I was in second grade at St. John's Elementary Day School in Abilene Texas.
I didn't see our teacher leave, but I did see her come back. Ms. Spain was crying. I'd never seen her, or, for that matter, any adult cry before. She was really weeping. I knew something was very wrong.
She told us that the President had been shot. I didn't know what that--being shot--meant exactly. I didn't know what--and certainly not who--the President was. What seemed obvious was that getting shot was bad enough to make our teacher cry. As she sat and cried at her desk, the principal came on the loudspeaker. She said--though heaving sighs that sounded a lot like Ms. Spain's uncontrolled sobbing--essentially the same thing: the President had been shot. She added that school was being let out and that our parents would be here shortly to get us.
For a second-grader, getting out of school in the middle of the day is a bewildering but exciting feeling. That feeling was already tempered by the discomfort of seeing Ms. Spain in tears, but it was on seeing my parents--in particular my mother Lynda, who was crying--that I started the long process of understanding what had happened that day.
Bill and Lynda sure had a lot of explaining to do with a question-a-minute seven-year-old like me. With one eye on Walter Cronkite, they had to talk about Presidents, elections, then rifles, motorcades, the Secret Service, and most of all, the dark and, until then in my life, the invisible subject of of death.
Until that day, I did not know that anyone dies; after it I knew it would someday happen to everyone--my parents, my siblings and yes, of course, me. A defining moment? Yes indeed.
I didn't see our teacher leave, but I did see her come back. Ms. Spain was crying. I'd never seen her, or, for that matter, any adult cry before. She was really weeping. I knew something was very wrong.
She told us that the President had been shot. I didn't know what that--being shot--meant exactly. I didn't know what--and certainly not who--the President was. What seemed obvious was that getting shot was bad enough to make our teacher cry. As she sat and cried at her desk, the principal came on the loudspeaker. She said--though heaving sighs that sounded a lot like Ms. Spain's uncontrolled sobbing--essentially the same thing: the President had been shot. She added that school was being let out and that our parents would be here shortly to get us.
For a second-grader, getting out of school in the middle of the day is a bewildering but exciting feeling. That feeling was already tempered by the discomfort of seeing Ms. Spain in tears, but it was on seeing my parents--in particular my mother Lynda, who was crying--that I started the long process of understanding what had happened that day.
Bill and Lynda sure had a lot of explaining to do with a question-a-minute seven-year-old like me. With one eye on Walter Cronkite, they had to talk about Presidents, elections, then rifles, motorcades, the Secret Service, and most of all, the dark and, until then in my life, the invisible subject of of death.
Until that day, I did not know that anyone dies; after it I knew it would someday happen to everyone--my parents, my siblings and yes, of course, me. A defining moment? Yes indeed.
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