11/22/2013

by Patrick Best

Unless you’ve been in a coma - or in solitary confinement without access to television, radio or the internet - you’re probably aware that today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy. I have seen the footage of the assassination so many times, I sometimes feel like I was in Dallas that afternoon as Jack and Jackie rolled through downtown in the midnight blue convertible and Lee Harvey Oswald pointed and fired his rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository. The frames from the The Zapruder film are so ingrained in my brain that it's like they’re a horrible childhood memory I can’t seem to shake... even though I wasn't born until 1970.

Countless movies, television shows and books have been inspired by what occurred on this day half a century ago. My favorite writer, Stephen King, recently wrote a great novel called “11/22/63” that explores whether traveling back in time to stop tragic events from occurring - like the murder of a popular President – would really make the world better for the people living today. Would terrorists have flown airplanes into the World Trade Center if JFK would have made it back to the White House safe and sound on 11/23/63? Would we all be riding around in solar-powered flying cars if he would have lived to flash that winning smile for the remainder of his term? Or would going back and stopping Oswald from pulling his trigger be the finger that pushes over a wobbling domino that begins a terrible chain reaction that leads to something far worse than Osama bin Laden? We’ll probably never know.

Today is my wife’s birthday, and I’m thankful to say that I’ve celebrated twenty-five 11/22s with her. I used to think that having your birthday fall on the day that Kennedy was killed was almost as bad as being born on Christmas morning, but now I think it’s pretty cool. The date is super easy for people to remember, and you don’t get the shaft on presents like the folks who share their special day with Jesus.

Even if I could slip down through the rabbit hole, back to the time when Dallas was known as the “City of Hate”, and stop the 24-year-old dweeb who forever draped a black veil over today’s box on America’s desk calendar, I just couldn’t do it. Believing that “bad things happen for a reason” could just be a coping mechanism for the living, but, if the butterfly effect theory (“one small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state”) is true, it’s possible that if President Kennedy wasn’t killed on this day in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 wouldn’t have been signed, The Beatles wouldn’t have recorded “The White Album”, Neil Armstrong wouldn’t have taken “one giant leap for mankind”, the Berlin Wall wouldn’t have been torn down and I would have never met a beautiful, smart, funny and honest girl named Susie Pierce.

There’s no doubt that November 22nd will always be most recognized as the day America lost its 35th President, but it will be eternally celebrated by this guy as the day my Susie Best. Happy birthday! I love you!