When you see today's date on a calendar or printed or online

[wnylib]

112. I was fortunate to have teachers who

took advantage of teachable moments.

I had that same teacher the following year for civics. When classes resumed the day after JFK's funeral, he let us spend the whole class period talking about the assassination, Oswald's murder on TV, and the funeral because he knew that kids would not be able to focus on much else. The next day, he skipped ahead to the unit that covered the line of presidential succession.

The year before that, Life Magazine had devoted an entire issue to the discovery of DNA, RNA, genes and what we knew then (very little, compared to now) about how they work. Our science class that year was human biology from cells, tissue, and organs to each system of the body. Our science teacher bought up several issues of the magazine and we used them as texts in place of the unit we were supposed to be covering in our textbooks.

In 7th grade, our earth and space science curriculum had included a section on radiation, which covered atomic bombs, fallout, etc. It was the Cold War years when the possibility of nuclear war was often brought up. Later that year, I read On the Beach, about the last survivors of a nuclear holocaust.

So, between my brother's Navy service, my awareness of nuclear radiation and DNA vulnerability, plus the fiction book on a nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis was pretty damned intense stuff for a 13 year old to cope with. Then there was the assassination the following year. Those things left their mark on Boomers. But then, every generation has its issues to deal with.