You know what I'm talking about. Events like the JFK assassination, of course, or man's first walk on the moon. Those events that touch us not just personally, but also as a people. Those events over which, in want of better words, we come together.
Being born, as I was, on the tail-end of the baby boom - too late for Howdy Doody, too young for Woodstock - my memories of these "generation defining moments" are a bit hazy. After all, I only knew of Grace Kelly as a princess, not an actress; my only recall of Elvis was the fat one, not the king of rock and roll. But they're right, of course, about these collective memories. Even though I hadn't reached kindergarten, I still remember that I was on my grandmother's couch, fighting the flu and eating grilled cheese, when the news broke that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas; in the living room with the entire family, gathered around the black and white 20-inch, when Neil Armstrong took those first small steps on another heavenly body.
But these memories, for me, are vague, like yellowing grade-school wallet photos collected eagerly from classmates whose names you wished you could remember. No, these memories are shadows compared to the total recall - not just of fact, but of feeling - that I have about the night the music was murdered - the night John Lennon died.
I was, at the time, attending college in Florida, in a small Catholic school nestled in the orange groves right outside Tampa. It was balmy that Monday night, even for Florida. I had just returned the evening before from a whirlwind trip back home to Jersey, for the express purpose of being maid of honor in my sister Gina's wedding the Saturday before. She picked me up from the airport the previous Wednesday night, flushed with excitement, filling me in on the upcoming week, the "Girls' Night Out," the bickering between bridesmaids over if a hat or flowers made more becoming headdress.
But then a song came on the radio - a song I never heard before, vaguely familiar yet quite fresh and new. My sister turned the sound up, and I asked her about the artist.
"You haven't heard this?" she asked as I listened to the refrain. "It's John Lennon's new song. Isn't it great?"
And it was great, a song about hope (even for the middle aged - after all, Lennon had just turned 40, almost ancient,
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