Bryan Preston relays his still vivid memory of the Challenger disaster. I remember it clearly, much like my mother remembers when she heard about Kennedy. For the record, I was in a tanning booth at the time.

Allow me to explain.

In 1986, my mother and I owned a small business, a combination ice cream shop and bakery. One of the other businesses in the strip mall was a tanning salon and she offered all of us merchants a deep, deep discount to use her place. I had been in an 8:00 a.m. class that morning and had a break until around 2-ish or so. A good friend of mine wanted to head to the tanning booth and I offered to drive, figuring that I could get a discount for her while taking advantage of a little radiation drenched snooze time. We got there, I put on the radio headphones, climbed into the tanning booth and drifted off. I was startled awake by the horrific news bulletin. I lay there for a few minutes more listening to the updates and then headed home to catch the news. It was a bad, bad day. As it happens, I vaguely remembered the Apollo mission where 3 astronauts died on the launch pad. I say vaguely because I was wee little child at the time. In any event, the Challenger disaster will stay with me until I lose what little wits I possess.

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