Do you remember the days when all
men were clean-shaven? It was kind of big thing for my dad to grow a
mustache in the 70s. It was really red, and I thought it was unnecessary,
or sometimes I thought that it was like having cup but no saucer from a set of
china. I wasn’t too fussed about it since it was his face, but I was
started wishing men would just stick with the standard bare face that I was
used to.
It was a loopy time for men from
my perspective. I mean really – leisure suits? Dad had one in
powder blue polyester. I liked the way the suit made his eyes blue and at
least he didn’t get his hair done in a permanent. That had to be clearly
the stupidest style I’ve ever seen. I’m all for curls when they happen in
a regular way, but perfect rows of chemically-induced curls isn’t manly, I
don’t care what they said about it at the time.
I was observing men going wild
with a suspicious and mistrustful eye. Dad bought a red motorcycle.
I was happy when he and Mom went away for weekend camping with other
misbehaving adults, but as a child of the 60s I wasn’t all that far from white
gloves at church. It was all well and good for college kids to smoke pot
and go to Grateful Dead concerts and protest wars, but I was in the first generation
of kids to watch so many parents divorce and I didn’t approve – it was
the destabilization of the world as I knew it.
While my parents stayed married,
divorce was going on all around me. My friends’ worlds crumbled, and
nobody knew we were supposed to say stuff like “it’s not your fault”. I
said stupid stuff like “isn’t it better that your mom moved out because now
there’s less yelling?” I don’t suppose I racked up any points for
appropriate sympathy.
I think it’s pretty safe to blame
facial hair for all of it. After all, look at those hippies and all the
chaos they created. It was only a matter of time before parents started
copying the very people they criticized for sloppiness. Women had the
pill and didn’t have to have endless babies. They could get out and
party. If their husbands didn’t want to play, then they could go out
without them. Women could work too, and with their own money, did they
even need a husband?
Then again, the husbands were
thinking that a lot of their wives weren’t any fun to go home to. They
needed male bonding at the bars, and if there were willing females there, so
much the better.
I’m currently older than my dad
ever was in this lifetime. Sometimes that surprises me because how can we
ever get older than a parent? My perspective of Dad is child to adult,
not adult to adult, or even older adult to younger adult. If years create
wisdom, I’m wiser now than he ever got to be, but I don't know if I feel all
that wise.
AND, I'm not smart enough to
figure out why comments are disappearing with Blogger lately. Does anybody know how to fix this? You can write me here if
you've got answers. Thanks!
