Joe Moody’s Web Adventures

Both Samantha Smith and the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov are dead. Andropov died of kidney failure and young Smantha, who wrote the letter, passed in an airplane accident. But the new kind of relationship they introduced progresses as Mikhail Gorbachev takes the helm.

Gorbachev has almost a comedic nature, and introduced heady concepts as glasnost, which means openness, and perestroika which means restructuring.

While the Russians are moving forward, we suffer a major setback at home, and our new confidence is shaken.

Someone rushes into social studies class and announces that the Space Shuttle Challenger just exploded after takeoff. A school teacher was on board.

Nobody really knew what to make of it. It didn’t conform to the velocity of the day: swaggering confidence, seizing the future with a no-questions-asked smile, Rambo, big hair and Mr. T: “Whatchu lookin’ at fool!”

After getting home from school I watch with the rest of the country as the networks play back the first 73 seconds of the space shuttle charging toward the heavens, only to suddenly break apart in a burst of flames.

They play it over and over again so much that the experience became numb. Maybe this is a modern psychological defense mechanism to something tragic, to replay a tragic event so many times that it loses its original bite.