duck and cover

[mechers]

There was a program on public radio today (link when available) about memories of the Cold War. Callers were talking about their memories of school, of watching films like Duck and Cover and having bomb drills. I was born in 1982. The Cold War was nearly over when I was in school. I never watched a propaganda film. We had bomb drills, sure, every month, but we called them severe weather drills. So why do I identify with the fear these callers twice my age are recalling? I have absolutely no memory or when or how I learned about atomic bombs and the Cold War. In fact, my first clear memory of anything concerning the topic was the fall of the Berlin wall. I was 7. It was after swim practice. We were eating spaghetti for dinner. Tom Brokaw was there. Years after, I doubted my memory and looked it up, and he actually was. That was the begining of the end of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR. Yet for years I persisted in fear of atomic bombs and radiation sickness. To this day I occasionally have nightmares about it. Where did I get this information and why did I absorb it in the absence of an actual threat? Why can I listen to people my mother's age on the radio and nod along as though I was actually there? I wasn't. This is something that puzzles me every time it comes up.

Most of the people reading this are around my age. Did you have a similar experience to mine? Or am I an anachronism?