ABSTRACT
When I asked an Israeli school teacher to identify the biggest problems for children during the Gulf War, the first one she mentioned was the gas masks. She elaborated that the masks were problems for all ages: Premature infants were transferred to tents and invariably experienced some degree of hypoxia. Mothers had bad experiences at the hospital and were like the “helpless taking the helpless home.” The infants wore sealed masks, and when they cried, the masks clouded over, so that parents could not determine the reason for their infants’ crying. Preschoolers wore “space suits,” which were too hot and not very comfortable; they were also not very convenient, given the number of toileting regressions. Grade schoolers, in turn, had to assume many new responsibilities for the younger children in large families. High schoolers were reckless and refused to wear their masks. Many of them carried empty mask boxes instead. The high schools began to expel adolescents caught not wearing or carrying masks. She said the 12-to 17-year-olds were probably the most traumatized by the sym bolism of masks, remembering the films they had seen of the Holocaust “showers.” There were individual differences along the dimension of risk-taking about not wearing masks.
