as someone has called moi, "Phony Phwench Man" which is totally true...LOL

My American History didn't start until I was 10.

The next few years, I was too busy in the ESL and trying to fit in and getting dx with what was wrong with me...

I couldn't walk when I was around the age of fourteen and basically stayed in my room/hospital most of the year that year...

so when Lennon died and Reagan got shot, I was not clueless but didn't cared...

I learned to love the Beatles much later and learned to love Lennon. But it was when George Harrison died that it broke my heart. He was my favorite Beatle, still is...

the day the Challenger launched, we were in class. My best friend James was one of the few kids that owned a VCR at the time, he taped it. When we heard about it in school, we were all in shock. I went to his house after school and hung out with him the rest of the day. We took his parents VCR and we taped and looped the event over and over. He was an electronics genius and he dubbed over some of it with a tribute...I remember we sat there and watched it over and over again. Seeing her mom baffled image over and over again...it STAMPED deep into our hearts...

few weeks later, he and I found some carvings of someone saying that he would shoot himself. We didn't take it seriously cause he was very popular....that night, he shot himself....

gun control became a very heated debate in our school the rest of that year...(please do NOT let this become a subject of debate and respect the original poster's intention: memory sharing and where we were in in our own history when it happened. )

We felt awful after we found out. Depression and suicde was taboo-ed back then(still are to some degree this day) and we both changed that day, I think...we never really talked about it afterwards and it wasn't until a couple of years ago, I confided in Alffe in private about it....and finally some weeks ago, I finally posted about it in the SOS forum....

space shuttle Columbia on Feb 1st 2003, da wife and I were still just friends. We went to Wisconsin to honor an old friend's wish who'd just passed away. We took her son, "D", and grandson, Eli, up to Egg Harbor and we were in the Comfort Inn hotel and we saw Columbia on the news. I remember just watching da wife, "D", and Eli, who was barely 1 year old. The expressions of "D" and his reactions somehow transferred to Eli and he started to fidget...I went to get him and as I held him, his sweet face contrasted greatly with that from the adults. His was the face of sweetness and innocence...while the adults were those of shocked and pain and uncertainty...


the day of 9-11, I had my b-10 tumor (it was better than a benign) removed that morning and I went home. When I woke up, I was still pretty drugged up and when I turned the TV on, I had thought it was a television show or something. It was when an actual news caster that reported when I realized that it was real...

in my groggy state, I called my mom...she confirmed it...

I remember that my heart sank deeply while I felt tremendous guilt cause earlier that morning, I was just worried about how my tumor was going to affect me and how I was going to be in pain the next few days and I was whine-whine-whining...

it still feels surreal as I am typing this out...

Tiananmen Square and Berlin wall were such contradictions for me that year...on one side, we have people that were being walled up, on the other side, people were tearing the wall down...

a few of my relatives, mostly scholars, were either hurt or killed at the square...I have never met any of them. Only know that I was related to them.

During the beginning of the last Dynasty of China (Qing, in case some were wondering) , scholars were persecuted as well as prosecuted. They had a mini cultural revolution which once again, killed some of my ancestors cause they were outspoken scholars...

during the communist China, once again, some of my erudite ancestors/relatives were challenged/jailed/or killed...

when I was young, I remember that my parents were always telling me I shouldn't say this or that cause they can end up in jail just because of something that I could've said...

anyways, I am really digressing here....

I am proud to be an American these days. (and to sooth those minds that were wondering, we have cats, but they are ALL safe... )