My godson’s son’s birthday was last week. Riley turned 13 and those with kids know that years shrink to minutes when nostalgia raises its weepy head. My own daughter, The Indy Pie? She’s 22 and graduating from a snooty upstate New York college days away. I remember dropping her off first day of kindergarten. Driving home? I sobbed like a lonely housewife in front of the 2 o’clock soaps.

The novelist Joseph Heller penned a wonderful novel after “Catch 22.” “Something Happened” was about an ad exec, wondering where life went. Heller’s answer? Well — obviously. Something Happened. I was 13 a blink ago.

It was 1963, the year President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was simultaneously living in North Hollywood, Chatsworth and Santa Clarita. Of all things, I remember the sidewalk, the grains and lines in the cement, and people stumbling as if entranced. It was rare to see a man cry 62 years ago. They let us out of gym class early, lined us up and solemnly shared that the president had been shot. With that one detail, I thought JFK had just been wounded, later learning the president was dead. Grown men were sobbing, steadying themselves against buildings. People helped women who had collapsed to the ground and everywhere I walked was this overwhelming, tribal grief. It’s as if we all knew that the country would be irrevocably changed from that moment on.

And it became so.

I am whimsically torn to warn anyone turning 13 to go back, it’s a trap. On the other hand, it — life, with all its........

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