Scary Autumn Memories – Soap on a Rope and Empty-handed Blouse Copping

Peggy’s late October party was like entering a subterranean vault permeated with English Leather cologne. Apparently, first time users hadn’t been schooled on how much of the fragrant substance to mete out, while others seemed equally clueless about English Leather’s new soap sensation, Soap on a Rope, and how much to rub when bathing.

The girls at this gathering were certain about one thing, however. Despite the plush rug, couch and love seat provided for everyone to neck on, no girl used them for fear of being labeled a slut. As a result, a line formed outside the furnace room, the hostess’s special sanctuary offering heat and privacy for all her party guest’s make-out sessions.

I could visualize it now – guys making out with girls, faces plastered together, hands groping for skin while mouths gasped for air in the hot steamy darkness. Unfortunately, my opportunity with Mary – my current heartthrob – was closer to fumbling in the shadows, bobbing for anything soft and round, ducking under protruding shelves, reaching over hot pipes, and getting only as far as copping a cold blouse before burning my back on a hot water line. So embarrassed, it wasn’t until the family beach vacation later that summer that I finally took off my shirt in public.

I retreated to the love seat to be on my own (still too young to appreciate the irony). This wasn’t a make-out party but a strike-out fest. I dreamed how the incident might have gone better. But even the rewrites were bad, now including a cast of thousands.

One rewrite had Mom in it, saying, “Be careful, Michael. Do you know what you’re doing?”

Another starred Mary, looking down on me from above, laughing.

A third scenario featured Dad walking in, looking for his golf clubs, then walking out.

The last one involved police storming in, asking if my parents knew where I was.

Was every intimate moment in my life going to be some sort of ménage a trois? A quatre? Cinq, six, sept?

I was coming to understand that when you went for the best women you never got anything at all. Love seemed so unreliable, so random, like picking flower petals and saying “she loves me, she loves me not,” or standing so long under mistletoe your feet cramped up, or desperately hoping some girl would pull the fruit loop off your shirt and ask you to go steady with her.

Every autumn for me is a mixed bag of whispers from the past. This memory is of the first make-out party I ever went to in sixth grade back in the 60’s, an excerpt from my memoir, Maybe Boomer, Chapter 10, “Girls.“

Election Fever

I adopted an alien son last week. He looks like us, talks like us, but has slightly protruding ears and blueish pallor to his skin. He’s amazingly bright, already knows our language and is a voracious reader. Unfortunately, he’s a fish out of water on Earth, in America, and particularly here in Santa Fe.

From just one week driving around town and watching TV at home with me, he’s observed a lot and rattles off questions like there’s no tomorrow left in our universe. At first, I wondered why all the questions, but realized – unlike me, an eighteen year citizen of Santa Fe – he is still seeing things for the very first time.

As we drove down St. Francis Drive yesterday, he asked, “What are all those signs sticking out of the ground over there?”

“Pictures of people running for political office in our upcoming elections.”

“Oh,” he said. “I have noticed some of these people are very attractive by Earth standards.”

“Well, yes, and sadly, some people vote solely on that criteria.”

“Why?”

“I suppose it’s because voters don’t know anything more about the candidates.”

“How could they not? I have seen 129 ads for political candidates on TV this week.”

“Right, but candidates don’t talk about themselves or the issues they stand for because they’d rather show how the other candidates have screwed up, whether they have or not.”

“Why do people believe these ads then?”

“I don’t really know.”

“When do we hear about what the candidates do stand for?”

“Sometimes in debates and sometimes in the newspapers.”

“Do people here read these newspapers?”

“Not so much.”

“Do they watch the TV?”

“Oh, yes. A lot.”

“Then people must know a tremendous amount about the candidates.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Even with the debates?”

“Well, there’s usually only a few of them, if that.”

“Then how do voters get to know the candidates and the issues, from these signs and all the political TV ads? I ask because New Mexico political candidates are spending 7.7 million on 177 hours of political ads for November’s Election Day.”

“How do you know that?”

“From these newspapers you speak of. I don’t understand who receives the 7.7 million dollars spent for TV and newspaper ads.”

“Advertising agencies mostly.”

“They must know a lot about the issues and what’s right for your planet. With all that money spent on campaigns, they must get a lot of people to vote.”

“No, because not everyone registers and only about half the voters get to the polls.”

“Then how are elections valid?”

“Look, that’s the way it works with elections and our two-party system.”

“You only have two parties, only two contrasting candidates?”

“Well, sometimes three, particularly if that third-party or voice has stumped for enough campaign contributions.”

“What would money have to do with it?”

“Oh ho-ho, let me tell you, without millions in fundraising, no one could win.”

“What is all this money spent on?”

“Advertising agencies, I suppose.”

“These advertising agencies seem very popular and powerful – smart, too. So, who makes these road signs of beautiful people?”

“Print shops, advertising agencies.”

My once stoic, alien son suddenly looked excited. He even rubbed his tiny hands together.

“Is anyone from an advertising agency running in these elections? I’d like to vote for him!”

“What? Even if you were old enough and an American citizen, you haven’t even heard the issues.”

“No one else has. I do not understand your logic.”

Remember This? New Math and the Old Wooden Desk

Let’s see. Let me figure this out.

How long have I sat in a chair-desk combo contraption like this one throughout my years of sixties public school education? (The answer, of course, is probably infinity, or something ethereal or endlessly mathematical like that.)

But to be sure, let’s try answering  the question by looking at one classroom subject – math. Based on the average 183-day academic year, and assuming I had a math class every day since first grade all the way through high school, that comes to an average of 183 hours times twelve years, or 2,196 hours end to end, or ninety-one and a half days without stop, or – worse yet – three months straight of summer vacation. Then, assuming there were six other periods a day I was strapped into one of these chairs – and I have no reason to doubt I wasn’t – that adds up to a total of 13,176 hours, or 550 days in a row, or an entire year and a half. My back hurts just thinking of all the hours spent in one of these straight back electric chairs.

But maybe it was worth it. As you can see, this baby boomer learned some pretty good math skills. Math came much easier than learning English, a subject I needed a whopping 2,214 hours to get me to read and write (2,196 hours of regular English class plus 18 extra hours of various after school remedial help). There’s no doubt reading was my biggest hurdle. For every hour teachers asked me to “Read quietly at your desk,” there was another wasted hour re-reading material, discovering I’d read passages three times already, or nodding off (attesting to reading’s serious narcotic effect if I nodded off in one of those hard chairs). In fact, even though libraries have far better chairs to sit in – even sofas! – I continue to get chills just walking into a library. Read more about my bibliophobia in the excerpt from chapter 6, “Reading,” from my memoir, “Maybe Boomer.”

 

Screen Test

I was walking a beautiful, chamisa-lined bike trail through my neighborhood the other day – vivid colors, pleasing odors, sounds of soaring birds everywhere.

Cutting across the trail, apparently en route from school to their homes, two young boys wandered together, saying little to each other, listening to the far more important sounds reverberating from the older boy’s handheld electronic device. “Gotta get you some weed / gotta get me some weed” was all I heard the singer rap through background music that sounded no finer than what a Fisher Price keyboard could produce. The youngest boy, about seven, looked up to the twelve-year-old and his video screen often. Both meandered on, heads glued to flashy images, ears attending solely to the song.

Later in the day, strolling through the vibrant Santa Fe Plaza filled with people and activity, I noticed a teen sitting on a bench by herself, immersed in her own world, never looking up from her iPhone screen. It was as if a fifteen foot bubble existed around her, keeping out a world of invaders who might enter her space.

Perhaps she was actually trying to connect, not disconnect from the world. It’s the way it’s done now, through a text, a Facebook message, a tweet, a whatever. In the act of finger digit communication, however, it seems everyone who is making these connections is alone while doing it. And perhaps the boys I saw walking through my neighborhood earlier were good friends. Yet, in their wordless comradeship, electronic images and words – some entertaining, some very dangerous – were bombarding their young existence.

And here I am right now, and have been for many hours, writing in the privacy of my own room. I have the convenience of my laptop to connect with my website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, sending my thoughts out to the entire world of people. Not only that, but I’m connected to my bank and a myriad of businesses, making my life easier to manage. Who really needs face time, anyway?

I had fifty years of non-tech living, fifty years of making contact “the old-fashioned” way through one-to-one friendships and relationships, assisted only by a telephone to call someone about getting together later. Call me a betweener, a man sandwiched like a floppy disc between toast and tablet, but I am concerned for those who have used modern technology their entire adult lives; even more the kids who have been raised on it. Electronic devices at first seem to expand, if not improve, connection with others. But kids and teens are all over these devices and I wonder about the quality of their connections made.

What  a mess kids of techie parents must be. Electronic gadgets will be all those kids ever know, right? And what about the Steve Jobs of the world? Their kids must have every gadget imaginable to use.

Not true. Steve Jobs didn’t help invent the most amazing technological devices because he was stupid. In a recent revealing New York Times article, author Nick Bilton writes how Jobs and other tech CEOs put serious restrictions on their kid’s use of technology, not vice versa. These entrepreneurs say they’ve seen the dangers of technology firsthand – the bullying from other kids, pornography, and kids becoming addicted to their devices. The CEOs agree children under ten are the most susceptible to addiction. Some CEOs don’t allow their children any gadgets during the week. Some don’t allow screens in the bedroom. Some allow unlimited gadget use so long as their kids are in the living room, but that’s all. And, perhaps not surprising at all, Jobs said he made it a point that every evening the family ate dinner together to discuss “books and a variety of things. No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer.” The tech industry giants have been smart enough to realize not only the rewards from technology, but the danger they present to kids and adults alike. But what about all those who not only use devices daily but rely on them for business as well as social and deeply human needs?

My downfall from electronic advancements was television. To this day, I wonder if I’ve learned just as much about life from watching characters and stories presented on a screen than I have from real life experiences. I’ve logged a lot of home television and movie house screen time. For the same reason today’s kids love to focus on a screen, so did I. So perhaps it’s only suitable I use an example from a movie to help amplify the issue of tech devices in our world.

Catching me totally off guard when I saw it five years ago, I was blown away by the film, “Disconnect.” It’s about kids and adults who are all attached to their cell phones and gadgets and can’t find the time to communicate with their families. There’s a couple who’s drawn into a dangerous situation when their secrets are exposed online. A widowed ex-cop struggles to raise a mischievous son who cyber-bullies a classmate. An ambitious journalist sees a career-making story in a teen that performs on an adult-only site. With so much technology at their fingertips to connect in today’s wired world, they are still strangers, all whose stories collide with explosive and sometimes tragic result.

This week, I feel I’ve witnessed a hollowness that real flesh and blood people in my very own neighborhood are feeling. In my gut, something feels wrong to me. I’m torn between two worlds, yet cling to the one I know best, the old-fashioned variety, all while realizing I’m writing tonight in the comfort – and isolation – of my private world, relying 100% on technology to get my message out.

Using a word check to review this writing, I’ve just been alerted I’ve used the word “connection” far too many times. But that’s not surprising. Human connection is, and always be, one of the greatest needs we have, in whatever form it takes. Yet, even in our modern world, it’s difficult to avoid fuzzy connections, both electronic and interpersonal.