Our Bomb Shelters

 Our Desks Were Our Bomb Shelters

Back in the 1970s, when we thought Russia would eviscerate us, we had nowhere to run. So, as elementary students, we crawled under our desks to hide from the bombs. We also did that for tornados.

Desks were a catch-all for nature and the Cold War.

I now see what a placebo that was, but we were naive. That was the '70s version of taking deep breaths. You can’t run from a bomb, but you can make yourself small enough to avoid one. Our desks were our bomb shelters.

Back then, a bomb threat didn’t rattle me. It may have rattled the kid who was already rattled, but most of us considered hiding under our desks an opportunity to take a break from learning. Our enemy seemed so far away.

My knees worked great back then. I don’t want to brag, but I had a lot of cartilage, so I could sit in the lotus pose under my desk for up to an hour. Probably longer, but I never had to. An hour was apparently the maximum time the school needed to decide if a bomb or tornado was imminent.

I wasn’t an unnecessarily tall child, so even though no one ever asked me to join the volleyball team, my entire body fit perfectly beneath my tiny desk. I felt safe.

I admit a couple of times when I stood up after sheltering, the desk clung to my backside. I didn’t care, though, because the only thing that was embarrassing in elementary school was peeing on yourself.

Walking around like a turtle with a desk on your back was totally acceptable, especially after a tornado or bomb warning. It was my armor.

Nowadays, the world is more frightening. We are under constant threat from school shootings, global warming, and civic unrest. Even our tornados are bigger and more frequent.

The current bomb threats in our neighborhood aren’t from the Cold War but from people who have decided The Catcher and the Rye and The Bluest Eye are dangerous to our children.

Our library had three bomb threats last week. Our recreation center with basketball, ice skating, after-school childcare, and a library was also evacuated for a bomb threat this week.

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