A Year Ago Today

There is something strange about knowing exactly where you were at a given moment on a given day a year earlier. Even on a day like Christmas or Halloween or a birthday most people have a hard time saying, "Oh, yeah, 4:22 pm, I was sitting in my cousin's kitchen eating chocolate cake," or, "11:23 am? Yeah, I was standing outside looking at traffic."
Only tragedy allows for that perfect clarity of memory.
Today there are literally millions of Americans who can remember exactly where they were at this moment last year. Where they were and what they were doing every moment of that day.
For the last two days I have been able to remember exactly where I was at any given moment a year ago. Now, granted, yesterday was easy, on August 28th 2005 from about 10:30 am until about 9pm I was in a car. Except for a brief bathroom break around 5ish in Jackson, Mississippi I was in a tiny red car with my husband, two very cool, very interesting Brits, a pile of luggage, canned goods and bottled water.
Actually, a year ago today I was in that car again, minus the Brits and most of the luggage, and, at 4:30 we were probably just outside of Champagne, just starting to hear on the radio about the levees.
Which is funny, because no one in federal government seems to have heard about them for another day or two.
They were probably all much too busy to listen to the radio.