The Senior Year Meme

What year was it?
‘83-84

What were your favorite bands or musical artists?
Aerosmith. Boston. REO Speedwagon. Rush. Iron Maiden. Styx. Sammy Hagar. Van Halen. Pretty much what is defined as “Classic Rock” nowadays *shrug*

What was your favorite outfit?
Jeans and a T-shirt. It still is.

What was up with your hair?
Fairly short. Long enough to grab, but not long enough to need a ponytail.

Who were your best friends?
Glenn. Jacqui. Richard. David. Tammy and Aline. Most of the debate team.

Where did you work?
Lotsa places. Bussed tables at Pizza Hut. Worked at O.G.Wilson’s at the mall. Telemarketed. Worked at the mall arcade.

Did you take the bus?
Midland didn’t have a public transportation and I only lived about 2 blocks from the school. I didn’t own my first car, though, until my 20th birthday.

Who did you have a crush on?
A few young ladies. I was a little nerdly, but not so much that I didn’t attract girls. It would be ungentlemanly to elaborate on some of the more interesting occurrences that year.

Did you fight with your parents?
My parents had separated (I found when I was 21 that they had never been married, and New York didn’t recognize Common-Law marriages in the mid-1960s) when I was 3, and I rarely spoke to him, but I got along pretty well with my mom.

Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?
Kirstie Alley (during “Cheers”, she was s-s-s-s-mokin’!).

Did you smoke cigarettes?
Yeah, about a pack a day. Plus the occasional “experimentation”.

Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack because you were too nervous to find your locker?
No.  I traded books and supplies as necessary between classes. But I always carried some sci-fi book or other for the slack times…

Did you have a ‘clique’?
No, I was one of the outsiders, having joined that school (after all the cliques had been firmly established among the classes) halfway through my junior year. I had contacts just about everywhere, but no cliques.

Did you have “The Max” like Zach Kelly and Slater?
Who?

Admit it, were you popular?
“Popular” as in “well-known” - yes. “Popular” as in “everybody wants to hang out with me” - nope. Real friends were few and far between.

Who did you want to be just like?
Tom Cruise from “Risky Business”. But I always ended up a little like Corey Feldman, except without all the supermodels from Sweden and the fancy cars.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
Grow...? Up? Seriously, I just adapted. I have lived a fairly hectic lifestyle, been halfway around the world and back, seen some sights that would amaze and amuse just about anyone, and been impressed by most. In my day I have been many things: a grocery sacker, a retail sales clerk (many times with many different products), a Care Bear ^TM (just for an afternoon), a busboy and dishwasher, arcade attendant, a pizza delivery guy, a Surface-To-Air Missile Radar Tech, a Bombing Range Safety Coordinator, a firefighter, a shipboard radar operator, a professional softball umpire (ASA), a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, a telemarketing manager, an Office Manager for an ISP, a computer hardware technician, and finally self-employed. I have tutored students from elementary all the way up through college (including a few people going for their MA needing help with the hard sciences).

I just strived to be wiser and kinder, as well as older. The rest takes care of itself.

*

Let me know if you decide to answer/post these, so I can link you…

Can we do anything about this question?  Can we find anyone to look at this thing with an objective eye, and report the truth about this? 

Yeppers....me!!  MWAHAHAHAHAAAA!  No, really....

Seriously, when I was younger, my mother and father divorced.  I had the unique opportunity (though far more unique then, than it probably is NOW...) to live with both parents for an extended period of time.  I’ve been there.  I’ve seen the different methods, and been exposed to both mom-less and dad-less environments. 

So, that being said, what you will read in a moment is a purely subjective review and opinion, with a few facts being thrown in. 

There is a balance that having intimate role models brings to the table.  There is an inheent knowledge of that....even by divorced people who look for a “proper role model” for their child.  I know lots of divorced women, with kids, who make sure the kids are spending time with someone they percieve as a proper male role model, such as an uncle, or a grandfather.  However, the ability to find such a role model does not replace the fact that the trauma that beheading the role model creates.  Someone loses face....sorry, but that is the way it is.  The child(ren) are put with a primary and secondary caregiver, and there is the perception of a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’. Who loses more often?  The man, who is the species aggressor/defender, and not the nurturer.  That intimate learning role is reduced, inherently, and the ‘winner’, the nurturing mother/female role, is increased. 

In short, a divorced dad is usually put into a situation where his role in the child’s life is explicitly reduced.  That role cannot be replaced.  Since the majority of divorces are not because of abuse, many non-harmful fathers are being emasculated because of the desire for divorce.  This separation from the male role model, and the point of view of the father being ‘punished’ for no understandable reason....do you think that this isn’t going to send a signal to the child?  An inherent “Mother is better” type of message? 

Double that for the women who decide that a man is not important enough to marry, in order to have a child.  That’s worse...that state of being is not unlike elephant herds in Africa, where the females and young wander around the savannah, and the males are alone or in young adult herds.  Same for chimpanzees, where gangs of young male chimps rush around and terrorize other chimps, and other animals, for that manner.  To function in our society, and have the greatest chance of properly learning and following the needed social patterns and mores, we need to have the proper role models. 

Am I saying that there are no people from single-parent households that function and succeed in our society?  Of course not.  However, what I am saying is that it isn’t a great leap of common sense to see that the disruption of the two-parent family unit has something to do with the problems we have in our society. 

What is the point?  Well....

The point is that a lot of our social ills can be traced back to the “60’s Revolution”. 

WHAT? 

Look at the suicide rates, the divorce rates, and the single-parent family rate.  The vast increases in these indicies between 1960 and 1980 cannot be ignored.  Why would these things increase? What was the cause? 

Modern-day leftist liberalism was born in that time, and the bitterness it stokes in the people that decide to follow that thought process was created then as well.  Look....when you take God out of the public discourse, when you start working on seeing what is wrong with America, as opposed to what is right, and when you start looking for the government (be it ours or the UN) to solve the huge problems that blanket the world, you are inherently setting a negative process in order. 

It is no wonder why people are so damned bitter about Bush winning the election....they have no hope.  There is no positive thing they could see in federalism, success in Iraq, and the utter futility of the UN.  It is the leftists that tell people to look to satiating their urges, and forgetting conscience, and that is the central ideal of the 68-74 period, was it not? 

If it’s all about me, and I believe that my goal must be to make myself happy, then I automatically view everything that I do that involves other people through that litmus.  If I’m not happy in my marriage, then screw it!  If I’m not happy with men, I can have a kid on my own.  If I want to blow my load in the White House...well, hey, it feels good, so I’ll do it! 

If my life isn’t making me happy, and my thought process isn’t making it better, than I quit.  That’s the ultimate form of self-centeredness, in my opinion. 

What is the root cause of divorce?  It’s not escape from a harmful situation, even though that happens....it’s because one or the other doesn’t feel personally fulfilled in some way....sex, money, lifestyle....whatever.  That’s selfish, and harmful, both to the participants, and the children involved. 

A woman having a child out of wedlock ON PURPOSE is not thinking of the child as much as she is thinking of satiating her own need for a child.  “I want a child.” What is that all about?  Add to that the fact that this woman, who has decided that she wants a child (much like someone wants a new car, or plastic surgery), is far more apt to support abortion-on-demand for those who DON’T want a child, even though they want to screw someone. 

Well, sorry, people.  There are these things called “CONSEQUENCES”, they follow actions, and they can be good or bad. 

OK...rant over.  Another beer…