And yet, because of that day, and since he lived not too far from me and was always on the bus ride to and from school, I clearly remember Paulie S., and probably always will.

We got up to the entryway at the main building, and a teacher, Mr. Whitlock, was positioning a transistor radio for best reception. He had tuned it to a NYC station, WNEW-AM, to hear news of the report that JFK had been shot. When we got there he had it tuned to WOR, but he chose to dial over to WNEW, apparently preferring their coverage.

Whitlock was deadly serious, pale to such a fault so that he seemed almost translucent, pastier than his normal ultra-white self. As we approached the are where he and a few of the other students were gathered round the radio, it was understood that we should be quiet, listen to the radio, and take our cues from Whitlock as to when we would could, or should speak.

We heard that President Kennedy had been shot, was taken to a hospital, and also that Texas governor Connally had also been wounded. A little while later we learned, over the radio, that JFK had been pronounced dead.

With that news Whitlock stood up, translucent and opaque, and told us to go to our homerooms and wait for further word. He had barely finished that statement when the Headmaster of the school came out and told us to go to the school buses, the day was over.

The school bus was a place of childhood freedom. We were a loud bunch. Being rambunctious, and getting on the drivers’ nerves just to the point before we drove them bonkers, was a learned skill. We sang, we frolicked, we yelled, told jokes, played games, and generally made an incredible amount of noise. It was as though the bus ride home was a natural place of decompression from the school day, where we’d let out any anxieties, express ourselves and just let it all hang out.

Not so that day. We drove home in near complete silence. Some of the younger kids (this school was K-12) thought to be loud or suggest playing games. But the older kids (that being any of us over the age of 10) shushed them. The gravity of the day was not lost on us, and the younger ones quickly caught the vibe. This was similar to the mood of a house in mourning over a passed loved one — the little ones may not be fully perceptive of specifics of the specific event, yet they are somehow sentient of the gravity and mood, and act accordlingly. It comes from within, it pervades, the mood overtakes all activity, emotion and action.

So it was on the school ride home. That kid Paulie S., as mentioned, an excitable and kind of obnoxious sort, in a needy and wanting manner, was troubled by the silence. He always began his agitated or excited outbursts with, “Hey! Hey!” and this was something that many would use to make fun of him.

The silence got to be too much for Paulie S., and he shouted out, “Hey! Hey! Let’s play Dallas! I’ll be the President and who will play the shooter?”

To this day I recall the look on his face as the majority of the kids on the bus reacted in silence, disgust, revulsion, so clearly appalled by his suggestion. He slumped into his bus seat, reactively hung his head and in his passive-aggressive way, felt sorry for himself, wept a little, and kept looking around, as he always did, to see if anyone would pay him some attention, or at least openly feel sorry for him.

No-one, not even some of the girls who might find it in their hearts to be kind to him in a motherly or big-sisterly way from time to time, reached out to him. His game suggestion had crossed a line. Paulie S was on his own for that bus ride home.

I always felt that he had no idea just how grevious and ill-conceived his game was. That was just Paulie, being himself: a messed up kid who was insecure and needed a friend, reassurance, and a whole lot of psycholigical help.

When the bus got to my stop I ran home, went to the den and turned on the TV. In those days our house had but one TV, a black and white Zenith. I turned it on, waited for the tube-filled box to warm up, and left it on Channel 2, WCBS in New York. I learned that JFK had been shot in a motorcade, he’d been killed, and that a suspect had been chased into a movie theatre where a local policeman had been shot, apparently by the suspected gunman.

My sisters arrived home, joined me in the den and we watched the coverage in silence. The next day we remained tuned, glued to the television set. It was a Friday, there was no school, but it had none of the feel of schoolkid joyousness over an extra day off, like a snow day.

Being a nation in mourning came very naturally. The president had been killed, life as we knew it would never be the same. We know now what we somehow sensed then: this was the biggest moment, somehow, of our lives. It touched everyone, it had meaning and would make a lasting impression on one and all.

We watched the television set as Jack Ruby gunned down Oswald. We watched as dignitaries from all over the world came to Washington for the funeral. We watched as Jackie and Caroline and the little boy John-John attended the ceremonies for JFK. We saw John-John’s salute, a moment that would be an iconlike event for the rest of our lives.

We knew that the world was reacting, this was the biggest event we’d ever known. It was bigger than Sputnik, bigger than Alan Shepherd going into space, bigger than the Korean War ending.

In many ways it was as though a signal of the end of an era of innocense for the boomers.

I wonder, this day 41 years later, what became of Paulie S, of Mr. Whitlock, of a certain little girl named Patti who cried the whole ride home, and of the mood we’d enjoyed before that day. We never really got that mood back.

A year later there was the Beatles, the Civil Rights Act (something barreled through by LBJ, perhaps -most likely- something JFK might never have achieved), The New York Worlds Fair, the British Invasion, more and more Viet Nam war, and life went on.

So I remember where I was, how I learned of it, and some of the people around me during that time. And that this was a signal moment for all of us. This was the day of change, the event of greatest impact and import in our young lives.

Just wanted to clear that up.