I remember watching that made-for-TV film. I also remember the actual missiles that almost fell that October.
I was in kindergarten and headed home following the afternoon session (kindergarten was half-day, morning or afternoon, back then). When I arrived home about the same time as my brother, my dad was home from work and busy filling any empty container with water while covering the basement windows with aluminum foil. My mom packed my brother and me into the car and drove to the supermarket, the parking lot full of cars and hysterical people (mostly moms) pushing supply-laden grocery carts. Inside, my mom plopped my brother and me by the comic books section where other moms had dumped their kids, telling them not to move while they joined the panicked mob in the aisles pushing whatever they could into the carts.
Finally, my mom showed up by us, told us to get off the floor and leave whatever comic books we were enjoying, and follow her. Back home, as my parents continued doing whatever they were doing (I had no clue whatsoever what was going on or what it was all about). We were now plopped in front of the black-and-white Admiral console TV set to keep up busy but it was futile as the afternoon cartoons including the Colonel Caboose Show was constantly interrupted by guys in ties always spouting "we interrupt this program."
I don't recall when the crisis suddenly ended. That moment is lost to me, but then, being five, I didn't understand a single thing about how that one afternoon suddenly turned so abnormal and when things went back to the way they were before.
In the next several years of elementary (called "grammar" back then) school, we learned a bit more, especially from a civil-defense-helmet-wearing turtle that always smiled on the classroom movie screen, and how to properly sing: "What do you do when you see the flash? You duck and cover! Duck and cover!"
It's so sad that history is no longer considered a necessary subject, except in brief presentation, in education. Right now we're living through history, a pandemic plague equaling the one of 1918 that wiped out entire communities. And, yes, I did have COVID; I was fortunate while being confined for three weeks in an isolation/quarantine ward (thank goodness for a room with cable TV and free Wi-Fi so I could continue looking at our beloved DS message board). This, like what happened in 1962, is world-changing history and many of us have and/or are living through both of them.
Gerard
