Where were you when? Memories.

This was a swap I did through Swap-bot.com - "Quick! Where were you when? Email swap" - I made the swap.
You know how there are certain things in life that happen that are so shocking, or totally make you happy, that you remember just where you were and just what you were doing at the time you heard about it or did it?

Below are three things I remember from my life.  I thought of the idea for this swap during the night before I posted it.

When John F. Kennedy was shot and died (November, 1963):  I was in 6th grade in my classroom in Methuen, Massachusetts (I grew up in that town) when the principal of the school came into my classroom crying.  She whispered to our teacher and then our teacher started crying (both were women).  Our teacher then told us that the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy had been shot.  Then the all the students in the classroom started crying.  We eventually found out that he died.  It was a sad day.  It’s still burned into my memory though: the principal of our school coming into our classroom crying and then the teacher crying and then the entire class crying.  At that age did we even know what it meant that the President was shot?  We knew we had seen him on television speaking to us, the people of the U.S.A., and he was pretty cool and good-looking.  He was a fine president.

When John Lennon (of the Beatles) died (1980):   I was driving South on Route 101 on my way to work in the San Francisco Bay Area (California) from Palo Alto to San Jose.  I was listening to the radio, as I always did, and they announced on the radio that John Lennon had been shot and that he was dead.  I was shocked.  I had to pull over into the breakdown lane because I started crying.  When I pulled myself together and got to work they had the radio on, and playing on the radio was songs by John Lennon.  Just about everybody there looked very sad.

9/11 happened (2001):  This time I was in Iowa.  I was sharing a house in Fairfield, Iowa with another woman.  I was upstairs in my room sleeping in or reading a book or something.  Claudia (name changed) knocked on my door at about 10 AM and came in and told me that some jet planes had crashed into the World Trade Center in NYC.  We both then went down into the living room and watched the news.  I don’t think I stayed too long, I think I went back up into my room or went out and walked the dogs or something.  It was just too horrific.  It was a horrible and shocking experience.  I was sick for three weeks after that happened.  Somehow or other I didn’t actually watch the planes crash into the twin towers until several weeks later.  I didn’t really want to see it.  I was very, very, very upset by what had happened.

I have lots of other memories of other things, happy things; here’s a few.  

When my daughter was born and I was in a birthing center in Menlo Park, California in 1981.  My husband was there and some friends of ours were there and they took pictures. I was pretty much out of it during the process but I definitely remember holding my darling new baby on my chest.

When I first saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964 when I was 12, I was still living at home (of course) and my parents always watched the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday night.  We were sitting in our living room watching our black and white TV.  They made fun of The Beatle’s long hair, but I didn’t care.  I LOVED the Beatles.

When I saw my first Macintosh computer in 1982.  My husband and I were visiting a student’s dorm room at MIU in Fairfield, Iowa.  This was before the Internet.  The student showed us the drop-down menus and other cool stuff on his computer. Then he opened something up where one could do research – not on the Internet, on his hard drive – and he showed us how the hyperlinks worked.  We were blown away.