Duck and Cover

I was thinking about a stupid thing today. Back in the ’60s when I was in grade school, we did this “duck and cover” thing. I’m sure you’ve either lived it, or at least seen it on the vids.

You might be thinking how stupid the boomers were to believe that putting your hands over the back of your neck would save you from a million-degree fireball coming your way. And you’re right. But not the way you might think.

I was one of those kids, although I didn’t put my hands over the back of my neck, for the same reason I didn’t wear a mask for the past three years. Because it’s stupid. We know masks are stupid today, and we kids knew duck-and-cover was stupid back then.

We had respect for our teachers (to some extent) but when we were under our desks, we all looked at each other thinking, “OK boomers”. Of course, we didn’t use that particular phrase because it hadn’t been invented yet, but the sentiment was the same as it is used today; about the older generation hearing the propaganda and actually buying into the fact that you could survive a nuclear attack. This is the same delusion that some insist that wearing a mask against a virus is more effective than putting a chain link fence around your house to keep out mosquitos.

And if there was a TikTok back then, you would be able to see that the kids weren’t buying it. But all you see are the grainy newsreels of kids in some scripted classroom, immediately ducking under their desks when the teacher said so. Believe me, that’s not my experience, and I’m sure it wasn’t for most kids of the day.

So you kids who cast aside the experience of your parents and grandparents because of what you’ve seen on the (mostly state-sponsored) media, believe me that we were more like you at your age than you want to believe. Even more so, if that makes sense.