I remember reading an anecdote told by Bill Murray about the cast for Lost In Translation taking time off “for the holiday,” which he misunderstood to be solemnity for the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. It struck him then that the younger cast and crew meant Thanksgiving, because none of them would have been alive when Kennedy was shot, and the notion messed with him.

I understand both sides of that divide. On one hand, Kennedy was always an assassinated president for me, someone seen in old news footage grinning and then gone in frames of the Zapruder film.

But at the same time, I know what flying was like prior to 9/11, what music was like prior to Kurt Cobain, and a number of other changes that folks in the generations succeeding mine just accept as the ways things are. And, just like me, I know they’ll have their moments of significant change in their lifetime that won’t mean anything to the generations that follow them. Sometimes you have to be there for it to matter.