The world was going to end. That was all you knew, or thought you knew, on October 16, 1962.
The news came on the TV that day. It had to do with Russia and Cuba and nuclear missiles 90 miles away from Florida. Some ships out on the ocean were going somewhere, but they might get blocked.
The TV showed some guy from Russia, as bald as a bowling ball, shaking his fist and making a mean face, and also another guy, with a bushy beard, dressed in a uniform like a soldier, with epaulets and all, yelling stuff at a lot of people cheering him.
The news guy on TV said that whatever was happening could turn into World War III. That sounded serious. Nobody knew what would happen.
You had seen nuclear bombs go off on TV. You remembered all those movies with images of mushroom clouds. Your fifth-grade history teacher told your class about how we Americans killed almost everyone in those two cities in Japan.
So you knew how that went, more or less. Radiation would wipe out everyone.
Perfect, you thought. I’m 10 years old. Now I’ll never get to be 11.
Why was this a “cold” war anyway? What was so “cold” about it? Was everyone supposed to wear an overcoat or something?
You went to bed that night listening under the covers to the news on your transistor radio, a Zenith Royal 50. The news guy mentioned an embargo, whatever that meant, and “looming tensions” and a “super-powers showdown.”
The next day, the president of the United States gave a speech. You liked Kennedy. He was the president of our country, and therefore a good guy.
But Khrushchev and Castro were bad guys. They even looked like bad guys. Khruschev was fat and bald. Castro had a bushy beard and never even bothered to wear a tie. Castro had more hair on his face than Khrushchev had on his scalp. Maybe Castro should give Khrushchev some hair from his beard to wear on his head.
Whatever the case, they both deserved a punch in the nose.
What kind of a name was “Nikita” anyway? Or “Fidel” for that matter?
The Army was now at DEFCON 2, which sounded bad. The news guy on the radio kept saying time might be running out. Maybe tomorrow the missiles you saw on TV tilted at the sky over Cuba and pointed toward the United States would be launched, and the bombs would explode and leave the world with nothing but smoldering cinders.
World War III would be different from any other. No one would win. Everyone would lose.
You had figured the world would always be around. But now you discovered otherwise. You could never really be sure of anything before, and now you really had no idea what to believe.
The good news was that you could probably get away with anything now. You could skip all your homework and throw spitballs in class and read your comic books while snacking on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with chocolate milk made from Bosco.
Might as well, you told yourself. What difference would it make? The world was going to end anyway.
Or maybe instead you would invent a shield in outer space that would prevent Russian missiles from hitting our shores. Or you would lead a secret government spy operation to overthrow Russia and Cuba.
But that was just you playing pretend. Soon, everyone and everything you knew and loved would be gone. You would never get to go fishing with your father again, or watch Jerry Lewis movies with your mother, or kiss that cute girl perched so pertly in front of you in class. You would never again go to the ice cream place that had a special called the kitchen sink because it had everything in it and would feed four to eight normal kids or else just one huge senior on the football team trying to impress everyone else.
Nothing else mattered now. Maybe nothing else besides survival had ever mattered.
But then your father came into your bedroom, your mother behind him. He knelt until he was eye to eye with you and clasped your shoulder and leaned close to you.
“The crisis is over,” he whispered in your ear. “We’re all going to live.”
Since then, you twice came close to feeling once more as if the world might end any minute. It happened with 9/11 and then again with the COVID pandemic.
These traumas — these ordeals forcing us to stare down the apocalypse — change us, both for good and for ill. The steel in our spines is tempered. We also grow suspicious, even paranoid.
This much we’ve learned, too. We had enemies then, back in 1962 and long before. And without question, we still do.
Bob Brody, a consultant and essayist, is author of the memoir “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.”
