Happy Birthday 1969!

I was only 11 years old, and I was a total nerd who hated hippies, was unpopular, always got picked last in sports, and wasn’t liked by any girls.

Except none of us were liked by any girls in 6th grade, so it doesn’t matter. I didn’t even know what sex was. That year my Mom read a book to me about sex but she lied to me, which was a bit annoying. I was walking home one day with my best friend and we were talking about sex.

He shook his head, “I dunno,” he said. “My Mom said she’s never done it!” A reincarnation of Jesus as an Hispanic woman! I mean his parents had separate bedrooms but obviously this had not always been the case, the last immaculate conception being a couple of thousand years ago, and even that one’s up for grabs. I’m a Christian and I think the IC is a load of hooey, sorry. Mary got laid by Joseph, just like any normal human woman, you know?

I had a ton of friends though with the local boys on and around my street. We all hung out all the time.

I actually played a lot of sports. I was just never good at any of them. All we did was play sports actually.

Don’t forget the antisocial behavior, the best fun of all!

We also had dirt clod wars. And berry wars, with these weird hard green olive-shaped berry things that grew on the plants around there. And play Kill the Man on the Hoppity Hop, otherwise known as Smear the Queer. And bully the faggots, psychos, and crybabies our age! Good times! Bullying is fun! Don’t forget the bullying!

And my two brothers and I, when we weren’t best friends, were busy teasing, tormenting, baiting and beating the crap out of each other. Oh Hell yeah!

Our backyard was undeveloped and a part of it was permanently flooded. That was called Mud River and was to be avoided. The rest of the yard was quickly turned into a series of forts. I think we each had our own forts.

There were construction workers out the backyard building a new tract, and like typical little shits, we stole wood, nails, chisels, you name it, from them. I must say it’s really fun to steal stuff! The rush you get from stealing stuff is almost like no other on Earth. Vandalism is close. I can see criminals do it. Crime is a rush like no other, even surpassing any drug.

We used to the wood the build forts. We used the nails for trading somehow or other. We transported them around in these toy trucks we bought. It sounds boring but it was a blast.

Oh, and we made Creepy Crawlers and had long marches around the house with them. My favorite was named Tim. He was a red spider who had one of his legs cut off. I think he was a General in the Creepy Crawler Army My brothers’ favorites were green horned toads called Horny and Hornet, a male and female. They might have been generals too.

I have no idea the purpose of these stupid marches around the house. My Mom marveled at the absurdity and idiocy of it all. “Don’t you ever get bored of this? The Creepy Crawler marches extended through much of the house, up and down both sets of stairs and winding through the hallways. We didn’t listen to her. What red-blooded 11 year old boy listens to their Mom? Screw that! Listening to your Mom is for girls, sissies and fags!

We also went hiking a lot and around this time. I joined the Boy Scouts and went on a number of trips with them, including multiday backpacking trips far into the High Sierra Mountains that lasted over a week.

My Dad went with us on a lot of these hikes and on a lot of these wild fishing expeditions, often involving deep sea fishing and fishing trips to Ensenada and San Felipe, Mexico. There were so many fish down there you could almost walk upon the sea on the backs of the fish. I have no idea what it’s like down there. I hear they didn’t have much of a commercial fishing industry, so it wasn’t fished out.

That was back when my Dad was a cool guy most of the time. Before he turned into a full-time asshole. He started having problems with his career, and he took it out on all of us kids, as men are so wont to do. That’s called Displacement, Psychology students.

At age 15, the Haircut Wars started, and I was “the ringleader of the rebels,” as he put it. Well, of course I was.

He would sit there and look at me at the dinner table with sheer hatred on his face and not say anything for long minutes. Then he would slam his fist on the table and say, “You look just like Veronica Lake!” I always thought that was funny. Veronica Lake was some hot actress back in the day who was famous for her curly hair. And yeah, I had curly hair. I guess that made me even more effeminate to him.

Men growing their hair as long as women was some sort of an absolute outrage for his generation. Men had short hair. Girls had long hair. And never the twain shall meet. I was never sure if he thought it meant I was a faggot or what. I think there was just something extremely unmasculine about long hair on a man. Like if your 15 year old son starts wearing dresses for no good reason. I’d probably slam my fist on the table too.

Funny thing though was that I was a complete washout with girls until I started growing my hair long, smoking pot, listening to rock and roll and being a typical degenerate teenager of my day.

After a while, I tried to explain to him that girls hated guys with short hair. We were actually growing our hair long to get chicks, Dad! Give us a break! He regarded this as one of the most utterly insane things he had ever heard. Growing your hair long so you look like a pathetic effeminate wuss girlyboy transvestite faggot gets you chicks because this is what babes want?

That does not compute!*

They called it “geek hair.” You could only get away with it if you were a jock or a good musician or a hot surfer. Otherwise you were screwed. We grew our hair long to try to get laid. Actually probably 50% of what sexually mature males do in their lives is nothing but an abject and pathetic effort to get laid. True fact. You don’t have to believe me.

Anyway, pretty incredible times. But things were always better back in the day. You all know that.

*A popular saying back in the day. You all probably never heard of it.