The Threat of Nuclear Attack
Once again we are under threat of nuclear attack--this time from North Korea. We've lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation since I was a child and I'm having increasing trouble taking it seriously or caring. Of course, I'm too old now to die young should North Korea or someone else carry out this threat. (And I have enough food for at least a week in my basement.)
When I was in grade school in Chicago, we were taught to hide under our desks if the Bomb hit our city.
Later we moved to Clayton Missouri where children were given dogtags that we were required to wear to school every day; each morning the teachers checked that we had indeed worn them. My father, who did not deal well with his own anxieties, enjoyed telling us that if we were dead the dogtags would be shoved between our front teeth to identify us.
The Missouri plan for nuclear attack was to send children home to evacuate with their parents. My parents were trying to build a business in St Louis and I never imagined that they could get back to the suburbs to save me.
Our-Baby was in a daycare center in a farther suburb. I don't know what plan the daycare center had for her but the street outside our apartment building was a major evacuation route for St Louis. That street was to be turned into a one-way street leaving the city at the first alarm. Our-Baby didn't figure into my thoughts on the bomb. I never expected to see her again if the Bomb went off. Easy come, easy go can apply to people, too.
Wait-For-Me and I went to school across the evacuation street and up a hill. As the older sibling, my assignment was to collect Wait-For-Me from her classroom and take her home. I couldn't even imagine getting across the evacuation street to that empty apartment where no one waited for us. I assumed that we'd die on that corner. I felt totally inadequate to the task of saving us.
It never occurred to me that some adult in a car might throw open a door and tell us to get in. I never considered that possibility until the thought suddenly came to me for no particular reason a few years ago--long after an air raid siren's wail announced the outbreak of war in Israel in 1973. In Israel at the first signal of war I took charge of a friend's young son because he was trying to get up the stairs to his parents' room while I was headed down the stairs to the shelter. I didn't think about his parents racing around outside looking for him. I simply assumed responsibility for him as some adult might have done for Wait-For-Me and I had we stood stranded on that corner in the midst of what we might reasonably assume would have been panic and chaos.
Now, I just remind myself that I really am too old to die young and freedom really is just another word for nothing left to lose... North Korea--bring it on!
When I was in grade school in Chicago, we were taught to hide under our desks if the Bomb hit our city.
Later we moved to Clayton Missouri where children were given dogtags that we were required to wear to school every day; each morning the teachers checked that we had indeed worn them. My father, who did not deal well with his own anxieties, enjoyed telling us that if we were dead the dogtags would be shoved between our front teeth to identify us.
The Missouri plan for nuclear attack was to send children home to evacuate with their parents. My parents were trying to build a business in St Louis and I never imagined that they could get back to the suburbs to save me.
Our-Baby was in a daycare center in a farther suburb. I don't know what plan the daycare center had for her but the street outside our apartment building was a major evacuation route for St Louis. That street was to be turned into a one-way street leaving the city at the first alarm. Our-Baby didn't figure into my thoughts on the bomb. I never expected to see her again if the Bomb went off. Easy come, easy go can apply to people, too.
Wait-For-Me and I went to school across the evacuation street and up a hill. As the older sibling, my assignment was to collect Wait-For-Me from her classroom and take her home. I couldn't even imagine getting across the evacuation street to that empty apartment where no one waited for us. I assumed that we'd die on that corner. I felt totally inadequate to the task of saving us.
It never occurred to me that some adult in a car might throw open a door and tell us to get in. I never considered that possibility until the thought suddenly came to me for no particular reason a few years ago--long after an air raid siren's wail announced the outbreak of war in Israel in 1973. In Israel at the first signal of war I took charge of a friend's young son because he was trying to get up the stairs to his parents' room while I was headed down the stairs to the shelter. I didn't think about his parents racing around outside looking for him. I simply assumed responsibility for him as some adult might have done for Wait-For-Me and I had we stood stranded on that corner in the midst of what we might reasonably assume would have been panic and chaos.
Now, I just remind myself that I really am too old to die young and freedom really is just another word for nothing left to lose... North Korea--bring it on!
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