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

[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