As near as I can remember, the first adult I ever saw cry was my fifth-grade principal, Mr. Friday.
It was Nov. 22, 1963.
If you’re under 55 years old, think of it as the day The Towers came down.
And if you share a demographic with me, you might not want to think about it at all.
You see, up until Dallas, ‘63 had been a pretty good year, at least for an 11-year-old kid in Illinois.
The Beatles were beginning to enter my consciousness; Doctor King’s speech had inspired in me a lifelong love of words; baseball was part of every summer day and puberty, while not just around the corner, was certainly just down the street.
I was almost a teenager, life was okay. Not to mention the fact that the fellow in The White House, with the world class haircut, a line I stole from James Ellroy, seemed pretty cool.
Then in comes Mr. Friday and out goes … well, we could play the old, “loss of innocence” card here but I really wasn’t hip enough at the time to understand everything that was happening.
I did, however, know that something was terribly wrong. Those newly discovered adult tears were everywhere.
The comics were gone; the Saturday morning cartoons weren’t on.
The Sears ad in the newspaper was boarded in black with just two words, “In Memoriam.”
There was nothing on TV but sad music and more grownups crying and … wow did they just shoot that guy? Is this real?
It turns out that it was. And so were Viet Nam and Martin and Bobby.
All of which may still have happened even if the limo had gone right on Elm Street.
Although ...