May 16, 2003

How I Learned to Fear the Bomb

I thought a lot about atom bombs as a kid, maybe more than most other kids. I wrote this haiku in fifth grade:

Look up in the sky.
See the pretty mushroom cloud.
Soon we will be dead.

My teacher became very agitated, showing a weird mixture of pride and horror. She must have thought my poem represented the terrible psychological burden children were carrying because of the bomb. That was around 1966, four years after the Cuban Missile

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