#1 Earliest Memory (Freewrite, 10 minutes)

The earliest memory I have is when I was 4 years old. My mother and I just had moved down to Port Orange, Florida from South Carolina. My mother decided to move with her friend and her two kids because the father had to relocate for his job. I remember shortly after moving to Florida, my mother, her friend and I were walking towards K-Mart to get some things for the new place. Before walking into the store, there was a bunch of commotion and the store’s intercom was going crazy. Being deaf, I could not understand what was being said or find out what is going on.

The reason for the commotion was because it was January 28th, 1986, which was the day space shuttle Challenger blew up. My mom grabbed my hands and took me outside. She pointed up towards the sky. I was still confused as to what was going on until I saw big cloud of smoke and some debris was falling from the sky. My mom explained to me that a shuttle with people inside blew up. I felt a wave of sadness at first and then suddenly felt fear for both my mom and I. I thought the debris was going to fall on us so I pulled her to go inside the store. She told me that it was over the ocean – far away from us.

I will never forget this day because it was my earliest experience that was intense and filled with confusion of moving to a new state and an explosion shortly after we moved. I guess you could say it was too much excitement a little kid who is easily oblivious to the world because of his deafness. This was always the first time I felt a sense of awareness faster than normal. I will always remember that fateful day and from that day forward, my love for science had emerged. Despite of the tragic event, I wanted to be an astronaut. Unfortunately, I couldn’t because I would not pass the physical. Still, that did not stop my love and quest for science.