One thing that most healthy adolescents go through is a stage of rebellion. After a decade or more of being force fed the principles and mores of their parents, the adolescent needs the opportunity to spread his or her own wings, so to speak. Most kids do this by rejecting some or all of their parent's long held beliefs.
My adolescence came in the early to mid 70s. Most of my contemporaries rebelled against their stuffed shirt parents by growing long hair, wearing ratty clothes, getting high whenever possible and engaging in sexual encounters at very early ages. While I did grow my hair kind of long for about 7 months in junior high school, I didn't engage in most of the other typical activities of my cohorts. By the standards of the day, I was a very tame lad.
There was a natural reason for my tameness, though. Unlike other parents, mine were flaming liberals! My dad, a municipal court judge in Kansas City, MO, was known as the "hippie judge". He drove a VW Beetle plastered with self-adhesive hippie flowers and far left bumper stickers. He wore Nehru jackets to work. My mom wasn't far behind.
Faced with parents dabbling far off in left field, the only direction for me to rebel was the other way. At one point, I joined the ultra-conservative group, Youth for Christ (think: Moral Majority for Kids!) This phase didn't last very long as I quickly realized that a) I didn't really agree with their conservative views and b) These teen-age zealots bordered on dangerous!
Still, I was far more conservative in my youth than I am today at 51. In fact, the longer I live, the more radical I become. (Most people, it seems, move in the other direction.)
A good example of my more conservative self can be illustrated by the one rock concert I attended in mid-adolescence. My dad took me to see Credence Clearwater Revival (CCR) at the old Municipal Auditorium in downtown Kansas City. I was a fan of their music and I was really looking forward to the concert...that is until I got there.
Within the first hour, I was ready to leave. The music was so loud I couldn't understand any of the words to the songs. All around me were attendees taking drugs -- right out in the open. At one point, I vaguely remember a couple a few rows over engaging in a sex act. As a person who actually likes to hear the lyrics of songs being performed, a non-drug user and someone who is not big on public displays of affection, the experience pushed me way over the top. All I wanted was to get the hell out of there!!!
It took a lot of nagging and pleading to get my hippie dad to agree to leave this orgy of excess, but he finally relented. I never attended a rock concert again and I don't feel deprived at all.
Why would I? Though I'm far more radical today, in many ways, I'm still a square.
My adolescence came in the early to mid 70s. Most of my contemporaries rebelled against their stuffed shirt parents by growing long hair, wearing ratty clothes, getting high whenever possible and engaging in sexual encounters at very early ages. While I did grow my hair kind of long for about 7 months in junior high school, I didn't engage in most of the other typical activities of my cohorts. By the standards of the day, I was a very tame lad.
There was a natural reason for my tameness, though. Unlike other parents, mine were flaming liberals! My dad, a municipal court judge in Kansas City, MO, was known as the "hippie judge". He drove a VW Beetle plastered with self-adhesive hippie flowers and far left bumper stickers. He wore Nehru jackets to work. My mom wasn't far behind.
Faced with parents dabbling far off in left field, the only direction for me to rebel was the other way. At one point, I joined the ultra-conservative group, Youth for Christ (think: Moral Majority for Kids!) This phase didn't last very long as I quickly realized that a) I didn't really agree with their conservative views and b) These teen-age zealots bordered on dangerous!
Still, I was far more conservative in my youth than I am today at 51. In fact, the longer I live, the more radical I become. (Most people, it seems, move in the other direction.)
A good example of my more conservative self can be illustrated by the one rock concert I attended in mid-adolescence. My dad took me to see Credence Clearwater Revival (CCR) at the old Municipal Auditorium in downtown Kansas City. I was a fan of their music and I was really looking forward to the concert...that is until I got there.
Within the first hour, I was ready to leave. The music was so loud I couldn't understand any of the words to the songs. All around me were attendees taking drugs -- right out in the open. At one point, I vaguely remember a couple a few rows over engaging in a sex act. As a person who actually likes to hear the lyrics of songs being performed, a non-drug user and someone who is not big on public displays of affection, the experience pushed me way over the top. All I wanted was to get the hell out of there!!!
It took a lot of nagging and pleading to get my hippie dad to agree to leave this orgy of excess, but he finally relented. I never attended a rock concert again and I don't feel deprived at all.
Why would I? Though I'm far more radical today, in many ways, I'm still a square.
You're a cool "square" in my book.
ReplyDelete: )
"I was far more conservative in my youth than I am today... In fact, the longer I live, the more radical I become."
ReplyDeletethats certainly so in my case too- up until about 30 I was someplace near ultra-conservative- not as a rebellion to my folks, because they were pretty conservative too- but at about 30, I started to rebel against myself... and that very act began to make all the sense in the world...
you know, the "grasping" after, the ambition, the "what about me" thought... something saw that it had to stop- and that it had to end in me first... now at 48, I see that its not such an easy thing to do, but more and more imperative every time I look at it...
the square part of me still manifests in a way similar to how you describe- NOT a fan of crowds- or a fan of doing things "because everyone is doing it"
so, a "rebel square"?
that about suits, I think
We could well say it's hip to be square! :)
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