• Home
  • Archive
  • About
  • Awards & Media
  • Contact
    • Facebook
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Courting Destiny

  • Courting Classics
  • Fiction
  • Mainstream Media
  • New York Stories
  • My Parents
  • Mental Health
  • N. Myrtle Beach

Sign Up For My Weekly Newsletter!

Who killed the Kennedy(s)?

November 16, 2013 By pia

My lifelong love affair with guilt began on November 22nd 1963 the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

I can’t remember when I fell in love with President Kennedy, his wife and their two children——especially Caroline. All the girls and women in the court my family lived in in Queens loved the Kennedy family. But only my best friend, Ava,and I played a game called rather cleverly I thought, Kennedy Family. Since I thought up the game I made Ava play President Kennedy and John John as I played Jacqueline and Caroline.

We lay on the grass in front of the garden apartment court and put President Kennedy and Jackie (as everybody called her) in all sorts of exciting situations——to me and I assume Ava——often mysteries that a very very young Caroline and toddler John John would solve.

That our games bore no relationship to any known reality didn’t matter to me or Ava. We were the Kennedys; we were strong, beautiful and powerful.

Then in Seventh Grade my family moved to real Long Island, just fifteen minutes away from the garden apartments. I loved living in a house, and even more loved not sharing a room with my sister. Yet the world lost much of its luster and magic. Still I could daydream about the Kennedy’s.

I cared about politics and social issues for as long as I could remember. My father would find newspapers on the subway and bring them home. He even bought a few. I learned to read on New Yorker cartoons which probably accounted for my very strange sense of humor.

We had to wait for my father to come home for dinner so we could all eat together and discuss the news of the day. I loved the dinner hour. But hated the gnawing feeling of hunger that made me over eat. It wasn’t just food I was hungry for but friends and something more. Something I couldn’t quite admit to myself. I was a thirteen year old, that November of 1963, in dire need of a boyfriend.

I was no longer a child with a ready laugh and a constant smile but a sullen teenager who no longer understood the concept of happiness. Still I had the Kennedy family to daydream about. I followed President Kennedy’s schedule with a vigor only a stalker and his scheduling secretary would understand.

When we got out of gym that day there were murmurs up and down the hallways. Somebody had shot President Kennedy. Our teachers and the administration would neither confirm nor deny the rumors.
As we started school at Seven something in the morning we got out just after Two PM. But I couldn’t go home. I had to go to extra-help in math.

It wasn’t fair. I wanted to go home where my parents would tell me the truth. My father worked from home a couple days a week and he was home that Friday.

Suddenly, on my way to extra-help, I realized something horrible. People were saying that President Kennedy was dead; that he had been shot in a motorcade in Dallas. I had no idea he was in Dallas. For the first time since he had become president I had no idea where he was. It was my fault and only my fault that he was killed. Had I followed his schedule as I should have I would have known and he would have been saved.

But maybe he wasn’t dead. Nobody was saying that for a fact. Instead of listening to my math teacher I drew anorexic girls with hair in flips and sheath type dresses. Mr. Glass didn’t seem to care if we participated or even listened.

An English teacher, a woman, burst into the room. She was crying. Mr. Glass did something very strange for a math teacher or any teacher really. He walked up to her and hugged her. So it was true. President Kennedy was dead. Just then the principal went on the PA system and said that extra-help and all school activities were going to be cut short. We should get on our buses and go home to our mothers as President Kennedy had been shot. I don’t think he said he was dead but a very strange music began playing on the PA. Music that forever after I would associate with death and Catholics.

My parents were waiting at the bus stop along with some mothers. We all ran to our parents and began to cry.

I spent the weekend in front of our one black and white TV set. I didn’t eat and I didn’t talk. On Monday my parents made me go to the Syosset Bowling Alley. I liked bowling. It was the only team sport I could sort of play. But I hated it that day.

And I missed Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald, also known as TV’s first instant replay. I told my parents I would never forgive them for that. I forgave them soon after but never let them know. I didn’t tell my parents that it was my fault President Kennedy had been killed. I knew how sick and stupid that sounded. I never let myself fall in love with a president again.

Until today I have never told a person this story.

Oh guilt this affair has gone on way too long!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 11/22/63, 1963, assassination, Caroline Kennedy, Dallas November 22, guilt, Jack Ruby, JFK, John Kennedy, learning about assassination in school, Lee Harvey Oswald, love affair with guilt, President Kennedy

« This is not how it looks!
Under Construction »

Comments

  1. Nathalie says

    November 16, 2013 at 6:49 pm

    You express yourself so well. This is very touching. We all remember where we were when we heard the news about Kennedy. I was a stay-at-home mother at the time, and watched all the news all day that day and the next. (While folding real diapers and ironing.) I did see Oswald get shot on live TV. That was terrible.

  2. Nathalie says

    November 16, 2013 at 6:52 pm

    I’m glad you decided to share your story and your guilt. But so sorry that you felt guilty in any way. Those are true feelings, no matter how wrong they are.
    Kennedy was popular while alive, but America fell in love with him when he died.

  3. Karen says

    November 16, 2013 at 6:55 pm

    That was hauntingly beautiful. The funeral was a sad day. I didn’t understand much but I remember the black-draped coffin and Jon Jon’s salute. My mom was crying so I did, too.

  4. Terry Duff says

    November 16, 2013 at 9:31 pm

    I was only 7 when Kennedy was shot. I was aggravated because my cartoons were blocked out… visions of the very sad funeral procession and the horse with upside down boots in the stirrups… days upon days of it. When I was in 11th grade, I did my paper on the Warren Report – thus semi educating me on the tragedy… Thank you for your well written post. I can only say that for some reason I always identified with Caroline Kennedy – can’t remember now – maybe we are the same age.

  5. Sage says

    November 17, 2013 at 5:12 pm

    50 years, I was in the first grade and should write my story… It is interesting how we as kids find reasons to feel guilty for things we have no control over. Nice writing, Pia, good to see you back.

  6. Bone says

    November 18, 2013 at 7:52 am

    Writing like this is why I first loved your writing.

    To this day, when I watch anything about the Kennedy assassination, I still hold out hope that maybe they’ll save him.

Search for your favorite post!

Follow Me!

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Sign up Now!

Sign up now and get my latest posts delivered right to your inbox!

About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

Categories

Archives

All material contained herewith is owned by Pia Savage, LLC

Copyright © 2021 Courting Destiny · Designed by Technology-Therapist