Reality Check: Surrealist Age

Some things still amaze me about how long I've been wandering this Earth. I know that relative to many folks, my life isn't very long, but as Dad always says; "Everything is Relative"...

I get these "Reality checks" in strange ways, as many of us do... This one started when I was checking in on the flight schedules of the next shuttle launches and a little window in the right-hand corner of the webpage was talking about a Shuttle Flight for Discovery in 1985...

Then I realized we have just passed the 20th anniversary of Challengers' destruction...

I was a "First Year" when that happened. I remember it very clearly...

The same age as the children I am teaching today...

Then I think that I was in College when these children were born (The oldest would have been born in 1992), and if I had managed to come over here when I originally intended (1994), they would have been a mere 2 years old... And my first years still yet to be born...

There is no deep significance to this realization... The significance is in the how I had the realization; coming about from the space program (Memories that are, in me, as young as the children I teach), and seeing that realization played out through my children.
It is surreal. I know someday I'll look back on this realization and laugh at it's simplicity... but for now, it's truly a stunning observation for me.

---Me.