The Remnants of My Misspent Youth

The Rem­nants of My Mis­spent Youth

This Week’s Prompt: Mis­spent Youth

~~ An entry in the Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life hosted by On the Hori­zon. ~~

When some­one ref­er­ences the ’70’s, I jok­ingly say, “Oh, my mis­spent youth!”

Yes, that’s a disco ball.

If you are snick­er­ing, it’s prob­a­bly for one of two rea­sons: Either you can’t believe that I am actu­ally that old and will­ing to admit it or you are in my age range and remem­ber­ing your own mis­spent youth … which prob­a­bly also involved disco.

I grad­u­ated from high school in 1974 so I was in col­lege in the mid to late 1970’s, the height of disco. Yes, I actu­ally wore Dan­skin cloth­ing, includ­ing the leo­tards with match­ing wrap-around skirts. And plat­form shoes, espe­cially Sbic­cas. We had bad perms, wore too much makeup, and wor­ried our par­ents reg­u­larly even though we were over 18 years of age.

To this day, if I hear old Vil­lage Peo­ple songs like “Y.M.C.A.” or “Macho Man” I gig­gle at the mem­o­ries of how we spent sev­eral hours get­ting dressed and arrived at the local clubs an hour or so early in order to take advan­tage of the free dance lessons that were offered before the disc jockey began spin­ning records. My kids cringe when I occa­sion­ally “bust a move,” espe­cially if I do it while stopped at a red light where some­one might rec­og­nize us.

In those days, men wore silly-looking poly­ester pants with no pock­ets or belt loops, shiny poly­ester shirts that they left half-unbuttoned in order to show off the hair on their chest (no man would ever con­sid­ered wax­ing his chest in those days!) and their gold chains. (Think Dan Ack­royd and Steve Mar­tin on clas­sic episodes of “Sat­ur­day Night Live.”)

Those days weren’t all care­free and joy­ous, however.

The world was a very dif­fer­ent place. For us late-era Baby Boomers who were try­ing to dis­cern what our futures should and would be like, it was, in many respects, a per­plex­ing and daunt­ing time.

True of every generation.

But I think those of us who reached adult­hood in the ’70’s, espe­cially women, found our­selves sand­wiched between the “Make Love, Not War” ’60’s and “Just Say ‘No’” ’80’s. We weren’t quite sure how to map out our lives because we did not want to be like our moth­ers, many of whom, like mine, did not fin­ish their edu­ca­tions and ended up being home­mak­ers. We wanted careers.

But we grew up play­ing with Bar­bie and Ken, taught to fan­ta­size about our dream wed­ding dress as we dressed Bar­bie in hers, as well as our hand­some future “Mr. Right” and adorable chil­dren. We were caught in the dichotomy. The role mod­els for how to “have it all” were nonex­is­tent, but the pres­sure to grow into “Super­women” was real and pal­pa­ble. (That’s a faux-engagement pose with my friend, Steven, Christ­mas 1975.)

For me, there was dis­so­nance between what I wanted to do with my life and what my par­ents wanted me to do with it. The fact that my only sib­ling — a sis­ter eight years older than me — was duti­ful, obe­di­ent, and never rebelled only com­pli­cated mat­ters. My par­ents fully expected and force­fully pres­sured me to fol­low her lead in all aspects of my life which, of course, assured that I actively strove to be as dif­fer­ent from her as pos­si­ble. Even today, I catch myself doing that.

So my mis­spent youth involved mov­ing 400 hun­dred miles away from home, all that disco danc­ing, a lot of par­ty­ing, a lot of dat­ing and, as my mother so elo­quently used to put it, “shack­ing up” a cou­ple of times, in addi­tion to one brief, ill-conceived mar­riage that began at the Sil­ver Bells Wed­ding Chapel in Las Vegas. I dropped in and out of col­lege a few times and held var­i­ous full-time jobs.

I was actu­ally “dis­owned” by my par­ents a few times. (I believe it was on a total of five occa­sions for var­i­ous offenses, if I recall cor­rectly.) My father, whom I have writ­ten about here with great affec­tion, was not so charm­ing when he stood in the mid­dle of the kitchen floor in this very house, yelling at me and call­ing me vile names, demand­ing that I “never darken [his] doorstep again” unless I changed my ways.

What makes me laugh about all of that now is how tame the things my friends and I were doing were in com­par­i­son not only with what other young adults were doing even in those days, but espe­cially the things you hear about today.

But my par­ents were caught up in the same cul­tural shifts. They sim­ply could not under­stand, from their van­tage point, how my con­tem­po­raries and I viewed the world or the chal­lenges we were fac­ing. They did not real­ize that the best thing they could have done was sim­ply back off, leave me alone, and let me find my own way. Eas­ily, their single-biggest error was their unre­lent­ing demand that I con­form to their way of per­ceiv­ing and inter­act­ing in the world. Our rela­tion­ship suf­fered dur­ing a few very rough years.

But even­tu­ally, as most par­ents and chil­dren do, we aged past all of that.

Do I regret any of the mis­ad­ven­tures I had in my mis­spent youth? Sure. I’d be lying if I denied that, if given the oppor­tu­nity, I would make many dif­fer­ent choices. But all of those expe­ri­ences are part of my jour­ney so far and it is a point­less waste of energy to regret what you have no power to change.

Instead, I focus on the good that came out of those expe­ri­ences, includ­ing the friend­ships made, many of which are still flour­ish­ing today.

Case in point: The photo above was taken dur­ing a party in my apart­ment in Fuller­ton, spring 1978. That’s my friend, Bar­bara, on the right with the Far­rah Fawcett-like hair­style. She was my room­mate in those days. She is also my sons’ god­mother and accom­pa­nied me on my trip to New York City this past March.

Folks like Bar­bara are bless­ings in my life. The fact that they “knew me when” and are still my friends today means that I don’t have to explain my life jour­ney to them — they have been walk­ing side by side with me dur­ing most of it.

Those rela­tion­ships are, as the com­mer­cial says, the “price­less” rem­nants and rewards of my mis­spent youth.

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