Where were you when the world stood still fifty years ago?

Fifty years ago on November 21, I had no idea that it would be the last day of my childhood innocence.  Who would have thought that me, a ten year old girl, would become glued to the news and fixed in front of a black and white television watching the world as she knew it explode?  Kids today have been exposed to many televised horrors that were unknown to ten year olds in 1963. Unknown that was, until the Friday when President John F. Kennedy, father of Caroline and John-John, was murdered.  Today, I am sharing a piece that I wrote in 1989 for my middle school's literary magazine.

                                                     November 22, 1988

          On this twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it has been said repeatedly that those who were old enough to understand can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. I remember that day and those that followed as clearly as I remember the happenings of last week. 
          Twenty-five years ago I was ten years old and a fifth grade student at Darby Township Elementary School in Glenolden, Pennsylvania.  We were ending recess and had been assembled in orderly lines for our return to the classrooms.
          Two women teachers, whose names I've long forgotten but whose faces are etched forever in my memory, stood at the head of the lines.  The taller and greyer of the two held a transistor radio to her ear, as the shorter teacher held onto her arm, tilted her head, and strained to listen.  Their faces, frozen with horror, warned us to wait quietly.  We shifted uncomfortably in our silent lines, wondering about the reason for the delay, but too afraid to ask.
          Finally, the teacher announced that the President of the United States had been shot.
          The orderly lines disintegrated into pandemonium.  Everybody began talking at once.  Though the noise was deafening, it was as if I had slipped into a vacuum of silence.  Shocked and sickened by the news, I withdrew from the crowd, drifted off to one of the logs surrounding the playground, sat down, and quietly began to weep.
          I remember being the only person crying.  Gradually, other students drifted over to stare and me and speculate about my tears.  I could hear them asking: Why is she crying?  Did she know the President?  Was he her uncle?  And so, the silly rumors began.  My friend, Keith, awkwardly patted the top of my head as I bent over and pressed my face to the tops of my knees.  He quietly whispered over and over again that it would be all right.
          Eventually, we drifted back to our classrooms.  By the time President Kennedy's death had been officially announced, everyone else had begun to weep.  My tears, however, had stopped.  The numbing shock that was to last for days had set in.
          I did not know then  why I cried.  Perhaps I mourned the death of Caroline and John-John's father.  Perhaps I was terrified by this sudden upheaval in my life and in my country.  Perhaps I realized deep in my heart that a time of innocence, a time adults called Camelot, was over.  My country would never again be the same.  Neither would I.