Where were you when the lights went out?

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This was a joke that I had heard several times in the past. The answer of course is in the dark but some people would come up with inventive and sometimes off color answers. I thought about this today when I was thinking about how memory plays an important part in our lives. Most people's memory fades with time but some older ones can still regale their listeners with tales of their childhood antics. My memory fades faster than most people I think. I can't remember any of my childhood with the exception of a few isolated scenes taken out of context. Most of the time I can't even tell you when those few scenes occurred or where I was at the time. In fact I would be hard pressed to remember what happened last month. I just got a letter in the mail from a doctors office I visited at the end of last month. They wanted me to fill out a survey about how I was treated there. I have no problem doing it but they ask questions like how long I waited in the waiting room and how long I waited in the exam room before the doctor came in. If I had known there was going to be a test I would have set a timer. Anyway this got me to thinking about how much I did remember about my past. There are several times I do remember clearly exactly where I was at the time. These were tied to events that was going on that were traumatic. The first event was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was in the seventh grade and we were sitting in our classroom listening to the news. Our teacher said we didn't have to do lessons that afternoon. The next time was when the space shuttle blew up on take off. I was in the drug store and the druggist had the TV on which for him was unprecedented, I thought it was some science fiction program until I saw the stunned look on everyone's faces. And of course we have the date that today is commemorating. It is amazing that it takes trauma to make us remember accurately. So where were you when the planes hit