How's this for a slap in the face?

Jessica McClure, who held the attention of the nation as a toddler when she fell into an abandoned well 17 years ago, is now a high school graduate.

In October 1987, when she was 18 months old, Jessica slipped into an uncovered eight-inch-wide pipe in her aunt's yard. Crews struggled for two and a half days to rescue her, digging a deep parallel shaft and then a 63-inch horizontal tunnel through bedrock to join the two shafts. They finally brought her to the surface in a moment covered on live television.

For those of us old enough to remember, the Baby Jessica story riveted the nation, one of the first moment-to-moment crisis not involving war or an assassination attempt that kept people glued to the 24-hour news sources for constant updates. And it sure doesn't seem like 17 years have gone by, but it has. Jessica fell down the well before the Berlin Wall fell, before the Soviet Union fell, seemingly in another world from today.

Best of luck, Jessica McClure. We'll be taking our Geritol if you need us for anything.

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