’63

 

“In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There’s a cruelty to childhood, there’s an anger.”

 

–Maurice Sendak

 

 

 

Last night (for reasons hard to explain) I found myself daydreaming about the day President Kennedy was killed. I was 8 years old and in the third grade on November 22, 1963. I had a blond crewcut and carried a black leather briefcase to school each day. My blindness was becoming a social problem and I was dimly aware of it–by the age of eight kids are starting to identify their scapegoats. The hunching boy with inch thick specs was fair game. I was prematurely lonesome and trying to reckon my surroundings because I felt provisional and vaguely frightened. As a disability studies professor I try to remember exactly how it felt to be 8 with a disability in public school. 

 

No one in the third grade feels secure. Forget disability–you know something vaguely sinister is going on. You’ve figured out they have bigger agendas than “eat your peas” and schoolrooms begin feeling both inviting and sad. “Inviting” because you’re learning division which is fascinating. You love that you can reduce things with careful forethought. It turns out you can make numbers smaller and smaller with acquired skill. Math is difficult: you can’t see the blackboard, you have to listen really hard. But you love its provinces. Division makes more sense than people.

 

And that’s the thing: I’d figured out by the fall of 1963 most people made no sense at all.  In fact I believe to this day “Catcher in the Rye” isn’t about adolescence at all–its about 8 year olds–Holden Caulfield is far too old for his idiopathic bloom of dark astonishment. The poisoned turd, the bolus of knowing–the admixture of cruelty and insincerity comes earlier in life.

 

At 2:00 pm, one hour before the scheduled end of the school day, Mrs. Morrisey, the superannuated secretary from the front office stuck her head in our room and announced breathlessly President Kennedy was dead. Then she told us to go home. Its possible the adults thought the world was ending. Earlier that morning we’d had an atom bomb drill which involved crouching under our desks. Maybe the world was ending? I remember our teacher telling us to stay quiet and orderly. There was no mention of home work. We were shepherded out the door. It was eery. It was a warm afternoon and no spoke a word.  

 

Walter Benjamin once wrote that “counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom” but that afternoon there was nothing like wisdom apparent. Mrs. Morrisey hadn’t said the President was dead but all would be okay, the nation had survived worse occasions, etc. Of course with hindsight I know it takes courage to provide counsel. That was the day I understood how little courage and wisdom was available. People of my generation always say, “do you remember where you were when you heard about President Kennedy’s death?” as if the main thing was your patch of ground, or a bit of architecture. 

 

For me the signature of November 22 was the parting of a curtain, a rending of an adult veil. At home I raced up the stairs to tell my mother. She was in the “master bathroom” that early 60’s status symbol–a new private bathroom for mom and dad–”movin’ on up”. I shouted through the closed door that the President had been shot. She wrenched open the door and smacked me. “Don’t you ever tell a lie like that again!” she shouted. The bathroom behind her smelled foul and she stood in the door in a house robe and I saw that she was unsteady. I began crying and kept it up on the way down the stairs to the TV room. I cried as I turned on the television. Walter Cronkite was on the screen, explaining disjointedly the news from Dallas. “The President died at approximately 1:30 pm Eastern time,” he said.

 

My mother sank to the sofa and began howling. Then she leaped to her feet, grabbed her car keys, and ran out the door, still dressed in her robe and slippers. I had to guess what she was up to–that she was driving to the pre-school where my sister was finishing up her day. 

 

If memory is really a theater than mine was illuminated by a single spotlight that afternoon. My mother was not a comforting person. She was not reliable. Adults were far more chaotic than I’d known. This was as frightening as the death of the President. That was my terrible discovery of an early afternoon. 

 

When my father came home he said nothing. He sat in front of the TV in glum silence. It wasn’t a wise or consoling silence. Just withdrawal. 

 

Authority can be strengthened by silence. But silence is also scorn. It’s fear tricked out in a dark costume. 

 

My version of that day isn’t mediated by the Zapruder film or conspiracy theories. It was the ascension, the day’s ascension, its standard raising, a flag saying how little a boy could trust adults in his near circle and also the ones down the road. In effect I became an contrarian adult on that day. I learned to abjure silence–even when to do so requires more than passing faith in the comfort of those around me. That was the day I started asking questions.