The Nuclear Age
“The nights were calm, and those crazy flashes disappeared, and the end of the world was a fantasy. Things were fine.
All through seventh and eighth grades, that most vulnerable time in a kid’s life, I carved out a comfortable slot for myself at the dead center of the Bell-Shaped Curve. I wore blue jeans and sneakers. I played shortstop for the Rural Electric Association Little League team; I batted a smooth .270—not great, but respectable. I was popular. People liked me. At school I pulled down... solid grades, A’s and B’s, mostly B’s, which was exactly how I wanted it. I devoted long hours to the practice of a normal smile, a normal posture, a normal way of walking and talking. God knows, I worked at it. During the autumn of my freshman year, I hiked down to the junior high every Thursday night for dancing lessons—fox-trot and tango, the whole ballroom routine. I went out on hayrides with the Methodist Youth Fellowship. It didn’t matter that I hated hayrides, or that I wasn’t a Methodist, it was a question of locking in with the small-town conventions, hugging the happy medium.MoreLess
All through seventh and eighth grades, that most vulnerable time in a kid’s life, I carved out a comfortable slot for myself at the dead center of the Bell-Shaped Curve. I wore blue jeans and sneakers. I played shortstop for the Rural Electric Association Little League team; I batted a smooth .270—not great, but respectable. I was popular. People liked me. At school I pulled down... solid grades, A’s and B’s, mostly B’s, which was exactly how I wanted it. I devoted long hours to the practice of a normal smile, a normal posture, a normal way of walking and talking. God knows, I worked at it. During the autumn of my freshman year, I hiked down to the junior high every Thursday night for dancing lessons—fox-trot and tango, the whole ballroom routine. I went out on hayrides with the Methodist Youth Fellowship. It didn’t matter that I hated hayrides, or that I wasn’t a Methodist, it was a question of locking in with the small-town conventions, hugging the happy medium.MoreLess
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