He served less than a thousand days.. a lifetime ago..and yet ( How I choose to remember JFK)

[SoCalDem]

6. It's odd what rushes back after all these years.. for me, it's uneven brick sidewalks

and the cotton tassels on my Aunt's big old gray couch..

The sidewalks:

We were released early from school, and all walked home in silence..afraid because we did not know what would happen next.. (we were not that far from the Cuban Missile Crisis, and there were still Nuke shelter signs on buildings in my town)..

It was raining (actually sleet), and the 4 of us shuffled along those uneven brick sidewalks on the way home (9 blocks), each of us occasionally stumbling a bit since we were oblivious to everything except what had just happened, and then trying to wrap our 14 yr old brains around the enormity of it all.

The tassels:

Actually pom-pom-ish tassels that I absentmindedly fiddled with as we watched her TV. (We did not have a TV). I spent most of the next 3 days there, watching..and then we all watched live, as Oswald was shot dead on live tv.

I still hear her telling me to quit messing with the tassels..