John Lennon came to my school when I was 8 years old. Or did I imagine it?

One morning in the mid-1970s, a solemn announcement came over the Friends Seminary intercom: “The famous John Lennon is now in the meeting room.” Walk, don’t run.

We didn’t run. But we wanted it.

I found myself perched with the rest of my third-grade class on a hard wooden bench on the balcony of our Quaker school meetinghouse on East 16th Street in Manhattan. Built in 1860, the meeting hall was old, dignified and a little creaky; he had absorbed the echoes of abolitionist debates, suffragist meetings and restless children who couldn’t sit still. That morning, I wasn’t sitting down. We were kids, but we knew the Beatles.

And then, suddenly, there he was: John Lennon.

I remember the silence – a collective inspiration – then the whispers. I’m pretty sure Lennon was dressed in black when he walked in. That’s how I always remembered him. He quickly took the stage with his wire-rimmed glasses, looking exactly like the face I had seen on the album covers. He was right there.

A burst of laughter broke the tension. I can still hear his voice, his dry jokes, the ironic expression when a boy asked him about the beautiful woman who accompanied him – not Yoko Ono, but someone else. But the words themselves? Disappeared. Did he talk about music? Policy? Did he sing? Why was he there?

For years, I clung to this memory like a relic. It was one of those surreal childhood moments that made me wonder if I had imagined it. It was a story I could tell anywhere — When I was in second grade, John Lennon came to my school! My 22 year old daughter had heard it so many times she could recite it. But recently, when I brought it up, she looked at me skeptically. “Did that happen?”

I was stunned. Of course it happened. Isn’t it? If this had happened today, there would have been plenty of evidence: blurry TikTok clips, tagged Instagram posts, shaky iPhone videos capturing every joke. But by the mid-1970s, an event like this might actually dwindle and disappear.