Whiskey sours were replaced by Boone's Farm Apple Wine, we discovered Bruce Springsteen, and the partying evolved from dancing the frug and spinnning the bottle to slothfully sprawling in someone's living room when parents were away. And, as much as my generation was reveling in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, we were torn between the desire to start a revolution and the compulsion to get into the college of our choice. (That doesn't seem to have changed much over the decades.) My older brother grew a beard and long hair and we protested the War in Vietnam by staying out of school one day. (Hmmm...don't quite see how that was effective.)
High school was filled with high drama. We spent a lot of time alternately being depressed about bad boyfriends, anxious about our futures, and industriously making plans about which concerts we were going to see, which albums we were going to buy, and which colleges we were going to apply to.
"Fleeing" was a big theme back then. We had just missed the era of trekking up to Woodstock or venturing out to Haight Ashbury. But we knew there was a wide world beyond Union Turnpike in Queens. I realized by my senior year that my classroom work was probably irrelevant to my future ability to earn a living, so I took advantage of a "real world" program and worked for credit my senior year and spent many of my college credits on "life experience" programs. (I interned for a Congressman -- before Monica Lewinsky tainted the meaning of that job title.) I can't exactly say that I entered the "real world," but I did feel more important and productive. I got to meet Ed Koch and Gerald Ford and Walter Mondale and Jacob Javits (the Senator, not the building). I even rode in the little train between the Rayburn Building in D.C. and the Capitol, and advised "my Congressman" how to vote on local issues. (Or, at least he humored me by pretending to listen to me.). I saw how politics worked from the inside (which is why I ultimately opted for a career in the public sector).
In addition to my stint in Washington, D.C. my late teen years were odd ones. It was my first major excursion off the East coast (and I discovered that in the Midwest people say "pop" rather than "soda" and they wait "in line" rather than "on line" and "sleep in" rather than "sleep late.") Ann Arbor was in a state of confusion, as tie-dye was being replaced by suits and ties. I started college in tattered jeans and ended it in cardigans. The animal house co-op I lived in (Xanadu) has since been converted back into a sorority house.
What did I learn between the ages of 16 and 20?
- If you did your school work well and on time and treated teachers with respect, you could get away with a lot. (I was always the "good girl," and therefore could get away easily with bad behavior.)
- Our parents were totally oblivious to how we spent our time outside of school. Was it denial? Or just a huge generation gap? Today's parents are just so much more connected to what their kids are up to -- perhaps because we were such wild children ourselves.
- The whole college application process is as demoralizing, stressful, and ridiculous today as it was back then. (But we didn't have tutors, college advisors, and obsessive parental involvement.)
- Great music lives on for many decades.
- Elected officials really can make a difference...it just takes a lot of time and belief.
- Working in a State mental hospital (an all male outpatient ward outside Detroit is great preparation for dealing with lots of other things in life and work. (Nothing scares me much now.)
- If you pick the right high school and college friends, they can be friends for life. We now sprawl and chat on Facebook, rather than a couch.
- There is no such thing as the "real world." It's what you make of it.
- Fleeing, on occasion, is still really important.
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