"Mommy, what happened?"

That was the question I asked my mom when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. CNN is celebrating their 25th anniversary, and tonight they looked at some of the bigger stories they've covered during their existence, allowing me to relive what I was doing at the time these stories were transpiring. The Challenger was the first real tragedy I was old enough to remember and understand what was going on. I knew of the Challenger because there was a teacher on board, and both my parents being teachers, I'm sure they told me that was why this was getting so much attention, thus encouraging me to watch since they would be watching.

So, after my mom picked me up from preschool, I rushed in front of the TV to watch. I don't think I had taken my coat or bookbag off because I didn't want to miss it. The shuttle takes off and all appears to be going well until suddenly, there's a big fiery explosion. Now, I'm 4 years old and I've never seen anything like this happen, so I ran to my mom and asked the question above. She couldn't believe it either, and when I saw that, I knew something was wrong. My mom told me I was really shaken, which triggered my drawing of the explosion and explanation of what went wrong. Now when I see these drawings, I laugh because really, who does this when they're 4 years old? For some reason I did and I'm still like that, always looking for answers. That might be why I can't get into reading any sort of fiction books because I think what's going on in real life and the storylines behind it are far more interesting than anything that could be made up.

There are just a couple of things to mention tonight:

• Tomorrow is the National Spelling Bee or the Battle of the Home Schoolers, since they dominate the competition. I think one of the better commercials of the year is the one for the Bee, showing the different kids spelling "pressure", with the kid saying the 2nd E being one of my all-time favorites. The way they videoed him, with his glasses down, looking as if he had fallen asleep standing up is pretty funny. Then, the commercial includes the crazy girl from 1997 who yelled every letter in "euonym" to win the trophy. I will definitely be taking time out of my day to watch, it can be very entertaining.
• In Columbus, the Memorial Tournament starts this weekend, which means it'll rain all weekend. The tournament may be cursed because the host course, Muirfield Village, is built on an Indian burial ground. This is the last tuneup before the U.S. Open, which starts in 2 weeks.
• On Sunday, Paolo Salvodelli won the Tour of Italy, the second biggest bicycle stage race to the Tour de France, giving Lance Armstrong's Team Discovery Channel the win. Speaking of Lance, he should be riding at least one prep race before the Tour begins July 3rd, most likely the Dauphine Libere, which passes over the high Alps.
• Finally, ESPN Classic needs to stop showing classic boxing. I love the old classics, namely Clay-Liston, Ali-Foreman, Ali-Frazier, Leonard-Duran, Leonard-Hagler, and Tyson-Douglas to name a few, but I've seen these fights so many times over the last month, I have the punching sequence of each fight memorized. How about some football, basketball, anything????
  

Happy June, 20 days until I'm 24.