Day 12

In your life you can remember where you were at certain times in it that had great meaning.  The day that JFK was shot and killed I was in school at Walt Whitman Elementary and the Principal came over the loud speaker and told us that he had died.  His life had been cut short by a man who had decided that he was going to make his point with a bullet not words.  We lost a great man that day that had a great vision for our country and he would have gone on to do many great things had he been allowed to live.  I do not want to dive into the conspiracy of the whole thing but I have my feelings on it and that is just what they are unproven feelings.  I feel that Lyndon Johnson may have been responsible for what happened in Dallas that day.  I think this because I feel that he would have never been voted to the office of the President on his own and was worried that after John had his way then Bobby (Who Johnson hated) would be elected as president.  This is beside the point.  The vision for our country to put a man on the moon was in my eyes the greatest triumph of our country.  We used our brains and science to make it happen.  It created an industry that was not war related and put lots of people to work.  He also had the President’s council on Physical Fitness and he had a vision of how important fitness would be to our country.  It really is a security issue that we all are fit because if your fat and out of shape you cannot pass the physical necessary to enter the military.  I fear for our future in this matter because when I was a child I was the picture of fitness.  There was maybe one child that was a little chubby in our school but most all of us were fit and slim.  Now the children in school are out of shape and PE is only 30 minutes three times a week if the program exists at all.  They have children that are in such poor shape that social services feels they have to step in and remove them from these parents who are allowing them to overeat and never exercise.  I also blame part of this on the fact that parents are scared to let their children play outside and set them in front of a TV with video games.   We used to go outside to play war and march around and roll on the ground and imagine we were shot and fall on the ground.  This fear is fueled by the scary person that takes children and the parents do not make the time to go out and watch them play.  Single moms are busy making dinner and doing laundry and dishes and housework after a busy day at work and by the time they are ready to sit down it is either too late for the kids to be outside or the Mom is too tired to do anything but flop on the couch next to them for a few minutes and then send them to bed for another day.  We do not know our neighbors well enough to make watch/play groups and that is a shame.  I wish for these kids that we could return to simpler times.