Historical Fiction Flashfic

     This was a historical fiction flashfic in-class assignment for Dr. Dial-Driver's Pop Market. The first historical quote that leapt to mind to indicate setting was Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" speech from June 12, 1987.

     "Mr Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"
     I was nine, and so I didn't understand what President Reagan meant. I just knew I liked his movies. (And yes, I knew how weird that made me.) But Dad liked him, and so I figured that maybe he could explain.
     He tried to.
     "The Russians - y'know, from WarGames, they - well, this is in East Germany, and they're similar to the Soviets. Dangerous. Anyway, people over there are tryin' to escape - there's a MacGyver episode about it, remember?"
     I nodded. Sort of.
    "Okay, well, what Reagan is tryin' to do is get the Soviet prime minister - sort of their president - to do is let the East German people escape by tearing down the Berlin Wall."
     "He prob'ly wont, will he?"
     "I don't think so, but maybe. It could be like Rocky IV, where we decide that the other side is human, too."
     His tone was mystified and pessimistic, so I figured that that was enough politics and that it was time to do math homework. Mrs. Jackson was attempting to teach us fourth-graders division, and that was going about as well as comprehending metrical feet would in a poetry class I'd take in college.
     "Fourteen goes into ninety-two - no, that's not right... If you have ninety-two, and there's fourteen..." I muttered on my way up the screaky stairs, my Keds furthering the erosion of the woodstain in the middle of each step.