Forty Years Ago...

 Good morning, everyone. Yesterday, I was listening to Spotify and my early 80's playlist, and I noticed that I had a bunch of songs in a row that came from 1983, and the realization hit me that 1983 was indeed forty years ago. Read that again, 1983 was forty years ago. Ronald Reagan was in his first term as president, the space shuttle orbiter Challenger had yet to make its maiden flight, and I at the start of the year was a nine-year old going to school in mamby-pamby land (it was a church school) fawning over a girl named Margie and enjoying Taco Tico with my sister Gwen every Friday. Speaking of Gwen, she was first seeing her future husband that year, and I would spend most of that summer with my brother and his somewhat intolerable wife. Fast forward to 2023, and I wonder to myself if what happened to me that year wound up shaping what would happen to me in life.

I was merely a nine-year old living in Orlando, but I had thoughts of being an astronaut at the time, for the Space Shuttle had me interested. However, I had not yet gone to Kennedy Space Center, in fact, I still have never been there, shame on me, I know. I would doodle on sheets of paper the scene of the shuttle launches at the time. But when Challenger was destroyed in 1986, my interest in space kind of went away. For some perspective, I was in the middle of sixth grade when the Challenger disaster happened; the shuttle wouldn't launch again until I had started my freshman year of high school. Out of mind, out of sight, right? But it was something else that really put a damper on those dreams I had of being an astronaut or working as a rocket engineer at KSC eventually, the mere fact that I wound up moving away that summer to Podunkville, NC.

I wonder what would have happened if my father hadn't been haunted by living in the house that he and my mother (who deceased on Halloween of 1981) stayed in, or had he more importantly blown his savings on hospital bills for mom (he didn't believe in insurance like a dumbass) and could no longer afford living in Orlando at the time. Would have I still be interested in the space program as I was starting to do back then? Would I wind up with a career in radio (as a little kid, like five or six, I would holler in the back yard just to ear the echo of my voice as it carried across a sinkhole/retention pond) as music videos were just really beginning to take off, and I had just gotten a little black and white TV for my ninth birthday? 

I probably would have had a greater opportunity to grow as a human had I stayed in Orlando instead of the small, narrow-minded town in North Carolina I grew wound up growing up in. But then again, I probably wouldn't be the person I am now. But it sure doesn't hurt to speculate what could have been...

More to come...

CT