Born in 1962

If you were born in 1962, you came into a year when the world genuinely came within a whisker of ending. The Cuban Missile Crisis in October kept the entire country in a state of suspended, barely breathing terror for thirteen days—families gathered around the television, kids doing duck-and-cover drills at school, fathers driving home from work not quite sure the world would still be there in the morning. When it resolved, the exhale was oceanic.

The rest of the year went on around it with stunning normality: Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to JFK in Madison Square Garden, a moment so charged it was almost surreal. John Glenn orbited the Earth three times in February and the country erupted in uncomplicated, pure national joy.

The Beatles were still unknown outside Liverpool. Ricky Nelson and Ray Charles and Bobby Vee were on the radio. The twist was giving way to the mashed potato and the locomotion.

*Lawrence of Arabia* opened in December and made moviegoing feel epic again. Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans hung in a Los Angeles gallery and people argued for the first time about whether a can of tomato soup was art. The drive-in was full, the suburbs were green, and Johnny Carson took over *The Tonight Show* from Jack Paar.

The ordinary machinery of American life kept turning magnificently.