by Ann Dennis

Created on: February 09, 2009

I swore, never ever in my life when I was older to use the opening phrases. When I was your age or I remember when And, wouldn't you know it at fifty-four I'm doing just that.

I remember when John Kennedy was shot. I was right there in front of a black and white 14" TV screen when little John John saluted his father's casket as it rolled by him and his mother. I didn't really understand why everyone was so heartbroken but I cried too, for that little boy.

I remember watching that same TV when they reported the murder of Robert Kennedy and the shock and pain reflected on the faces of the people in the crowd.

I remember hearing Martin Luther King's dream speech. And the horrible night when we sat up listening to special reports all night and finally hearing that he was gone. It was during his I have a dream speech that I suddenly realized that there were other kinds of people in the world that not everyone looked like me. It occurred to me to wonder why there was so much anguish and arguing over the different skin colors. To me skin was like cloths, today I wore a pink skirt and tomorrow I will wear a blue dress. That didn't make me any different. I guess I was a sheltered child in spite of Poor Walter Cronkite and his competitors Huntley and Brinkley.

I saw the news every night and listened to Walter Cronkite relate the news of the day and it all seemed to be about the Vietnam War. I listened to my mother worry that if it went on much longer my dad, in spite of having his only brother in service already and three children to raise, may be drafted as well. I don't think the possibility was a near as she worried. But, she had reason, she had had three brothers involved in the Korean Conflict.

Somewhere along the line we landed on the moon and my dad sat up his new video recorder and taped the first man on the moon on our new 20" TV. However, it was still black and white.

I never walked to school, in snow or uphill, I rode a big yellow school bus and that was a trip in itself. I got a lot of my teen culture education on that bus. When miniskirts were the rage my mother was still making my skirts to the center of my kneecap. One of the upper grade girls showed my sister and me how to roll the waist to raise the hem up and then we could roll it down on the way home on that bus. I also did my homework on the bus. No one dared bother me because the bus driver was strict about our behavior and would seek assistance if he needed it and the authorities backed him up. In addition, if I had been the cause of the problem I knew what would happen when I got home. My first crush was on that bus but it didn't last long. When we hit high school age it seemed that every teen had the goal of finding a way to get to school without riding the bus and he was no different.
He lucked out and had a neighbor who drove him and his younger brother to school. He forgot I existed and I didn't have any classes with him to be able to remind him. It wasn't long after that that I had another. By the time I graduated high school I'd had three indifferent crushes and had no reason to hang around that town and enlisted in the army.

The funny thing is my kids don't want to hear, when I was your age or I remember when' but others actually ask me about some of the past history I lived through. I'm very careful to answer their questions and stick to the subject so they won't become bored, roll their eyes, and never ask me again.

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