I remember when Kennedy was shot. I was home after school watching Queen for a Day with Mrs. Arnott. The show was interrupted with the news, and I called my mother to tell her. It’s possible the Tufts University English Department first learned that Kennedy had been shot thanks to a phone call from an 8-year old.

More remarkably, I believe I remember Sputnik. One evening — I would have been just 2.1 years old — my father called me to the back door in the dining room. Look, he said, see that moving light in the sky? That’s the Russians’ new satellite, Sputnik!

I can’t be sure it’s valid, but I’ve long had this memory.* To be visible to the naked eye, the moving light would presumably have been not Sputnik itself but its larger rocket booster, which also went into orbit. If this memory was burned into me at such an early age, it must be because I sensed how important the occasion was to my father.

So here’s my Sputnik ambition. I’d like to be the last person alive to remember having seen it.

[11 September 2019]

*Confirmation!  My sister, who was 4.4 at the time, says she remembers this too. So now for a start I’ll need to outlive Gwyned.