CHILDHOOD THEN | CHILDHOOD NOW

Our Desks Were Our Bomb Shelters

Far away, so close

Back in the 1970s, when we thought Russia would eviscerate us, we had nowhere to run. So, as elementary students, we crawled under our desks to hide from the bombs. We also did that for tornados.

Desks were a catch-all for nature and the Cold War.

I now see what a placebo that was, but we were naive. That was the '70s version of taking deep breaths. You can’t run from a bomb, but you can make yourself small enough to avoid one. Our desks were our bomb shelters.

Back then, a bomb threat didn’t rattle me. It may have rattled the kid who was already rattled, but most of us considered hiding under our desks an opportunity to take a break from learning. Our enemy seemed so far away.

My knees worked great back then. I don’t want to brag, but I had a lot of cartilage, so I could sit in the lotus pose under my desk for up to an hour. Probably longer, but I never had to. An hour was apparently the maximum time the school needed to decide if a bomb or tornado was imminent.

I wasn’t an unnecessarily tall child, so even though no one ever asked me to join the volleyball team, my entire body fit perfectly beneath my tiny desk. I felt safe.

I admit a couple of times when I stood up after sheltering, the desk clung to my backside. I didn’t care, though, because the only thing that was embarrassing in elementary school was peeing on yourself.

Walking around like a turtle with a desk on your back was totally acceptable, especially after a tornado or bomb warning. It was my armor.

Nowadays, the world is more frightening. We are under constant threat from school shootings, global warming, and civic unrest. Even our tornados are bigger and more frequent.

The current bomb threats in our neighborhood aren’t from the Cold War but from people who have decided The Catcher and the Rye and The Bluest Eye are dangerous to our children.

Our library had three bomb threats last week. Our recreation center with basketball, ice skating, after-school childcare, and a library was also evacuated for a bomb threat this week.

Our children are affected by this. Bomb evacuations are becoming as normal as school shootings.

I don't know if children are asked to hide from tornados under their desks anymore. The threat assessment is much higher and more frequent. They are now trained to defend themselves against active shooters and against each other.

The kind of naivete I grew up with is long gone.

When I was young, I thought bomb threats were kind of exciting because our enemy was thousands of miles away and because I got to nap or giggle under my desk.

When the enemy resides inside the walls of the school, it’s not fun anymore. Our children are no longer hiding from distant oligarchs and fascists across the sea.

Their enemies are now their neighbors who are afraid of literature, their classmates who own guns, and politicians who are sacrificing our children’s safety to gain political favor.

How can our kids hide under their desks from someone who wants to burn down their library? How can a desk protect them from a classmate with a gun?

I miss tornados. I miss the Cold War.

Thanks to Kim Kelly Stamp for her helpful edits that helped me see my piece more clearly.