thanksgiving, 2012

I'd been walking around all last week thinking
about Thanksgiving.
I looked at my calendar and saw that Thanksgiving fell on November 22 this year.
"Why the hell. . ." I asked myself, "is that date significant
 for me?"
It seemed to be so stuck in my head but, being distracted by the mayhem of real life, I didn't really take pause to
think it through.

Then last Tuesday morning as I was waking from my deep sleep, it hit me. . .
November 22 was the day, in 1963, that President Kennedy was murdered.
That was 49 years ago and in all those years I couldn't remember Thanksgiving ever falling on November 22.
So I poked around on the internet and sure enough, it never has and probably won't again for another 75 years.

 

 I've got no deep philosophical point here but it surprised me that - even with my more creative than average brainpan - I never even considered that one year Thanksgiving must inevitably fall on the day the President was killed.

I think I've mentioned, earlier posts, that I was 10 or 11 years old when JFK died so I didn't know or care much about politics or anything much more than I didn't want to go to school any more. But since then, I've read and learned a lot about the man and I've come to really like him.

John Kennedy was 46 when he died and in my child mind at the time, never imagined I'd ever live longer than that.
I guess I was wrong.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.

JFK pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey