If it's gonna be that kind of party, I'm going . . . in the mashed potatoes

1) Slightly upwards of 44 years ago, the Cuban Missile Crisis began. Still photos of President Kennedy on the phone in the Oval Office come to mind, as do images of from the U-2 spy plane of medium-range missiles carried on the beds of military trucks on a runway. That’s pretty much it. Making light of serious things is a pastime that never grows old, but I guess the idea of nuclear holocaust is so absurd, and so historic, that I would rather just ignore the impulse. Did kids in junior high really undergo drills for a nuclear attack that involved hiding under one’s desk? Is that a fictive figment, an example of memory-playing-tricks, or does Hollywood – my unimpeachable source on this issue – play it straight?
I don’t suppose that history is anymore intelligible than other people are. Intelligible. Remember when I said that one thing to you, and you thought it meant x, and I thought it meant x – 1, and all the others in earshot mangled my morphemes into things otherwise indivisible? That’s what I mean by not having any idea what the hell happened back then. And obviously I am still struggling with the idea that George W. Bush has that many lives in his clammy little hand. That is not a partisan sentiment – the idea of Al Gore endowed with that power (power isn’t even really the right word) is equally shiversome. (shiversome not being a word, but meaning something all the same.)
Two years after the CMC, in 1964 the year of Our Lord*, the Soviets ousted Nikita Kruschev from power. I know that Nikita once wielded a shoe in the UN. Everything else I know about the USSR and nuclear holocaust-related issues comes from Spies Like Us, which gave humanity the following:

Doctor, doctor; Doctor, doctor; Doctor, doctor; Doctor, doctor; Doctor, doctor; . . . . Doctor, and – doctor.

2) Speaking of Russia, and other stuff, the library at school has a little cart to which is affixed a sign that reads: FREE BOOKS. Being the kind of person I am, I took advantage, and culled from the rows The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. Some time in the next three years I will read this book. A sticker on the front cover confirms that the book has been “Withdrawn from the school library.” Underneath the sticker, the following statement is printed in attractive font:

An Experiment in Literary Investigation

For years I have with
reluctant heart withheld from publication this already completed book: my
obligation to those still living outweighed my obligation to the dead. But
now that State Security has seized the book anyway, I have no alternative to
publish it immediately.
THE AUTHOR

I opened the book to a random page a second before transcribing its front-cover announcement. The page is 292. The passage reads:

Here is one straightforward and typical case that was brought before a military tribunal. In 1941, the Security operations branch of our inactive army stationed in Mongolia was called on to show its activity and vigilance. The military medical assistant Lozosky, who was jealous of Lieutenant Pavel Chulpenyev because of some woman, realized this. He addressed three questions to Chulpenyev when they were alone: 1. “Why, in your opinion, are we retreating from the Germans?” (Chulpenyev’s reply: “They have more equipment and they were mobilized earlier.”) 2. “Do you believe the Allies will help?” (Chulpenyev: “I’ll believe they’ll help, but not from unselfish motives.” Lozovsky’s reply: “They are deceiving us. They won’t help us at all.”) 3. Why was Voroshilov sent to command the Northwest Front?” [no answer given]
The text goes on to explain that Chulpenyev was arrested and given a sentence of ten years plus thee years’ disenfranchisement. God Bless America, huh?

3) I am the new basketball coach. Not the varsity, but an assistant responsible for coaching either JV or Frosh. We shall see.