NUMBER ONE WITH A MULLET

"C'mon now...I'm not getting any younger."



In the spirit of Zazzafooky's "Tids and Bits" posts, we muse about our youth in snippets.

Damn youths and their ADD...and their ADHD, and their short attention spans, and their hula hoops, and their Dan Fogelberg and...

Anyway...enjoy another "quickie" post. You might as well; I certainly did.

Because self-absorbtion won't soak up the stains...

My old childhood hometown was quite dull; collecting dust was a hobby, and the farmers all grew cobwebs. It was a wide spot in the road, a rustling, fertile heartland hub from whenst our nation's aspiring gas station attendants spring. But a couple of things come to mind:

--We were so restless and bored, that alot of kids starting snorting Kool-Aid in junior high. Having a cherry-scented splotch beneath your nostril became a weird status symbol of the "cool" set. Except for Billy, who sprayed Right Guard up his nose, and Tim, who snorted Ajax. And lived. Tim's mother was really nice, but scared us--she was a burn victim who had been smoking in bed or some such, and lost half of her face to Big Melty Burns. When she spoke, her scars gave the illusion of movement, and it looked like she was still actively sizzling in the sun. Nice lady, though.

--My friend Brock and I didn't want to snort Kool Aid, or anything else for that matter, to find some sort of "cool" niche. So Brock started compulsively eating paper...sheets of it. I declined. I never was able to keep up with the popular kids...

--Kids routinely picked fights and beat each other up for fun. It was boredom. Darren and Shannon were best friends on the football team; one day, I overheard them talking. Darren said, "Hey man...there's nothin' on; you wanna fight after school." To which, Shannon replied, "Yeah, sure. But hurry, 'cuz I'm fighting Jimmy at seven at the quarry."

--Parents enrolled their children in school at the latest possible age. Many kids were almost seven years old when they started school (state law said they had to start no later than age six). They did this so their kids would be bigger than the other kids, and thus maybe be better at sports. (They certainly weren't going to college on any honor's programs, right?). The problem was, every parent did it. Except mine. (I was from the city, you see). And I was tiny even for my age. So when bulllies became a problem, my father got the brilliant idea to enroll me in a martial arts class. There was even one nearby, he said. When I arrived...there were all my class bullies, all lined up and practicing their kicks.

--Not being much of a fighter, I resorted to raising hell my own way. I took "For Sale" signs out of people's yards, and switched them. I did the same thing with bird baths, statues, lawn ornaments, etc. One night, we untied this guy's dog, and tied him back up at a different house across the street. Our wrath was entirely arbitrary. Any person on the block might wake up to find his birdbath missing, and replaced with a swingset. The sad thing is, we thought we were a gang.

--Alcohol and sex are the usual vices of smalltown kids. There's nothing else to do, right? Over a third of the graduating class was pregnant. Hey, it was Missouri. We didn't have girlfriends, so we chipped in on crappy cable descramblers and watched the scattered signals. Of course, everyone drank. But because me and my little 12-year-old friends weren't in with the "popular" crowd, we couldn't figure out where they were getting the alcohol. My parents didn't drink, so we couldn't get anything from them. Billy's mom drank alot, but she drank it so fast and so often, that we could never steal any of it.

--When these plans failed, we "made rounds." This entailed hitting all of the local mom-and-pop video stores. But we didn't have any money--jobs were scarce, and most of these kids' PARENTS couldn't find a job. So we just walked around, and looked at all the lurid covers of the (now vintage) 80's horror films, and occasionally snuck into the adult section. That's how little there was to do in this town. Oddly enough, this adolescent non-pasttime led to one of my many odd hobbies as an adult--acquiring nearly every cheesy horror/sci-fi/exploitation flick of the 1980's, many in their original VHS boxes, in all their "colorful" non-PC glory.

--The entire town closed up at sundown. Even the Wal-Mart closed at 7pm. The elderly town fathers "didn't want any after-dark shenanigans" going on. There was an arcade once; of course, the town fathers shut it down. It was "attracting the wrong element," they said. These are the same people who outlawed skateboarding within city limits.

--There was a movie theater, that played one film a week, a month or more after its release. They shut it down for the summer on occasion, when the owners decided to "take a stand" against the "crap" that was being released during the summer blockbuster season. As a result, many residents of that town have yet to see Tim Burton's Batman. They obviously could not afford a rental...

--Fortunately, we moved when I was 13...to the Ministry. But it was still far better; at least those people had a reason for being ignorant--they had a faith to uphold. The other folks were just...rural.

Maybe this explains why I turned into such a loose cannon in my twenties?

The moral of the story is: I don't watch the Blue Collar Comedy Hour. I get flashbacks. I also have mixed feelings about evolution: I believe it was possible...but it clearly doesn't work. (Closing notation: how is it that the people who spend the most time reenacting the Civil War are also the ones who've learned the least from it?)


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