ASSUMING THE POSITION

By Sheriff Jim R. Schwiesow, Ret.
September 16, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

The denizens of the 50’s and the 60’s, upon reflection, will hearken back in their minds to their school days and remember the social events of the time that were the impetus for recurring school safety programs and exercises. These were instituted by an already out of control, and intrusive upon individual choice, government bureaucracy, implemented by school boards and school administrative hierarchies, and carried out by that final supreme authority over student activities - teachers. I am addressing specifically the classic nuclear attack exercises that were an aside from the curricula of those days.

These were always kicked off by startling and incessant clanging bells or hair-raising horns, buzzers and sirens that signaled the imminent phantom approach of red star bedecked Soviet bombers loaded with the ultimate ordinance, Atom -later Hydrogen - bombs that were putatively destined to be poured out upon the heads of all the little captive enrollees in the nation’s schoolrooms and upon the Miss Betties’ Mr. Bobs’ and Mrs. Belles’ who guided their educational pursuits.

My recollection is that most teachers could have won academy awards for their singular performances as nuclear attack wardens. At the sound of the inescapable auditory alerts these would - with worried and concerned countenance affected to impress upon their often somnolent charges the urgency of the situational circumstances - direct the rooms full of tousled heads to get immediately under their tables or desks, sit upon the floor with knees raised, place their heads between their legs and prepare to kiss their fannies goodbye. The boys as I recall called it, “assuming the positionâ€