This is a day of remembrance for many, and rightly so.  I was a 5 year old Kindergartner when Kennedy was murdered, and hearing of Oswald's heartless deed is etched into my memory very clearly.  It is perhaps the earliest "clear" memory I have, full of detail and emotion.  The older memories I have are small and episodic, lacking the emotional depth of this one.

The memory is clear, but what else is there about that day?  What is the lasting impact on those who were very young grade school children at the time of the assassination?  What does it do to a child when the earliest memory he has is of an event of great violence? 

Children are very resilient, of course.  Once the funeral was over, my classmates and I quickly moved on to other distractions.  Thanksgiving came, then Christmas, and then the Beatles.   Life returned to normal.

Or did it?  

Here are some of the things I remember that stand out from my grade school years:

• Kennedy's assassination
• Vietnam
• Race riots
• Vietnam
• Race riots
• Hippies and anti-war demonstrations
• Heated and ugly arguments between my parents and my older brother about the Vietnam War
• The Tet Offensive, and its aftermath, when hundreds of American military men are killed each week
• Martin Luther King's assassination 
• Race riots
• Robert Kennedy's assassination
• Chicago riots
• Nixon's victory over Humphrey
• Drugs, and the death of a 17 year old neighbor from a heroin overdose
• Kent State killings

I clearly remember watching the rioting and looting in places like Watts and Newark and Detroit.  Many of my relatives lived in Memphis, and I remember the phone calls from them as they wondered if the hell that engulfed their city after Martin Luther King's murder would reach into their own neighborhood. 

I clearly remember watching the mayhem that was Vietnam nearly every night on the evening news, images that would be prohibited from the public during later wars in Iraq and Somalia, and perhaps other places that we know nothing about.

Violence, in other words, became the norm for a small child like me.  Beginning on November 22, 1963, it became the normal state of affairs.  Not in my home, mind you, and not in my safe, upper middle class neighborhood.  But I watched it nearly every evening on the TV news, and it was far too often the subject of dinner conversation.  Violence was expected.  It was the way things were, and always would be.

Is it any wonder that Americans my age stopped letting their children out of their sight, thinking some murderer or sexual predator lurked  behind the bushes just out of sight? 

Is it any wonder that exurban farmland is being eaten up by sterile gated communities, complete with guard houses patrolled by faux policemen, to provide a false sense of security for the more affluent among us?

Is it any wonder we allow billions to be wasted on an unending War on Drugs?

Is it any wonder we let our leaders, even when they are baby boomers just like us, eskew reasonable diplomacy and resort to military solutions for problems as insignificant as a coup in Grenada, a tinpot dictator in Panama, or non-existant WMD in Iraq?

Is it any wonder that New Deal hopefulness, post World War II optimism, and even JFK/LBJ-style social liberalism have been replaced with the jaded, reactionary, and ultimately selfish conservatism that is dominant today, that seems to stress what is best for "Me, Me, Me" instead of "We, We, We"?

This, to me, is the legacy of November 22, 1963.