I had just pulled my can of diet coke out of the machine when two people walked by at a fast clip and said, "The Challenger exploded?  They are all dead. No one could survive that."  WHAT?  I was frozen in the moment.  Why would anyone say such a thing.  Exploded?  What are they talking about. 

There is a country western video in which two lovers reunite in a train station.  It's filmed in such a way where although you see everyone rushing at top speed past them the two lovers are walking in slow motion.  That is how this felt to me.  I was standing there and almost as suddenly people were almost running out of the cafeteria to the student area.   I felt like each step I took was with bricks.  It just couldn't be.  I could hear the concern and the conversations and understood what they were saying but it all kind of seemed garbled.  I got to the crowd to see the news replay the explosion.

My generation had always felt you should go out in a blaze of glory.  I was watching a blaze of glory and it didn't seem a better way to go.  I was just transfixed by it all.  They were looking for survivors although they knew there would be none.  Did McCulliffe really understand that this could cost her her very life?  She had children didn't she?  What of the others? 

I eventually went to my next class.  so many people didn't show that they cancelled it.  Some people complained that the coverage interrupted their soaps.  There was a great deal of sadness in my heart.  When I heard people criticizing NASA and then the talk about scaling down NASA and all I understood.  I understood because I had dreams once and they too were falling down around me because I hadn't planned so carefully and I had been careless.  The difference was my mistakes hadn't caused anyone's death.  Still when the families of the dead talked about wanting their loved one's visions to go on and that they believed in what NASA's vision was I thought maybe I could go on with my vision too.

I am one who tries to take from things I learn.  Good, bad, success, and disaster and try to apply them to my life.  People who do what these people do are a whole different breed of people than I am.  They are willing to take great personal risks and overcome great obstacles for a vision and dream that requires their best.  I sometimes wonder if in any of them had any personal doubts?  Did they ever feel less than?  Did they always believe that they could do anything they set out to do?  One thing for sure.  They will each be missed by those who loved and cared about them and remembered by us all. 

Recently NASA was looking for another teacher to go.  This time they wanted a Science teacher specifically.  I had thought about applying until I read that part.  I thought about it and then got frightened about being confined to such a small place.  I was mostly frightened about dying.  That's how I see it now.  Dying. Was I willing to die for a dream that was not really mine? Did I want it just to prove something to myself?  Would that be worth it? 

Darryl took Mike and I to Hunstville and we toured NASA space camp.  Space Fight was interesting to me but not a dream of mine.  I guess I have lived most of my dream.  Regrettably not in the way I imagined I would.  To a large extent I have only myself to blame.  Just like the space program I need to move past my disasters and really look at what can be done in the future.  I can't let disaster define me.  I can allow it to shape my life but I can't allow it to rule me. 

Middle School