Good times, bad times

Last Friday a question occurred to me. Why is it that we remember the bad times, the horrific events in our lives the worst? When you ask somebody, they can tell you the exact place they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy was assasinated. Myself, I was in French class, right before our AP time started when our principal came over the intercom and announced that all teachers should turn on their TVs because something monumental was happening. I figured it was a joke of some manner, that Michael Jordan had publicly declared that he would be returning to basketball again until CNN came on, and I saw the Twin Towers smoking. Why is this? Why do these events stick in our minds so strongly? I believe that it's because we know and expect that good things are coming. Marriage proposals are the result of a long period of dating and courting. Championships come only after smaller wins. First, you take your region or conference, then state and finally the nation or, for some, the world. These good times don't arrive as shocks and aren't ingrained in our memories the same way.

This could all be trash though. When I threw this out to my friends at the lunch table, they could all remember when they first realized what was happening on September, 11th, but, when I offered the counter-example of Kerri Strug's sticking her final event with an injured foot to earn the gold for the American women's gymnastic team, quite a few of them remembered where they were because they were watching it happen.