During the 1950s, we regularly practiced air raid drills in elementary school. We were taught to get on all fours in the hallway with our hands locked behind our necks and our chins tucked down. This was in case the Communists bombed us. The teacher's whistle would be the signal when it was safe to look up again.
We were told there were bad guys in the world, but that the adults in our life could keep us safe, as long as we kept our chins tucked down and didn't look up.
Also during the 1950s, many families in my neighborhood constructed bomb shelters. In fact, the Civil Defense recommended we all do it. If you couldn't dig a bomb shelter in your backyard, you were suppose to construct one in the corner of your basement. We watched our fathers stock our basements with canned food, jugs of water and medical kits, and compare opinions on the wisdom of buying a radiation detector. My Dad was of the opinion that it was a waste of money because the government would just test everybody anyway.
The doors of any bomb shelter worth its name had to be sealed with duct tape -- a double layer. This was to keep out the radiation. And just like the teacher's whistle at school, the air raid blast would be the signal when it was OK to come out again.
Again, we were told there were bad guys in the world, but the adults in our life could keep us safe, as long as we didn't mess with the duct tape seal.
These preparations seemed to bring the adults in my life a sense of control over the world's dangers. I remember Dad standing back proudly, admiring his handiwork on the bomb shelter he built over one weekend. He had darkened the basement window so that flying glass wouldn't cut us and lined all the walls with sandbags. He built plywood shelves that contained the provisions the Civil Defense said we would need. When my mother pointed out that Dad had made no preparations for our sleeping, he told her that we'd have plenty of time "on the day" to fetch our pillows and bedding and that he had made the plywood shelves "plenty wide" so we could sleep on them if we moved away all the canned goods. Mom returned to folding laundry.
For me, this was the stuff of nightmares that literally followed me into adulthood. I wanted to know what would happen to our dog if we had to go into the bomb shelter. She would come with us, right? Where would she go pee? What if she had to be there with the neighbor's dog who was mean? What if I had to be there for a long time and miss school?
I was equally dissatisfied with what they told me at school. I questioned my teachers about the logic of hugging a cement wall because wouldn't chunks of it fall on us when the bombs dropped?
My parents, my teachers, my government -- they all meant well. They understood that taking action helps people feel in control of the uncontrollable. That, or maybe they really thought duct tape would keep out radiation and tucked chins would spare you injuries from falling cement.
Today, I find myself explaining terrorism to children with access to online news 24/7. I tell them how their chances of being a terrorism victim are considerably smaller than getting into a car accident on the busy and dangerous roads we travel on. I tell them that the world has always had crazy people in it and that isn't likely to change. I tell them that worry is nothing more than an attempt to control tomorrow -- and we can't. And I tell them that the pain and empathy they feel for the people of Boston is a healthy thing. But mostly what I tell them is we all do the best we can with the knowledge we have and one thing I know is that duct tape is principally good on the arms of my husband's Laz-E-Boy.