It was a "where were you when you heard Kennedy was shot" moment.
In fact, I wasn't anywhere when JFK was gunned down, as I hadn't been born. However, the nature of the weaponry used for the presidential assassination is pertinent.
(Don't worry, I'll get to the point. Christmas has been tough. I've had food poisoning, a two-week headache that is immune to painkillers, and it's the start of the New Year. So cut me some slack.)
The Kennedy-esque moment I have in mind happened at 2.31pm on December 20, 2007, in the Hamleys toy shop concession on the top-floor of House of Fraser in Birmingham city centre.
A till assistant broke the grim news. She gave it to me straight, too straight for my liking: "Action Man has bitten the dust."
Action Man is dead? Why weren't people rushing around in panic? Man down! Man down!
How could Action Man be a goner? When did it happen - and how could it happen?
The flock-headed, scar-faced military hero was unkillable. God knows how many times I threw my Commando-clad warrior out of the bedroom window - sometimes with a parachute attached - and his expression never changed, not once, not a trace of emotion as his gripping hands fought for purchase in the flower bed.
Yet he's gone, apparently, and in the end it wasn't the Nazis that got him, or the Russian counter-intelligence network. Action Man was killed off by Nancy Boy Harry Potter, big girl's blouse Transformers and "Ooh, I'm really scared" Doctor Who figurines.
The forces of trash consumerism have done what the mass ranks of the world's most evil military complexes failed to achieve.
You just can't buy an Action Man these days. I had set my purple heart on one as a special Christmas surprise but failed at every turn.
The coiffeured Hamleys executioner explained the combat ace's demise by saying he didn't have a movie out. What a ridiculous excuse.
"There's not the brand there, is there?" she said, metaphorically increasing the voltage to the electrodes attached to my testicles.
I also, however, detect other darker forces at play here, emanating from the same school of thought that condemns the notion of boys playing with toy guns.
Followers of this precious faith think it is fine for young tearaways to slay monsters in faraway galaxies but blanch at the thought of them blacking up their faces and re-enacting moonlit ambushes with semi-automatic toy rifles that are the size of, but less dangerous than, toothpicks.
Could it be that these people, who set themselves up as the moral guardians of our children, find it "inappropriate" to have toy soldiers popularised at a time when British troops are fighting valiantly on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq? They don't like the war, you see (as if any sane person does).
The same facile arguments were whipped up at the fag-end of the old year when teaching unions got in a tizzy over the Government's eminently sensible advice to nursery schools to let boys be boys - and let them play with toy guns.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families believes under-performing three to five-year-old boys might pull their socks up if they are allowed to act out their fantasies.
It is thought they may improve their sums and spelling - what the experts call "educational engagement" - if they are allowed to pursue their chosen method of play, rather than being lumped with an abacus and Tiny Tears.
Unions believe toy guns are symbols of aggression and that the Government is stereotyping boys by condoning games of cops and robbers and cowboys and Native American Indians.
Girls, some girls, like pretending to be ballerinas and love playing High School Musical. Boys, generally, like pretending to shoot people. It's a fact of life. It's in their DNA.
Acting out gun raids doesn't mean little boys are going to turn into armed robbers, tooled-up gangsters or playground spree killers. Such outrages against society have nothing to do with lads who once played with spud guns and have everything to do with the warped minds of sociopaths, mindless gun laws, and human frailty.
Incidentally, the Action Man I failed to buy was intended as a gift for a little girl. How's that for stereotyping?