My year is 1986.

My sister-in-law, Jen, made a Facebook post with a year she was given, listing the things happening in her world that year. I clicked "Like" to get my own year. She gave me 1986.

I start the year with a Cabbage Patch doll from Christmas and gratitude that my Grandpa Hart is released from the hospital after suffering a heart attack.

On Jan. 28 of that year, the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch, killing the crew of 7 astronauts, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. The same school teachers who got us so excited about following the progress of the shuttle which was built in our community are the same ones who break the news to us during the school day. Some of my classmates' parents had worked to help construct the shuttle. The teachers still manage to turn our attention to the skies as we approach Feb. 9, the day Halley's Comet reaches its perihelion, the closest point to the Sun, during its second visit to the solar system in the 20th Century. We, however, are not informed that the United States Navy divers find the largely intact but heavily damaged crew compartment of the Space Shuttle Challenger March 9; the bodies of all seven astronauts are still inside.

On March 19, I turn 11 years old.

Our family cat, Bandit II, gives birth to kittens on the yarn of a half-finished blanket in our shed.

On April 26, a mishandled safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union "killed at least 4056 people and damaged almost $7 billion of property". Radioactive fallout from the accident concentrated near Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and at least 350,000 people were forcibly resettled away from these areas. After the accident, "traces of radioactive deposits unique to Chernobyl were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere".

I salt slugs in Washington with my Aunt Lisa and buy sand dollars at beach stores there.

I purchase my first bra.

Unbeknownst to me, I make my first visit to the home city (Mesa, Arizona) of my future husband whom I'll meet 7 years later in Provo, Utah. (During that first visit, we also ice-skate in Phoenix.) 19 years later, Mesa becomes my home when we move there with 2 1/2 kids.

On May 25, at least 5,000,000 people form a human chain from New York City to Long Beach, California, to raise money to fight hunger and homelessness for Hands Across America.

On September 8, the Oprah Winfrey Show premieres.

In December, the Rutan Voyager, an experimental aircraft piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completes the first nonstop circumnavigation of the earth by air without refueling in 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds. The Voyager was built in my desert valley and also began and ended it's journey there.

My favorite color is purple.

Many thanks to Wiki and my girlhood journal for refreshing my poor memory.

Would you like a year as well?