November 22, 1963
East Hartford High School
2.02 p.m.
Ninth grade English, and just out of Catholic,
school, I was not yet adjusted to the
outrageous idea of a public school –
no uniforms, and teachers who were men,
men in street clothes, not dressed in black with stiff
white collars and faces of gravity,
and women teachers with hair on their heads
that we could see, and dresses like our moms,
and liberty to fall asleep in class.
I was sleeping when I heard the static
of the PA thirteen minutes before
the end of school. The speaker squawked a cough,
and then Mrs. Wilson tried to say through
tears that President Kennedy was dead.
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