Suburbia

I was born in Washington, D.C., on August 30, 1948. For those of you who believe in such things, my birth date makes me a Virgo, the sign of the anal-retentive. The sign kind of sucks, really, and I don't know if it has helped or hindered me, but I am sure the stars do more than twinkle.

I was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland. Of course, there is no spring there, and I can assure you no one was mining for silver. Its only claim to fame is that it is the largest unincorporated city in America. In other words, we were too lazy to govern ourselves. Our town motto was "I'd like to vote, but I don't feel like driving."

Silver Spring is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and all suburbs are identical. The houses may vary in size and design, but the game is the same. Everyone has the feeling that they are living in a special space, when in fact there is nothing unique about it. Being brought up in suburbia is, therefore, like being born and raised nowhere. It is an oxygenated void. As a result, it prepares you for either depression or space travel. Have you ever heard of the great suburban writer? Well, I promise, you never will. I can just imagine how chapter three would begin….

Growing up in suburbia, everyone was middle class. Everyone had a lawn and a car. Everyone was white. Except for the maids, who would arrive once a week to clean up after all of us. It's what I imagine South Africa was like during apartheid. There was a wide variety of white people, though—Italians, Irish, Poles, Russians, Jews, Catholics, WASPs. It may have been sterile, but we all seemed to get along.

It was the fifties and America was booming. It was a time when father actually knew best and there was a sitcom to prove it. Elvis Presley was changing the genetic structure of America's children. There were TV dinners specially made, I guess, for watching TV.

The USSR, however, presented a bit of a problem to the idyllic suburban American lifestyle. It was our sworn enemy and it was going to bury us. They were evil—really evil, spectacularly evil. So evil, in fact, that if you had ever been a Communist, you were tainted for life, or so said Senator Joe McCarthy. Communists apparently walked among us, like aliens, ready to convert us to their heathen ways at any opportunity. The Commies were no better than child molesters. I didn't experience that level of paranoia again until I smoked pot.

I never quite grasped this concept; my family came from Russia, and if they were any indication of the Soviet mentality, I didn't think we had much to worry about. My grandfather had come to the United States in 1916 and didn't realize he was here until 1967.

Worst of all, the Soviets had the atomic bomb, and they were going to use it if they thought it was necessary. The good news was that we also had the A-bomb, and if the Ruskies got out of line, we would blow them all to kingdom come.

At school we kept getting mixed messages about the atom. It was used to create the weapon that blew the shit out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but according to a Disney cartoon, Our Friend the Atom, the atom was the best thing since sliced bread. It would, we were instructed, eventually answer any problem with which civilization was presented, including the need for mass annihilation.

It was all very confusing to my seven-year-old mind. It was a cartoon. It was really sweet. And it was Walt Disney telling me this, for God's sake. Uncle Walt! The same Walt Disney who had given me Mickey, Donald, Davy Crockett, and my first introduction to entertainment-related marketing.

It turns out that Disney produced this nonsense with the help of the US Navy and General Dynamics, the folks who built the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus, which carried nuclear missiles. Imagine Halliburton and the Department of Defense using Beauty and the Beast to sell the war in Iraq to elementary school students. In case you weren't sure, we'd be the Beauty.

I didn't know what to think. Especially given the fact that we were being shown instructional films on how to protect ourselves in case of nuclear attack. They would show us image after image of A-bomb tests and even the real deal at Hiroshima, just in case our childlike minds couldn't grasp the devastation caused by these weapons.

Other films demonstrated how to protect ourselves in case our neighborhood just happened to take a hit. And living outside Washington, D.C., that was a really good possibility—even a second grader could tell you that. These films would show a bomb blowing the ever-loving snot out of everything in sight, a fireball of epic proportions that let off a monstrous blast of heat. It turns out, though, according to the powers that be, that all you had to do to protect yourself if you couldn't find proper underground shelter in time was "duck and cover."

That's right, just duck down and cover your head, and you could survive the blast. Yeah, sure, right. Even I knew after watching these films that you might survive, but your face would no doubt melt and your nose would probably end up on your foot.

We would even have air-raid drills once a month in my school. It was, perhaps, the kindest way for the administration to remind us we could all die at any minute. So, all of my little friends and I would hide under our desks to protect ourselves. And all I could think while I was under the desk was, What are these adults who are in charge of me thinking? I am not a goddamn idiot!

We are talking about a fireball from hell, and these morons had me hiding under wood—under kindling, for God's sake! I might as well have been a rump roast in an oven. Looking back, I now know it was at this point in time that I began to regard authority with a jaded eye. I don't know what these people were thinking. Just because they were completely stupid, I was supposed to be stupid too?

If that weren't dumb enough, bomb shelters became all the rage. People were building underground cubicles in their backyards where they could hide in case of nuclear war. There, they could stow food and water and wait for the all-clear signal to sound. It looked good on paper, but the idea of spending weeks in a tiny room with my parents and brother just didn't seem worth the effort.

Not to mention the fact that there was also the possibility that those without shelters would try to break into yours. Luckily my parents had a basement, which saved us the embarrassment of building a shelter. Even though we were told to keep food supplies down there, we didn't. My parents seemed to have the same idea I did: If the bomb were dropped, then the hell with everything.

The folks who told us we could protect ourselves from a nuclear attack by hiding under our desks are the same jackasses who just told us that we could protect ourselves from a chemical attack with duct tape. Yeah, if you had enough to wrap yourself in, you could suffocate before the chemicals got to you.

Copyright © 2005 by Lewis Black