11/22/1963
I can’t believe we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. Well, maybe I believe that much. I just find it difficult to believe that I am old enough to remember this date.
As a class, we had all gathered with everyone else in front of our school’s only television to watch his inauguration a few years before. My classes followed things in the news. We may have known in advance that Kennedy would be on a trip to Dallas on this day.
I had had a dream the night before. In the dream, I found myself standing in an office in front of a vacant wooden desk. There are various framed family photos on the desk, and one of them is face down on the desk. In the background, I hear a woman sobbing. I look to my left, and see an empty wooden rocking chair. I wake up.
The morning of the twenty-second, school goes on normally, at least at first. We are in our separate reading groups. At some point, I remember our school principal coming to the door of my classroom and motioning to my teacher to come out. When she comes back, she is visibly shaken. She calls us out of our groups to return to our usual seats.
She tells us that something terrible has happened. I know right away that this must involve President Kennedy.
She goes on to say that this thing that has happened is maybe the worst thing that could have happened. I know then that he is dead.
She tells us the news, and there is a gasp from the class. One girl screams. Another starts to cry. We are released to go home, having been told that details are still sketchy as to how this happened.
I wonder how it is that I knew right before my teacher told us, that she would give us this particular earth-shattering news, and I remember the dream I had. I have had other precognitive dreams since, but nothing of this noteworthy historic nature.
And fifty years later people are still wondering if what we know about this event is really how it happened.
Memory is the Key 