Five preteens, four girls and a boy, sit in the small bedroom. The blue ripcord bedspread marks the backs of their tanned legs. It’s 1969, and they're playing their favorite summer game. While “spin-the-bottle” has been part of their repertoire for some time, let me remind you that it is summer. Texas summer. And it’s 1969.
What this means for those of you who are younger or more economically or geographically fortunate than our five friends is that the 3BR 1.5B brick has no central air conditioning. The boy in question is fortunate enough to have his own window unit and his parents are both at work.
The game is “Freezeout.”
They’ve set the Kenmore at its lowest setting, blocked the crack under the door with a JC Penney bath towel, and are just beginning to feel the first goose bumps. Someone drops the needle on an album forbidden in at least one household, in spite of the squeaky-clean singers, because of a single song, the song they all love, the song that brings them to their chilly bare feet….
“Gimme a head with hair…”
Shining. Gleaming. Streaming. Flaxen. Waxen.
I’m pretty sure I was the only one who knew – at least at age ten – that the song was from a play famous for actual naked people (did you guess that I was the one barred from the Cowsills album?). Our parents worked desperately to convince us that hippies, be-ins, yippies, sit-ins, and other manifestations of malcontent would turn us into “juvenile delinquents.”
But no amount of distraction shielded us from the daily parade of body bags, the tear-gassed protestors, and the flecks of color entering our all-white world.
We taped our peace sign posters up inside our closets and showed our families Bobby Sherman on our bedroom walls.
In one of those great ironies only the universe can create, I now assiduously work to ensure my daughter has the kind of social consciousness my parents did their best to prevent me from developing.
Toward that end, I downloaded the soundtrack from Hair and slipped it on her iPod Monday night.
Never trust anyone over 50.
We taped our peace sign posters up inside our closets and showed our families Bobby Sherman on our bedroom walls.
In one of those great ironies only the universe can create, I now assiduously work to ensure my daughter has the kind of social consciousness my parents did their best to prevent me from developing.
Toward that end, I downloaded the soundtrack from Hair and slipped it on her iPod Monday night.
Never trust anyone over 50.
2 comments:
This is hilarious. I wonder what our children will end up rebelling against. God forbid they try to exercise their rebellion by becoming Neocons or some such. The horror!
Those sound like some crazy days.
At least it gave you writing material!
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