Earliest Memories of the World Outside (was Forcing Kids To Watch History Made)

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

Amy wrote:

> The earliest memory I have of the world of news was Watergate.  
> Nothing whatsoever about Vietnam, and how could I have watched 
> Watergate reports without seeing anything about the war?  Maybe my 
> parents had the good sense to send me out of the room (do they give 
> warnings anymore for gruesome news stories?  I remember the 
> newscasters warning parents before showing pictures of Jonestown).

I always wondered this myself -- why I have absolutely no memories
of the Vietnam War.  Finally I thought to ask my parents about it.
Turns out that until the war was over, they made it their practice
never to turn on the television until after I'd gone to bed.  They'd 
only watch the 11:00 news.  They didn't want to risk my seeing 
footage of people being shot, or of ear necklaces, or of anything 
horrid and gruesome like that.

Thinking it over, this might explain why my parents never watched
television. . . .until all of a sudden, they, er, did.  

> Mind you, I didn't understand what Watergate *was.*  I thought it 
> sounded quite exciting--I pictured a great seawall with the ocean 
> lashing it--but I asked my mom what it was and she said "a hotel."  
> Yawn.  

Isn't that sort of thing so *disappointing?!*

I remember a friend of mine telling me all about Patty Hearst, who 
had been "kidnapped and brainwashed by the underground."

Well, I'd never heard the expression "the underground" before, and so 
I imagined it literally.  I was envisioning these Mole People sort of
revolutionaries, who all lived in weird little communities down in 
the sewers and subway tunnels.

Needless to say, I wanted to join them.  ;-)

I also believed that the civil defense drills we did in school were
in case of attack from space aliens, because when I had asked a 
teacher what they were for, she had answered: "It's in case we're 
ever attacked from the sky."

I didn't even consider the possibility that she was referring to 
being bombed, because you see, to my mind, that would be "attacked 
from the air," not "attacked from the sky."  "Attacked from the sky," 
to my way of thinking, could mean only one thing: SPACE ALIENS!

You know, I never understood a *thing* that was going on when I was a 
little kid?


Elkins