I entered 1986 as a seven-year-old child and exited an eight-year-old adult. I am not sure of the age at which the average person's dreams are crushed by the harsh reality they are born into, but mine were gone so early that I cannot say with certainty if I ever actually had any.
In late January, a television wheeled into my classroom in central Massachusetts gave me my first serious encounter with the image as almighty: a space shuttle ascending into the atmosphere, exploding before it could defy and escape. A few months later came fears of that same atmosphere slowly spreading nuclear toxins across the Mercator projection I was just starting to understand. In October, the naive joy of my region's local baseball team, on the precipice of generational exorcism, collapsed under the weight of a single ball between the legs of a newborn scapegoat. I know other things happened, but perhaps a young mind can absorb only so much trauma that is accessible later through language.
Doubtless this informed everything since—all of it.