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I am so old.

I just found out that tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.

I could have sworn I was in the third or fourth grade when that happened, but I guess not. I don’t remember if I saw it happen on TV like most of America (seemingly) did or where I was when I saw it. I’m pretty sure we watched it live at school; it was a big deal to educators because of the fact that Christa McAuliffe was a teacher and was making the trip. I couldn’t have told you what time of year it was. I just remember that it happened, and that it was very sad. Still is.

Reagan was supposed to do a State of the Union address that night, but abandoned it in favor of talking about the shuttle disaster. You can watch that here.

Twenty years. It doesn’t seem possible.

“In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.”

Fame has never been a prospect that appealed to me. The money that often comes along with it would be nice, but it would have to be a hell of a lot of money to be worth the trade. I don’t like it when I bump into the occasional person who remembers my name but I have no idea what theirs is. Imagine having that happen all the time, day after day after day.

“Dude! Can I get my picture taken with you?”

So I’m glad that Warhol’s prediction is untrue. I don’t want to be world famous, or even nationally famous.

However, I always thought it might be kinda neat to have something like two minutes of local fame. I wouldn’t mind being the guy they were talking about when you saw this headline in the paper (on page five of Section B):

That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? It’s the kind of thing that you could tell someone you did and they’d say, “Oh yeah, I think I remember hearing about that.” Although, honestly, I could probably make up some shit like that and still have people believe me. I’ve found that if you keep a straight face while you’re telling a person something, and act like you believe it yourself, you can convince a lot of them of just about anything.

Some person: “So you actually pulled a drowning kid out of a pool and saved his life with CPR?”
Me: “Yeah. It’s one of the most amazing things that’s ever happened to me, you know? That and the time I saw Jesus in my oatmeal.”

As long as you don’t make up something that’s too over-the-top, it’s an easy sell. Not that I do that, really, but I could. Probably.

Although with that being the case, if I ever got famous (note: it wouldn’t be from this website) I could just tell people that no, I am not the famous person you think I am, and could you please just let me eat my dinner in peace. Problem solved, now bring on the money.

Want more proof that I am a hopeless geek? During my commute home from work Friday afternoon, I was listening to Radiohead’s OK Computer. Great CD. That’s not the geeky part.

During one song I heard Thom Yorke sing the words “one thousand feet per second.”

Here it comes.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I whipped out my cell phone, opened up the Calculator function, and figured out how fast that was in miles per hour.

WHY?!

P.S. - It’s 681.81818181 (repeating) mph.