That Jack Ruby moment

I am watching Jay Leno and he is interviewing Tim Allen and Tim Allen was talking about encountering a fan and the guy is reaching into his coat pocket and Tim Allen described this as his "Jack Ruby" moment and then he did a creditable imitation of Lee Harvey Oswald grimacing as he reacts to the gunshot wound and describing how the entire audience would be looking on in shock and awe at the moment and it occurred to me that you really had to be a certain age and orientation to feel that moment and understand what Tim Allen was getting at when he referred to the "Jack Ruby" moment. The imitation was good, but the damage, as you might say, was already done because just the reference to "Jack Ruby" opened the wound from your memory and you could see that moment when the Dallad police detective grimaced and Lee Harvey Oswald doubled over in the initial pain of the bullet going through his stomach and the dark figure of the nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, his back to the camera, brandishing the 38 revolver toward the accused, soon to be lying on a slab in the Dallas morgue.

That was, I believe, November 24, 1963, in the morning, two days after the assassination of President Kennedy in Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Some things just don't go away. The wound was picked at until it festered and never healed. Some wounds are like that.