I was sitting in my 8th grade class room, in my dusty little southern Arkansas hometown of 2,500 people. No 24 hour instant news, just a bunch of young kids scared to death that the world was going to end any minute. This was at the very height of the cold war and we all had nightmares about "the bomb".

"Look at the size of the boy's head. If you put some antenna's coming out of it, it'd be Sputnik. It's a virtual planetoid. It's got it's own weather system."

oh yeah, and on this day in history, it's possible that one of my parents was being conceived. Not really sure as I'd have to know how old they were, but it's in the same general timeframe...