Historicality: Peace Lost Its Chance

The year was 1980. The Empire Strikes Back hit movie theaters. Solidarity was established in Poland. And Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter to become the 40th president. Civil Rights and Woodstock were but fleeting memories in the minds of the aging hippies and nascent yuppies. It was a turning point, a time when the free flowing, sometimes drug induced ideas of the 60s and 70s gave way to a more pragmatic and realistic conservatism. An era of romanticism had come to an end.

The year 1980 also marked my first memory, one of those snippets from youth that I recall vividly. I was a little more than three years old. I was at my grandparents' house, though for what reason I couldn't say. Someone was on the phone. I don't remember who, though I'd guess it was my grandfather. It was a rotary phone in those days. And the only one in the house. One of those phones that was attached to the wall, a little too high for a three year old to reach. My grandmother called me from the hallway; she was moving a kitchen chair beneath the phone, obviously intending that I was to speak with whomever was on the other end. I stepped onto the chair and prepared the line that my grandparents had relayed. I heard an unusually melancholy voice say hello on the other end. And then, I said my piece, 'I'm sorry about John Lemmon.'

It has been 30 years since the world changed. Since another era of romanticism waned into nothingness. And today marks 30 years since the actualization of that romantic era's symbolic death. Though it might not have been the day the music died, it was the day that peace lost its chance.