They say that the defining moment of our parents' generation was when JFK was shot. People can place you in a time slot by if you remember it, by where you were when you first heard the news.
                It’s my considered opinion that the mark of OUR generation was when Kurt Cobain died. No, I’m not kidding.
                Whether you were a fan or not, you heard about it. You probably still hear about it. Not a year goes by without someone reminding me that “Today would’ve been Kurt Cobain’s Xth birthday” or “It’s X years today since Kurt killed himself.”
                I can still remember the day when I found out that Kurt was dead. I was in the kitchen, baking something (that’s enough to make the day memorable, right there) when my sister called from her friend’s house. She told me to turn on my radio; they’d heard something about a body. I spent the afternoon calling friends and flipping radio stations, gathering the information as it trickled in: the body was indeed Kurt Cobain’s; he was dead; an apparent suicide.
                I don’t even know why I cared so much. I liked Nirvana, but I was a stupid little Jr. High girl. It was all just music to me. The fact that Kurt Cobain’s death had an influence on me anyway is further proof of my theory. Go ahead, ask your friends. Chances are that they remember where they were on that oh-so-fateful day (jeez, I don’t even know if i meant that sarcastically or not!), or how they heard about it.
                Now, with the death of JFK Jr., I wonder if people will assume that his death will have the same sort of generational-memory effect as that of his father. Personally, the only reason I remember where I was when I heard that John-John’s plane was MIA was because I saw it on the news at a restaurant—it will be forever ingrained in my memory the manner in which the very gay waiter (his name was Pope) placed his limp hand over his heart and exclaimed “Oh my God! How could they justh losthe a plane?!”

-Violet Nova, Remorsecodeblues #16, 1999