Sirens sounding again! The noise is deafening, surrounding me. Is this another drill or is it real this time? I stand there motionless. What am I supposed to do? Oh yeah... get under the desk, cover my head, don't look towards the bright light. What else... I can't remember... I'm so scared. It's the waiting under this desk that is going to drive me crazy. Waiting to see if IT is really going to happen or is just another drill. Oh gross! Someone has stuck gum under here. Now what did they go and do that for? It'll probably get in my hair when the bomb hits and this desk falls on my head. Then Mom will have to cut it out with her scissors. Boy, she's gonna be mad at me if I come home with gum in my hair.
I did not look at the gum again, but at my classmates under their desks, some with tear filled eyes, others with eyes tightly clinched too scared to open them, and still others laughing, as if this was a game. We were sitting on a tile floor scuffed with black heel marks from patent leather shoes. The thought of running out of the classroom door and all the way home crossed my mind, but my legs were numb from fear. I tried to think of something else, my dog Teddy, a TV show I had seen the day before, all my beautiful dolls in my bedroom at home, anything other than the room I was sitting in. Finally I heard my teacher, Mrs. White, telling us it is all clear, we could now get up and sit in our seats. A feeling of apprehension passed through me, as I slowly crawled out from under my safe haven. I had the same feeling when I thought the boogie man was hiding under my bed and I looked and saw nothing but still felt something was going to get me.
Who can say what a normal childhood is. When I was in third grade, I really didn't realize all the crazy things going on in the world around me. Bomb shelters were in style, not designer labels on jeans. Just because some man named Fidel Castro was mad at President Kennedy, we had to bring a box to school with cans of food, water, a blanket, and extra clothes in it. My Mom added a first aid kit with bandaids in my box. "Just in case", she said. I thought it was a wonderful idea at the time. Looking back, I think, bandaids wouldn't have helped the booboos the bombs could have made. But when you are a kid, you think bandaids make everything feel better.
About once a month my family and a few of their friends would drive out of town, on the state highway, to Masaryktown. We would camp beside a lake that was down a long dirt road, way back in the woods. Seemed like it took forever to get there. The wind carried an abundance of scents, the pine from the woods, the perfume of the wildflowers, and the smoke from the campfire. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the mosquitoes had not tried to eat me alive. "Just a camping trip" the grown ups would tell us kids. But I knew better. I had heard my parents talking. This was another kind of drill called evacuation. My Dad called it, "Getting the hell out of Dodge." The lake was a hiding place, just in case Castro sent the bombs. Mama was afraid that mad man was going to kill us all. She would cry and my Dad would tell her it would be all right. It seems Castro was mad at the people at MacDill Air Force Base also, and we lived close to MacDill so we could not stay in our home.
Eight years old is such a young age to realize your own mortality. Mixed thoughts went through my head. Why should I have to waste my time going to school? I wanted to do things I wanted to do! I wanted to be able to grow old like my Mom and Dad. I wondered what it is like to be dead.
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Copyright 1997 Lesley Kroenke
