The people who made fun of me for getting teary about the tree getting cut down oughtta see me now lol
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@hollie
I cried, too; wow, was not expecting that
@superball I was in the 5th grade and watching with my class at school when we lost Challenger, so I dunno, all the launches get me in the gut. :)
@hollie I forget what time of the year it was, but I was in 5th or 6th grade, too. I became obsessed with the tragedy and was determined to become an astronaut, to the point that I ended up *this close* to going into the Air Force Academy. SO glad I stayed out of the military, but yeah . . . here’s what I just texted a friend:
“Took me back to when I was a kid determined to become an astronaut, and to the Challenger explosion. Despite that tragedy-or maybe in part because of it, and because of my age at the time—it all felt deeply profound. This moment just cut through decades of ossification back to that feeling, only this time they made it into orbit. 😭 I wasn't even going to watch, because of various intellectual objections, but one of my Mastodon friends posted the live link, and others were watching, so l joined in.”
So glad I did.
@superball Oh that's cool! I had some friends as a kid who were aiming for astronautdom. 😊 I had a year of wanting to be an Air Force pilot but that got dashed when I was told they didn't accept anything less than 20/20 vision, and I was already wearing Coke bottle glasses at 10 years old.
@hollie My vision was allllmost but not quite 20/20, plus I was a half inch short of the 5’4” minimum, so I was out on two counts. Also the possibility of actually making it to astronaut was minuscule, and I didn’t want to dedicate seven years of my life (four in the academy and three as a second lieutenant) to the military, anyway. So I got married for eight years instead. 😏