Tag Archives: adolescent

Decal

Decal: (n) a specially prepared paper bearing a design for transfer to wood, metal, glass, etc.

 The extra-large was not quite big enough.

It was the story of my adolescent life.

I was always just a little bigger than the size chart proposed, and the clothes-makers made available.

But the guys in the group had their hearts set on these bright yellow-gold, open-front sweaters that we could wear onstage whenever we actually found ourselves onstage, playing our music.

Like most high school bands, we talked and planned more than we set up and performed.

We practiced twice a week—for no gigs.

And every once in a while, we got the itch to buy a stage outfit—for no stages.

I had to admit that the sweater was absolutely one of the coolest things I’d ever seen in my life. It looked great on everybody else—whose bodies aligned in the righteous station of normal.

But it was small on me.

I didn’t care.

I decided to buy it along with the rest of my friends.

And suddenly we were the possessors of the coolest outfit to wear if a stage were ever made available.

Black pants. Black banlon turtlenecks. Gold sweaters.

A mother of one of the guys suggested that we needed some sort of decal on the sweater to set it apart as unique to us.

We didn’t know exactly what she meant, but we nodded in respect. Sensing our confusion, she gathered up the sweaters and said, “Give me a week and I’ll give you a surprise.”

We had no capacity to object.

Two weeks later, she handed us back our golden sweaters—except on the top left panel, near the shoulder, there was a B and a Q decal, which she had embroidered into the cloth.

Since we were called “The Blessings Quartet” it was pretty cool.

Actually, we were all shocked at how neat it looked and how groovy it was, considering it had been made by an adult.

It did not make my sweater fit better.

But to this day I believe that we started getting opportunities to perform because word of our gorgeous sweaters, with the decal, quickly spread throughout the surrounding masses.

 

Deadhead

Deadhead: (n) a person using a free pass

Just to be candid with you, when my children were growing up, I often called them “deadheads.”

It was that glassy-eyed look, which they would sport when arriving for breakfast, believing that if nothing was happening outside, then nothing need happen inside their own heads.

I taunted them about this profile because it does not disappear simply because you cease to be an adolescent.

For if you believe you’re going to respond to what is happening, but stay disconnected until you have confirmed there is activity afoot, you will not only fail to be ready for the opportunity, but will find yourself resentful that you weren’t given more time to prepare.

The secret to life is no secret.

It’s completely obvious.

The whole temperature of Planet Earth is geared to three different emotions, and our job is to know when to use them:

  1. Care
  2. Aware
  3. Dare

Often we arrive and somebody is already hurt. There’s pain in the air and suffering has made its mark. Being able to dip into a heart filled with grace and provide care is ushering heaven to Earth.

Sometimes there’s a chance to do something truly significant, but it is buried under inconvenience or arrives on a day when we have already determined that “we’re too busy.” Yet, for those who are aware and have tuned their ears, eyes and passions to possibility, these little treasures can carry us into the future and place us in great positions.

And we must realize there are occasions when fear, anger or bigotry has shut down the world around us, and it is time to step out of the box of conformity and do something unexpected—and provide immediate benefit.

Can we dare to do it?

So to avoid being a deadhead, you must travel with care, aware and dare tucked into your saddlebags, so you are ready to set up camp and start the fire.

Crochet

Crochet: (n) needlework done with a needle with a large hook at one end.

I know nothing about crochet.

Yet this, by the way, does not discourage my need to espouse.

I have never crocheted. I don’t think I’ve even seen someone crochet, though they could have been doing it incognito—because since I don’t know what it is, it could be done before my very eyes and fool me for sure.

But I do recall that I had a great-aunt who decided to crochet me a sweater, since I was so overweight that it was difficult to buy them in stores. (As you can see, the premise for the gift was already somewhat flawed.)

So she set out to do this sweater for me—and then, six months later it arrived in the mail.

It was huge, and the color of straw.

In other words, it wasn’t yellow, it wasn’t brown, and you couldn’t even call it brownish-yellow or yellowish-brown. Although it was brand new, the flatness of the color made it look like it had been worn for many generations. And even though it was very large, when I put it on it felt funny. It was like one shoulder was crocheted shorter than the other, and the left-arm length was about three inches too long. It also had no buttons—you know, in the front, so you could join it and turn it into a sweater instead of a human horse blanket.

But it was warm, and it was the first piece of clothing that had come my way for a while (since in my era there was no such thing as “big men’s shops.”)

I decided to wear it.

My friends tried to be nice, but finally, when the class clown walked in, unaware that everyone was attempting to be sensitive about my misshapen garment, he just burst into laughter, which caused everyone else to feel free to mock at will.

You would think that this would have cured me from wearing my crocheted sweater—but because it was mine, and warm, and because I refused to be intimidated by the foolish fashionistas, I ended up donning it quite frequently.

Matter of fact, I kept it for two years, which is quite remarkable for an adolescent.

I wore it until one day, in study hall, I was suffering from a severe head cold. I had no Kleenex and feared that my entire brain was ready to run out of my nose and into my mouth. I reached up with my sweater and ran it across my nose, trying to sop up unwelcomed mucous.

You can tell by my description of the event that my wheaty-colored sweater could not be worn again.

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Coagulant

Coagulate: (v) to change a fluid into a solid

Every once in a while, my silly little boy shows up to take over my manly frame.

For what I hope is a brief time, I start thinking like a child or an adolescent instead of taking advantage of the library of my journey.

One day I convinced myself I was having a heart attack. Of course, the more I considered that my heart was being attacked, the more abundantly symptoms leaped to the forefront to do their best imitation, trying to reinforce my foolishness.

Eventually I found it necessary to drive to the emergency room and check in.

Well, nobody questioned my contention because…well, because I’m fat. After all, that’s what fat people do. They eat too much cake and pizza and have heart attacks. Since I wasn’t eating, the possibility of cardiac arrest was available.

So they put me on a treatment while they tried to figure out what to do with me. One of the things they gave me was an anti-coagulant. This is a drug that keeps your blood from clotting. I didn’t think anything about it.

But when it turned out that I had mingled a case of indigestion with an anxiety attack to simulate a cardiac event, they sent me home. They offered one warning: “Keep in mind, if you cut yourself, it’ll be very difficult to stop the bleeding.”

I ignored them.

That evening when I went into my bathroom to shave, I did nick myself. I put a little piece of toilet paper on it, as gents often do, but it continued to bleed down my neck, over and over and over again.

I do not know when it eventually coagulated, because I had to lay down and wrap it in gauze.

Whatever they intended for that particular drug was very effective.

I could not coagulate.

So as it turns out, on that particular day my greatest danger was not having a heart attack, but rather, bleeding to death from shaving.

 

 

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Clampdown

Clampdown: (n) a severe or concerted attempt to suppress something.

I was a parent to six sons.

Three of them were my biological offspring, and for the other three, I was more or less a godfather (minus kissing the ring and slaughtering
my enemies).

Different experiences bring different quality. As a parent, you would love to pass on that sage wisdom to your children. It’s not really an issue of morality–it’s just that certain activities suck up more time, energy, heart and soul.

In other words, in the long run, they’re just not worth the payoff. For that reason, they’re rather obvious–but not to a fifteen year old kid.

  • Smoking looks cool until you start coughing.
  • Drinking may seem sophisticated until you vomit on your favorite pants.
  • Multiple sex partners almost seem ordained until your crotch starts to itch and you need a shot of penicillin.

So how is it possible to pass on to the growing organisms in your household how to avoid the stupidity of certain activities which not only fail to deliver in ultimate satisfaction, but certainly can be dangerous?

After conversations, pleadings and reasoning comes the possibility of clamping down.

Since your children will not remove themselves from temptation, you make a vain effort to take temptation far away from them. Of course, historically this only increases the fervent interest of the hapless adolescent.

I never drank, I never smoked, I never looked at a snapshot of porn–but all of my children, to some degree, have investigated these vices as if communing with a vicar.

I wish I could tell you that clamping down is an effective means of eliminating foolishness. But since being a fool is in the storehouse of every human being, whether we like it or not, he or she will probably pull it out at one time or another–and give it a spin.

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Blazer

Blazer: (n) a lightweight jacket, typically solid-colored

Dictionary B

In my high school days I was in a music group, a quartet of fellows who were very intrigued with the idea of being famous and not quite so intent on musicality.

We spent most of our rehearsals discussing the clothes we would wear on stage, and also whether we could get a good deal on Beatle Boots. It was very important.

Of these four young men, I was the chubbiest.

So whenever we went clothes shopping and they found something they really liked–something they thought was hot and cute, which would get the girls’ attention–they would discover that it didn’t come in “Porky.”

They pretended not to be disappointed–but I knew I was holding them back from being debonaire.

One day we came across some golden blazers.

They were so cool. Everyone tried one on, and each person looked stunning in his own adolescent, awkward way.

There was one extra-large in the blazer. I tried it on, and it covered most of the terrain of my belly but pinched me at the shoulders and looked a bit ridiculous when I stood in front of the mirror.

But the guys were so intent on purchasing the garment that they convinced me I was passable.

Back home, I tried it on again and again and again. Each time it looked worse and worse and worse–especially when I wore it with the accompanying black turtleneck.

I looked like a bumblebee with a glandular problem.

So I set out to address the situation by soaking my blazer in water and then going out to my mother’s clothesline in the back yard, hanging it up with pairs of boots dangling from the inseams, so as to stretch it.

Do you get the picture?

After it dried out, I discovered that it still failed to cover my midriff–but nearly reached to my knees.

For the next year and a half, whenever it was “golden blazer time,” the other guys looked nifty and keen–and I resembled a monk who had recently acquired a beer gut.

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Beatnik

Beatnik: (n) a young person in the 1950s and early 1960s belonging to a subculture associated with the beat generation.Dictionary B

Trends and fads have one thing in common: they have a commencement with no graduation, also having a beginning minus destination. For that reason, it’s difficult to assess their genesis, or comprehend their exodus.

But if you take a moment and think about it, every movement goes through three stages:

  1. Purity
  2. Parity
  3. Paltry

Our new ideas often begin with purity.

Like beatniks.

I believe the purpose of such a social awakening was to become more introspective and discover our inner selves and how we relate to the world around us.

Quite noble.

But for an idea to become popular, you have to be able to market it without promoting its more cerebral aspects. So eventually the beatnik generation sought parity by wearing black berets and turtlenecks. It was an easy way to identify a fellow beatnik.

Yes, often our greatest movements are shrunken to a simple fashion statement.

Then, once they became tired of wearing their costumes, they decided to just maintain the angst. Thus, the 1960s and 1970s.

We ended up with a paltry representation of self-realization–actually merely an adolescent temper tantrum to anything our parents did.

After all, there would have been no objection to the war in Vietnam if there weren’t a draft blowing young men into military service.

So how is it possible to keep the purity without insisting on parity and ending up with paltry?

I don’t know.

But I think it is the job of writers, who detour their material through the brain, to insist on considering such idealism.

 

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Beat

Beat: (n) a main accent or rhythmic unit in music or poetry.Dictionary B

If you really don’t know the difference between good and bad, it’s easy to mix them up. All you have to do is listen to the wrong zealot.

There are people who are convinced they are right, and they’re very willing to do questionable things to promote their cause.

When I was a young boy and rock and roll was equally as adolescent, I was told that the beat of the music was set to the human heart rate so as to excite us and build up a “jungle fever,” which would make us do uncontrollable actions of lust.

The person sharing this was so convinced of his truth that he wrote a book. I, being naive, was converted–until I fell under the spell of the passionate beat.

As I’ve gotten older, I have realized that music is supposed to stimulate us. Trying to eliminate stimulation for fear that it might turn into sexual impropriety is to place our emotions in a box, hoping to find a high shelf where they cannot be touched.

It’s ridiculous.

We need a beat.

My God, today our country needs a spiritual and emotional beat to set the tempo for intelligent conversation and change. One group is too slow; the other at times seems to have uncontrollable rapidity.

What is the beat of change?

It would only make sense that it should correspond with our hearts … since without them, we seem incapable of sensing our better nature.

 

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Banana

Banana: (n) a long curved fruit that grows in clusters and has soft pulpy flesh and yellow skin when ripe.Dictionary B

I have two thoughts that come to my mind when I consider banana: one is a sensation of flavor and the other is a source of inadequacy.

First of all, a banana is a tricky fruit because when it’s not quite ripe, it tastes kind of “green” but is very high in potassium. When it actually begins to rot and has the banana flavor we’re accustomed to, it is high in sugar and you might as well be eating a candy bar.

I like bananas.

However, I do have memories from high school, of sitting at a lunch table with friends, eating a banana and having them all giggle, because in their adolescent minds, it conjured the image of a penis.

Now, here’s where the inadequacy comes in: I’ve never seen or eaten a banana that is actually the size of a man’s penis.

It’s another elaborate ruse from the male of the species, contending that his particular endowment is enriched beyond reality.

Every time I look at a banana and consider myself, I quickly shake my head, hoping to rid my brain of the unnecessary comparison.

Now I know this is childish, and I also realize it’s foolish to watch a beautiful woman at a distance eating a banana, and have unclean thoughts come into your head.

But I am not going to be dishonest with you after all these months of writing and pretend that “a banana is just a banana.”

No–a banana has transforming powers, both in nutrition … and in naughty thoughts.

 

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Antifreeze

dictionary with letter AAntifreeze (n): a liquid typically based on ethanol, which can be added to water in a car’s radiator, to prevent the engine from freezing.

 

Poverty promotes poor decisions.

Aside from the obvious dangers of starvation, eviction and financial humiliation, having little money often causes one to cut corners, which leads to dumping all of your existing treasure on the ground in a big heap.

When I was nineteen years old, I purchased an old green van which had originally been used by the telephone company. It was well-worn, but I was pleased to get it for $300.

Living in Ohio at the time, I was confronted with the perils of winter. One of those obstacles was the issue of “winterizing” your vehicle by adding antifreeze to make sure that you did not literally ice over and destroy your engine.

Well, here’s the problem. Antifreeze cost $2.99 a gallon, and I would be required to purchase two such units to take care of my vehicle. That was nearly six dollars–the equivalent of the food budget for my young wife and myself for three days.

I heard through the grapevine (which, by the way, is also inhabited by some nuts) that you could add rubbing alcohol to your radiator and protect it from the cold just as easily. Now, a bottle of alcohol was only twenty-nine cents, and I felt that three of them would be sufficient to provide me with the necessary coverage.

So I poured my alcohol in. A very cold Ohio night transpired, and I rose in the morning to start my van. I decided to peek in the radiator to see how my plan had worked.

It was frozen solid.

In my late adolescent mind, I figured that the best way to unfreeze my radiator was to start my engine and let the car warm itself up. (It made sense at the time.)

After starting my vehicle, I realized that I had cracked the block.

I discovered the reason for antifreeze. It performs a function. Its six-dollar price tag saves you from spending several hundred dollars repairing your engine.

It was a very expensive mistake, and one that I never repeated again.

Sometimes you swallow a little expense … so you don’t choke on a larger lump.

 

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