Jump Back, 1999

I just read that it was ten years ago that JFK, Jr died.

I remember that summer with clarity I don’t have for any previous seasons (or really any since). When I read that it had been a decade that summer flooded back in full-color flashes.

It was 1999. I was leaving for Syracuse in a few weeks. I’d lived with my father for exactly one year and was still getting used to freedom. I was saying my goodbyes to friends I’d known my whole life, shedding my family and the person I was sick of being. It was a typical Virginia summer of suffocating humidity and days of nonstop 90 degree sun. I was working at the environmental consulting firm as an intern and I dressed up every day and made ridiculous amounts of money. I shared an office with a guy who looked a lot like Charlie from "The West Wing". One of my best friends from high school worked in the office with me. I drove us to work everyday in the little blue Mitsubishi that I borrowed from my grandparents while they were summering in Maine. We took long lunch breaks and loved the feeling of pretending to be a grown up and having the money to back it up. Every morning we stressed about what we'd do that night.

It was the same summer that Blair Witch Project came out and I distinctly remember reading an article in the Washington Post about how it was allegedly based on actual footage. Burkettsville is less than a half-hour from my house. I saw that movie during a rainstorm. Seth and I drove back home in his pale yellow Mercedes and we were frightened of the endless forests and gravel roads of our home town. Ghosts and witches could be anywhere.

It was the summer of Woodstock ’99 and the chaos there. I remember friends considering going but never getting around to it. It was year of the final Lilith Fair; I went with friends from work.

I remember the overwhelming sense of sadness at the loss of JFK, Jr and I didn’t even know much about him. I was saddest for the Bassett family. It was just so abrupt.

Ten years. It went by at a speed I am just beginning to process.