Scary over-commenting and John/Rodney's childhood.

[icarus]

I'm done over-commenting in trinityofone's LJ, so she should feel no need to beat me off with a stick and take out a restraining order. But really, who could resist speculating on teenage boys and sex, as well as going into what being a preteen in the 70s was like?



John and Rodney are right around the age that, so long as their parents didn't divorce (divorce rates shot through the roof with no-fault divorces in the mid-70s):

a) Mom would have been home, and maybe had a part-time job during the school year (the ubiquitous Avon).

b) Kids were let loose all day. So long as they came home for meals and told mom where they were going, and waited 20 minutes before getting back into the pool, they just disappeared.

c) There were a lot of woods, open lots where you could play army-man (the guys who grew up queer loved to be the soldier who got injured and had to be 'helped' by the others), and boys had BB guns where they did stupid things (everyone has a BB gun story where they shot a friend, ooops).

d) Their parents were right on the border of the 60s. If John or Rodney's the oldest in the family, mom and dad were probably a little out there in some way (folk singers or beatniks who've settled down, though the pot was still around). If they're the youngest, they're parents would be total 1950s housewives.

e) Pot was everywhere. Cheech and Chong were "the Thing" for 12-year-olds.

f) Also, getting to stay up and watch Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live (which was funny back then) "I'm a wiiiiild and crazy Guy!" was definitely something the cool kids got to do.

g) Music-wise, Kiss was "in" for guys, while the conservative parents worried about their satanic style (I kid you not). Pink Floyd's "The Wall" had just come out and everyone was singing "Hey! Teachers! Leave us kids alone!" (the school marms hated it). The very cool guys were into AC/DC and would chant "He's got the biggest BALLS OF THEM ALL!" since being offensive is the M.O. of most 12-year-olds. Naturally, the gay and transvestite implications of AC/DC went right over their heads, they just thought "Back In Black" was the hottest thing ever. "Stairway To Heaven" was also new endlessly popular, definitely the stoner song and the Eagles' "Hotel California" was being played to death on the radio. I mean, to death. Everyone hated it. The tail end of Disco was just disappearing around the bend, with a few songs by Blondie like "Heart of Glass" and "Rapture."

h) Smoking in the bathroom was cool for the "bad" 12-year-olds, while pot was something the teenagers did. It was easy to get cigarettes, you could wheedle the drug-store clerk if they knew your mom smoked ("mom sent me to get them") or there were cigarette machines in the lobby of a lot of restaurants and bars. Health issues were not even considered because most kids' parents smoked.

i) There was an air of permissiveness about sex with weird stuff going on behind closed suburban doors. Even the kids knew not to "criticize" and to be "open-minded." And everyone knew someone in the neighborhood where things were getting a little weird (mostly wife-swapping was big). There were a lot of commercials about not being racist in certain areas hard-hit by the riots in the late 60s.

j) Streaking! Nudity was IN!

k) "Duck and Cover" drills at school in preparation for nuclear attack, which the smart ones (like Rodney) knew was completely inadequate. Everyone was fairly certain WWIII was going to happen at some point and were really anti-Russian. Most of the war games boys played were WWII however, because the Russians were a sensitive issue. No one wanted to play the Russians.

The generation split and weird parents (Rodney's folks were so ex-beatnik):

Let's see... there was a real generation gap between the parents. There could be only a five-year age difference between the adults, and their values would be completely changed. You knew you had one of the "new" generation beatnik parents when:

- They had wheat bread instead of white, and margarine instead of butter. Their kids said words like "nutrition." For normal families white Wonder bread and tuna casserole was just fine.

- The kid had a lot of rules no one else had. For example, the weird parents restricted the TV-time, or didn't like their kid to watch certain violent shows. (There was a lot of parental disapproval about "The Dukes of Hazzard" being gratitously violent so that was the usual off-limits show.)

- Mom had lots of ideas about ERA or the "Equal Rights Ammendment." She didn't go to PTA or the local church but she was in therapy. And talked about it. A lot.

- The parents fought a lot rather than keeping a calm plastic exterior.

- Their kids were totally disinterested in smoking/pot/what-have-you even though they had easy access to it. It was what their parents did, so they didn't care.

- Their kids were on their own a lot more than most kids, and so while they were given a lot more rules to follow, they had to self-mandate. It was ironic but true that the very parents who interfered most in their kids' lives were around the least and much more self-involved. Mostly these kids hung out at their friends' houses.

Let's see, other Norman Rockwell-but-not aspects of the late 70s... oh yes. The ice cream trucks were everywhere, and kids saw nothing wrong with buying ice cream in front of their friend if they could get money for ice cream and their friend couldn't. So buying ice cream for your buddy (especially if mom didn't prompt you?) was the height of generosity.

But really, the kids from "normal" families really felt sorry for the kids with the "weird" parents.

Other things that were different: benign neglect, aka, freedom

Kids either walked or got around on their bikes. Moms very often didn't have her own car, so if you couldn't get there by bike, you didn't go.

Besides, who wanted to go all the way back home to ask? You were miles away from home by 2pm.

The way kids got to wander off and spend time by themselves or in a pack of kids is really different. It was fairly common for a kid to come limping home with a sprained ankle, supported by a friend.

Mom would have to milk the story out of him about how he was playing on some abandoned rusted farm equipment they found in the woods. Mom would wrap his foot up (you only went to the hospital for serious injuries) and make a new rule about not playing on the rusted farm equipment, which everyone would ignore.

Oh, also? The new-fangled parents supported their kids getting into this new game called Dungeons & Dragons, as it was "imaginative" and "healthy." It was originally considered the PBS of childhood games (and very quickly became geek-heaven).

As for videogames, someone mentioned here... didn't have them until a little later, not at home. Except for Pong! which was the ultimate in skill. Most of the video games were in seedy arcades where a lot of the drug trafficking was done (I kid you not). Even the most permissive parents called them off-limits for the 12-year-olds. There was a lot of smoking and pot behind the arcades by the teenagers, but John and Rodney were a little young for that crowd.

By the time John/Rodney were 14, 15, Atari and Intellivision came out, with Donkey Kong and other such games. (The Beatnik families -- who all later bought Macs -- would have the Intellivision of course: better graphics, fewer games available.)

Since I'm over-commenting already, what the heck....

All the kids listened to records of Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby was a universal constant. Everyone had his records.

Bill Cosby: "Ice cream! We're gonna have Ice Cream! You know what I'm gonna do when I get that ice cream? I'm not gonna eat it. I'm gonna smear it. Alll over my body. And I'm gonna put the cherry... in my belly-button."

Why we as kids thought that belly-button line was so funny is beyond me.

/scary over-commenting

I left off the part about teenage boys and sex because at least that part was on-topic.


ETA: correction on "Stairway to Heaven" (courtesy of vulgarweed, yes, I did say new where it should actually be the song that wouldn't die).

ETA2: How could I neglect Pong? (courtesy of iibnf).

ETA3: Wow, someone must have linked to this from somewhere. Oh. Hell, I have comments to reply to, don't I? Ooops.

Have heard from a number of people (isiscolo, kelliem, emrinalexander among others) about Duck and Cover drills. A Seattle friend my age insists he had them. Myself and other people did not. Some in LJ had them in one area but not when they moved elsewhere.

It appears that Duck and Cover started losing ground in the late 60s and early 70s, but it really depended on where you lived. In many (most?) areas it was replaced by more generic (tornado, etc.) drills and regular television tests of "The Emergency Broadcast System."

We shall now return you to your regular programming.

Comments

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Music-wise, Kiss was "in" for guys, while the conservative parents worried about their satanic style (I kid you not). Pink Floyd's "The Wall" had just come out and everyone was singing "Hey! Teachers! Leave us kids alone!" (the school marms hated it). The very cool guys were into AC/DC and would chant "He's got the biggest BALLS OF THEM ALL!" since being offensive is the M.O. of most 12-year-olds. Naturally, the gay and transvestite implications of AC/DC went right over their heads, they just thought "Back In Black" was the hottest thing ever. "Stairway To Heaven" was also new, definitely the stoner song and the Eagles' "Hotel California" was being played to death on the radio. I mean, to death. Everyone cool hated it. The tail end of Disco was just disappearing around the bend, with a few songs by Blondie like "Heart of Glass" and "Rapture."

music pedant voice: "Stairway to Heaven" and "The Wall" were 10 years apart. And "Rapture" was actually early hip-hop.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yes, but we're talking about what was popular and what was playing endlessly on the radio.

Silly thing. The radio doesn't stop playing popular songs just because they're ten years old.

"Rapture" is only early hip-hop if you look at it from the point of view of hip-hop existing, which it didn't at the time; in other words you're looking at it retrospectively. You didn't really get either rap or hip-hop unless you lived in the inner city and that several years later.

Obviously, you weren't 12 in the late 70s.

Icarus

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Well, that's true. Hell, you still hear "Stairway to Heaven" on the radio a lot. It was always the last big slow dance at my school in junior high--well, either that or "Freebird" because we were Southerners. :)

Nah, I turned 12 in '81. Close but no cigar I guess. My problem is I was a music pedant even then. :P

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's always a music pedant, but they're usually listening to much cooler stuff than the rest of us. I mean, I only heard the Talking Heads when they hit the top ten with "Burning Down The House," nevermind "Psycho Killer." *rolls eyes*

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way, Blondie was popularized by the soundtrack of "American Gigalo," and so their later album -- including "Rapture" -- got a lot of summer airplay. It was sun-bathing song.

Blondie was popularly dismissed as "Disco" by the kids (regardless of the rest of their music) because of the disco beat of her smash-hit "Heart of Glass." The rep followed the band.

Kids are not music pendants, but you can get a feel for the kid-culture by the music they listened to.

Bill Cosby was also much earlier (this is pre-Cosby Show), but people grew up with his records and it was a sure-fire way to cross "generations," kid-wise.

Icarus

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I used to take down the Top 40 in a notebook every week with a whole selection of symbols to mark whether the song was moving up or down, whether it had ever been #1 or in the Top 10, whether I liked it or not...the worst was when I went away to summer camp for a couple weeks and I begged my mom to do it for me while I was gone, explained my elaborate system to her...and she did.

I remember hair-pully girl fights over who was better, Debbie Harry or Pat Benatar. And the three weeks my best friend wouldn't speak to me because we had a fight over whether Van Halen was real heavy metal or not. (He thought yes, I thought no.)

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

Pong! You left out Pong! Everyone totally had pong.

And Bill Cosby. Oh man, he totally cracked my shit up.

(Yes, I'm only a few months younger than Hewlett... ma ma ma ma maaaaaa generation).

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought about mentioning Pong. And Space Invaders (later).

I shall add.

Icarus

[amalthia]

it sounds like it must have been rather fun growing up in the 70s....I don't remember having that much permission to wonder about with my friends. but maybe girls had it different than boys....

I also never see kids playing outside anymore.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I spent a lot of it with full-fledged poison ivy and scratched knees from running through the woods. *g*

I was one of the girls, and we roamed pretty free on our bikes. Up to Twin Pines (the ice cream place), the other side of the lake. If we were going far we just had to tell one of our moms where we were going (we deliberately picked the most permissive mom to ask).

I also never see kids playing outside anymore.

Inside used to be a kind of prison you couldn't wait to escape -- unless you had a lot of books. But now kids have a lot more sedentary things to do.

Icarus

[amalthia]

I don't know, when I was in Alaska, I'd put my book in my bike basket along with a blanket and some coolaid, and find some shady spot to read outside away from teh house. :) I was outside a lot growing up too, rollerblading, playing at the park, bike riding, swimming...but then again I lived on a military base so I think my dad was okay with us roaming about as long as we were home for super and got our homework done.

Though I'll admit, I also spent a lot of afternoons on my bed reading books. :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

as long as we were home for super and got our homework done.

Exactly, only my parents didn't check up on my homework.

I had a special boulder that would become sun-warmed that I would sit on or lean against and read.

The furthest distance I regularly went was to the library. I'd get on my bike, go around the lake, cut through some trails in the forest, cross the fields where kids played motorcross, then to the local branch. :D But I was a bit freer than my friends who grew up in the city. I lived on the further edge of suburbia.

Icarus

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is one of the most interesting LJ posts I've read in a while. I wish people who are older than me or live in a different environment would talk more often about how things were!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Was it? Cool! I liked providing a ridiculous amount of unnecessary background for John/Rodney. :D You know, just for local color.

Icarus

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

You did duck and cover drills? Maybe it's a geographic thing, because we sure didn't in the Washington DC area. I associate that with the 60s (or possibly earlier, because I was in elementary school in the late 60s and we didn't do that).

I remember the early video games being in pizza parlors.

I never listened to Bill Cosby. But I don't think I knew who he was - my parents were the somewhat weird ones who restricted tv viewing and served organic vegetables and whole wheat bread.

Very much true that kids were on their own a lot, and that most moms were either stay-at-homes or divorcees.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My friends insist they did on the West Coast. I went to Waldorf, so we never had them. We were more likely to host Russian exchange students.

I remember the early video games being in pizza parlors.

Yep. Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Within a year they had full-fledged video arcades even in my little town -- and wow were they seedy.

I never listened to Bill Cosby. But I don't think I knew who he was - my parents were the somewhat weird ones who restricted tv viewing and served organic vegetables and whole wheat bread.

My mother was "one of those." But she waffled periodically, and we hung with our friends enough to actually watch TV, listen to Bill Cosby, etc., etc.

Then my step dad showed up and was (hilariously) appalled at our upbringing. "What's with this classical music? What do you mean you don't like potato chips? Records in German? It's that school she sends you to." He opened the floodgates of Americana.

Icarus

[merrycontrary.livejournal.com]

We did duck and cover in California, except we called them Earthquake Drills.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Aha! A Seattle local who's my age said they continued the Duck and Cover in this area.

In Michigan we had Tornado Drills. It never occurred to me that these were the same drills, teaching us how to cooperate in an emergency, with a different title slapped on.

Icarus

[teaphile.livejournal.com]

Oh, the memories. I'm a bit younger than that, but my sister's not, so I get the benefit of her teenhood as well. But we didn't have an ice-cream truck, damn it!

So true about the different kinds of parents. I had the ones stuck in the 50s, but some of my friends had the divorced beatniks.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend had the 1950s type, and most of my brother's friends did as well.

You know Rodney had the beatnik parents that didn't quite get divorced until he was older. Rodney has all the signs of that intrusive over-nurturing therapy-infested childhoods. :D That kid was an experiment in non-traditional parenting.

Icarus

[mkcs.livejournal.com]

That's a lot like my childhood. (I was born in '74 in New Zealand.) The only difference is that we stayed closer to home - there were some great vacant sections (would you call them vacant lots?) on my street full of shoulder-high fennel plants, long grass, and convolvulus. The only thing you missed is the cap guns - little gunpowder caps that you could explode by pounding them with rocks (we'd all lost the actual guns). And the music was different, except for Stairway, of course.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Hee! I loved reading this. I am just a bit older than they would be, okay, maybe 10 years older *g*), but I was a teen in the 70's so this all sounds mostly eerily familiar. :-)

[trill100.livejournal.com]

You know, I seem to have, despite being born in '87, grown up in the 70's... right down to the Pong. I guess my parents just kind of recycled my brother's childhood for me?

This was an awesome rundown of what their childhood/teenhoods would have been like. (and something that several fanfic writers could use a good review of. *g*) Kudos on the awesome work and over commenting goodness.

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, the memories! I was a wee bit younger (born 1970) and English, so no Duck and Cover, but so much of the rest of your post has resonance. *g*

I'm bookmarking this in my SGA resources folder. :D

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Oh, God. I just realized that I never responded to this because: 1) I suck, 2) life scooped me out and ate me with a spork, and 3) I suck. Oh, and also, I think I was kind of ashamed because this is all so much more interesting and rich than the story I was writing (and am kind of stuck on--crap). You should write it!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh no! I over-commented and killed your fic! *Icarus starts digging for it.* It's under here somewhere I'm sure.

Icarus

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

No, if anything, my crazy brain killed my fic. Also, I'm going to continue to insist (for a few more days/weeks, anyway) that it's not dead, it's just sleeping. =P

[emrinalexander.livejournal.com]

"Duck and Cover" drills at school in preparation for nuclear attack,

Um...I don't think so, not in the 1970's. I speak from experience *G* - I was 11 in 1970 - and that whole duck and cover routine was the 1950's (my partner is 8 years older than me and says they did that for a while when she was in elementary school before it was dropped).

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My friend from Seattle insists that he had to do Duck and Cover. I didn't. We just had tornado drills. But Seattle can be backward in tiny little ways.

Icarus

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

This is so cool! I feel all nostalgic now!

I'm a few years older than John and Rodney but this still sounds exactly like my childhood. Yes, we did "Duck 'n' Cover" drills in my elementary school in suburban Illinois in the late sixties, but after we moved to Colorado when I was in 5th grade (1968), we no longer did them. I suspect they were still going on in Illinois, and Boulder was just ahead of its time. (Not to mention there was a nuclear trigger factory 20 miles away so we knew we didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of surving a strike there.)

I would say that most of this probably pegs the era quite well.