I don’t remember why we were told we had to do this. In 1958 or 1959, in first grade in Queens, we all went in an orderly line to the school auditorium, with its row upon row of fixed-to-the-floor chairs with flip-up seats. We were shown how to crouch between the rows. We were shown how to cradle the backs of our heads in our hands, and to draw our heads down towards our thighs. I think this happened only once. I don’t know when or how I learned or was told or realized that this was an air-raid drill in the event of a nuclear bomb drop. I have no emotion around this memory.
A few years later, in Connecticut, I stood in the doorway to the living room and glimpsed my mother weeping in front of our small television set. In grainy black-and-white, President Kennedy was on the screen, and I heard the words “Cuban missiles”. This scene frightened me though I did not know what a missile was. I did not want Mom to see me seeing her weep, so I backed out of the doorway and slipped down the hallway and up the stairs to my bedroom.
Around that same time, I had a dream that Russian tanks came streaming off Exit 19 of the Connecticut Turnpike and lumbered towards our house. This dream also frightened me. I did not tell anyone about it.
