It hits me every November, like clockwork. Sometimes it’s earlier in the month, sometimes it’s later. But it’s always there — like an uninvited guest.

“It” is the JFK assassination and my being drawn back into that vortex of violence, gloom, confusion and conspiracy theories.

It was Friday, Nov. 22. I was a high school senior, an underachieving cluck who was at best a blip on the radar screen of academe. I was in the art room, doing what I always did there, which was bs’ing with my fellow slack-offs.

Most pressing on my mind was that in one short hour school would be over and the weekend would begin. Not that I was actually going to do anything, mind you. But there was one thing I wasn’t gonna do, which was endure any school rigamarole for 2 1/2 days.

The bell rang, signaling the end of seventh period and the beginning of eighth. I picked up my books and shuffled into the hall and all hell broke loose.

With classes passing, the halls were jammed with kids, but suddenly from out of the morass, Kathy Klein ran up to me, wild-eyed, and shouted, “The president’s been shot!”

“What?” I shouted back.

“Someone shot JFK!” she said.

“Really?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“No,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

Next, everyone else was shouting in one fashion or another. I didn’t know if it was real or some kind of hoax, like The War of the Worlds. From how everyone was reacting, it didn’t seem like a hoax, but on the other hand, it seemed too weird to be true.

I went into my next class, French, and sat there like everyone else, listening to Mr. Murphy the principal give the latest updates on the PA. Everyone sat there, silent and motionless, the only sound being Mrs. Godson’s muffled sobs.

After that, it was one very long and very weird weekend. The TV was flooded with nothing but reports about JFK — the shooting itself, the scene at the hospital, LBJ being sworn in on the flight with him and Jackie back to D.C. There were interviews with witnesses, reporters, doctors and cops.

Then there were all the reports and updates on the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. He was an ex-Marine, a defector to the USSR who came back with a Russian wife and kid and a screwball political ideology, and who had zero chance of ever succeeding in what we’re fond of calling The Real World.

Everything ran together, both on the screen and in my mind, a collage of craziness that I thought couldn’t get any crazier. Then on Sunday, it did. That’s when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas police headquarters basement — on live TV, no less.

Monday was JFK lying in state at the Capitol. About 250,000 filed past the casket, another 50,000 were turned away, and a million people lined the procession route to Arlington.

While the broadcasting was continuous, my watching was sporadic. The violence, the grief, the overwhelming sense of loss were too much for me. They were the exact opposite of the Kennedys’ image before the assassination — which also had been too much for me.

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Spin spin spin

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Simply put, the Kennedy family were larger than life. They had wealth, looks and privilege beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings. They’d gone to the finest schools, had vacationed in Europe, and were destined for greatness.

At the head of the pack was JFK. He had It All. He had one-in-a-million looks, was witty, driven, and charismatic. He was a war hero and a Pulitzer Prize winner. His wife was pure class and tastefully glamorous; their kids were adorable.

JFK was the first television president and the TV loved him. Strictly speaking, Eisenhower had been the first television president, but he really didn’t count. Yes, he’d organized the D-Day landings, the largest amphibious landing in history, and he’d overseen the rest of the European campaign, somehow managing to deal with Montgomery, Patton and de Gaulle. His leadership skills were the stuff of legend. But, a swashbuckler he was not. If anything, he looked like someone’s pleasant old uncle, or maybe grandfather. His wife Mamie was just as sweetly insipid.

By contrast, JFK and Jackie oozed beauty from every pore. Plus they were something Ike and Mamie clearly weren’t — young, vibrant and worldly.

And there I was, watching them from the distant sidelines, a nebbish from a small town whose dream of being a schoolteacher would, compared to the Kennedys, have looked as lame as his life — if it’d ever been noticed at all.

As it turned out, a whole lot of JFK and the Kennedy mystique was a sham, a triumph of public relations over reality. At the time, we knew none of that, but by the mid-’70s the truths got revealed.

The patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, Sr., was a power and status-seeking SOB who, if he had a speck of ethics or conscience, kept them well hidden.

JFK himself was a serial philanderer of epic proportions. As for his Pulitzer? Drew Pearson summed it up best: “John F. Kennedy is the only man in history who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book that was ghostwritten for him.” As a politician, his skills were nothing to write home about. His greatest diplomatic feat was his resolving The Cuban Missile Crisis, which he did by following his brother Bobby’s advice.

The list goes on and on and there’s no sense belaboring it. But the fact is as a First Family, the Kennedy’s were really the First Family of Spin. Sadly, we were prevented from knowing it at the time.

But when the truth finally came out, it was clear that while they may have been larger than life, their faults, problems, and failures were larger than life as well.

When it comes to the cult of celebrity, I believe Emily Dickinson said it best:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you — Nobody — too?

There there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! They’d advertise — you know!

How dreary — to be — Somebody!

How public — like a Frog —

To tell one’s name — the livelong June —

To an admiring Bog!