November 22

[Riot]

When I was in third grade, I stopped to pick up my friend after lunch, so we could walk back to school together. Yes, public school kids did walk to and from school, and had an hour off for lunch at noon - which we ate at home, with our stay-at-home moms, while we watched Bozo the Clown on TV.

The moment the front door of the house was opened, the world was never the same again. His mother was crying. Adults do not cry. We were going to be late to school, so she herded us into the car, composed herself enough to drive us the few blocks to school. The radio announcer was frantic.

We were all waiting outside the school for the doors to open. One kid said we'd better look in the sky, as his dad said that any minute there might be communist planes carrying nuclear bombs flying over suburban Chicago.

We entered the school and went to our classrooms. All the teachers were crying, even the men that taught the 5th grade. Hushed into good behaviour, we took our seats, and our teacher told us that our President had been shot, and we would sit quietly and await news.

A few minutes after 1:00pm, the principal came on the loudspeakers, and announced, "The President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is dead. We will now all put our heads down on our desks, and pray." And we did, uneasily, knowing only that something momentous and dreadful had happened within the adult world.

We were then sent home. We spent the next days constantly riveted to the television. My year-younger sister was cranky, and wanted to go out and play. My mother said, "No, you all need to sit and watch with us, and never forget these days".

I never did. Those days are first thing I think of, every year since, when I realize the date is November 22.

I flew into Dallas for a weekend two years ago, and on a sunny Sunday afternoon I took the time and went alone to Dealey Plaza. I looked up at the window in the Texas Book Depository. I saw the grassy knoll. I stood on the sidewalk, under the Texas Book Depository, right where it had happened, looking at the cars moving past fifteen feet away, imagining a slowly-moving open limousine, the sidewalk crowded, Secret Service agents in their dark suits, Mrs. Kennedy turning towards us, smiling. The plaza, busy with traffic, seemed strangely so physically small. Far too small to contain the amount of history present.

This morning I have heard nothing on the news mentioning that day in 1963. But it's still the first thing I think of, on November 22.