“Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at”
Aidan was waiting for me in the driveway as I arrived at his house Sunday night for hot dogs on the grill.
As I stepped out of my jeep, I glanced into the yard and noticed Charlie pushing a wheelbarrow and Keely walking across the yard with a shovel, as baby Grayson played with a garden hose. Spring planting I’d assumed.
“What’s everybody doing here,” I asked, as Aidan gave me a hug.
“Eh, we’re cleaning up after The Challenger disaster,” Aidan said casually. “It exploded you know.”
An uncontrollable burst of laughter shot out of me. I glanced into the yard again and saw Charlie throw a pile of dirt and sticks into the woods. I laughed again.
“Aidan,” I said, attempting to sound stern. “How do you know about The Challenger?”
“I just read about,” he said, simply. “It’s in my book.”
He then went on to describe, as only a 7-year-old can, about the space shuttle Columbia disaster, the sinking of The Titanic, and The Great Chicago Fire.
It was only later that I found out Aidan had recently obtained the 2006 World Almanac, and had just that morning read a chapter on Disasters.
I remember watching the Challenger explode live on TV, when I was in third grade, where we gathered as a class to watch the launch. I also remember a few days later all the Challenger jokes started popping up.
“What does this button do?”
But, as tragic and surreal as watching a space shuttle explode was, and as tasteless as the jokes were that followed, whenever someone brings up the Challenger, I’m still brought back to my first day as a fourth grader at Litchfield Center School. I was the new kid and some raggy looking kid named Jermiah Manning asked me if I wanted to know a secret.
“My father died in the Challenger last year,” he said.
And, like I did today with Aidan, I laughed in his face.
