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November 23, 2003
Memorable events
A visit to Lynn S's site set me thinking. Her piece on the assassination of JFK made me wonder what it is about certain events that make them so particularly memorable. I know that I should be able to recall (at least I am told that I should!) what I was doing or where I was for a fairly large number of such events, but the fact is that I can't.
There are one or two that stand out. The first was the assassination of H F Verwoerd, South African Prime Minister and architect of apartheid. I can recall where I was, but not the date or anything other than the delight of the adults around me at the time - all white and all South African and against apartheid - as to place, I was preparing to sail in a dinghy race at the East London Yacht Club. (East London in South Africa - not the other one!)
When the Cuban missile crisis blew over I was at school, I can recall a teacher interrupting our lessons to convey the news to the master taking the class. Again, the date escapes me except that it must have been around 1960 and the subject was mathematics - not one of my favourites! Equally, the assassination of JFK. Again I was at school and the class was interrupted, but now I cannot recall either the date or the subject being taught. From Lynn's blog I learn that it was 1963 and the 22nd November, but I doubt I will remember that for very much longer.
Even the fall of the Berlin Wall I can recall watching on TV, but couldn't tell you when it happened other than vaguely in the late 1980's!
September 11th on the other hand is something I can recall in very fine detail. I can tell you exactly what I was doing and were I was at the moment that the news started to come in on this one. So what is the difference between these events, and why do I recall one so clearly and not the others?
Quite clearly the events of September 11th are much more recent, but I suggest that there is another element at play here. I am, as I have said before, a member of the emergency services. It could have been me and my crews under that rubble. The Prime Ministers been assassinated? So what? Will we still be sailing the race? Missiles in Cuba? Is this a threat to us in South Africa? Some one shot the US President? Is my date with my girlfriend going to be cancelled because of this? The Berlin Wall's come down,? Oh good, now is the mortgage interest rate likely to go up or come down?
It seems to me that the impact of any particular event is directly related to the manner in which it impinges upon someone's own life. The events which occurred while I was at school were remote, in a country (apart from Verwoerd's murder!) that had little apparent communication with where I lived or the life I was living and were therefore of little personal importance. Likewise the Berlin Wall. It hadn't directly affected my life so was therefore a case of "Good show! It was a gross abuse of peoples rights, now its gone. Great, what's next?"
On the other hand, during this same sweep of time, other events have burned themselves into my psyche, events I was personally involved in or which impacted directly on me or my family. These include a school classmate who was killed by a shark on Nahoon beach while swimming in a group of friends. Several of them beat the shark off with their bare hands and dragged Geoffrey from the surf. Others of us were swimming at the same beach a bit further away and only became aware of the problem when a life guard started to order everyone out of the surf. Another friend killed in a hit and run accident on a pedestrian crossing also sticks in mind, as does the death of two fire fighter colleagues killed when a stack of newsprint rolls, each weighing a ton, collapsed during a fire and crushed them against the only solid wall in the warehouse. Another would be the phone call from a neighbouring Brigade when, as the senior Officer on duty, I was advised that our Chief had just been killed in a serious motor accident.
These and other events impinged directly upon me and those around me. They are memorable and come back in the "hour of the wolf" - that wakeful hour when all the world seems to be resting on your shoulders and you really need to sleep.
Conclusion? It is not necessarily the major world shaping events that stay in any individual's mind, it is much more likely that the event which makes a really indelible mark is one in which the person has a personal interest or stake. Thanks anyway to Lynn for the reminder - and for the date of JFK's assassination.
Posted by The Gray Monk at November 23, 2003 10:16 PM