JACK DRUGS SELLS OUT!
So 30 years ago this coming Sunday my mother popped me out of her body and into a sterile and frigid room deep in the heart of Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A., or so I've been told, having no recollection of the event myself. Yeah, a "milestone" of a birthday (or so Hallmark would have us believe) that I no longer fear nor dread. My youthful and nihilistic "I'll never make it to 30" prediction has nearly withered completely away, as has my youthful nihilism, appropriately enough. I guess wisdom is here.
Being a nostalgia whore (like the rest of my Gen X ilk. Slaves to the zeitgeist!), I've been thinking lately of birthdays past, whether eventful or uneventful. I mean, how can I forget my 4th birthday, when I paraded around all day in a baby blue clip-on bow tie and my newly received Mork From Ork rainbow suspenders? Or how about my 15th, when I got into my one and only high school fight? Or my 21st, which I wasted away by going to Chili's with my then-fiancee and culminated it with...a beer. A Miller Lite no less. But one birthday memory does nothing but confuse me. Makes me wonder if perhaps I've been implanted with a memory chip and there's a bug in the program somehow (which, in turn, makes me ponder "how do I know that I'm not a paranoid schizophrenic?"). But does anyone else in my Audience of Nil remember strange, non-trauma producing memories of years past that hold no logic whatsoever and that no one else around seems to remember?
It was my 6th birthday, that I know. My aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., came over to feed my attention-starved childhood mind with gifts, cake and ice cream. Gifts, cake and ice cream: life was so simple then. Christ. Anyway, after the gathering was over, I remember one of my aunts taking me to the parking lot of a strip center that was in town. It was nighttime at this point, and there were people running around maniacally laughing and screaming away. Joy and debauchery were definitely in the air as if it were an early-80s version of a freak-out. The one memory that sticks in my head is of a guy pushing a girl around in a shopping cart, running at top speed, and the girl laughing her probably coke-riddled head off. The next thing I remember is getting dropped off and walking to my bedroom where my parents had neatly stacked my gifts of the day on top of my toy chest. Everyone was asleep, so it must have been late. No one bothering to wait up for a 6 year-old returning from a mysterious and bizarre excursion. As far as I know, I've never enquired my family as to just what the hell went on, and 24 years later, I'm sure nobody remembers. But what the fuck was that?
I know what you might be thinking, if you've gotten this far into the entry, and it's the same thing that I would be thinking. But no, no molestation nor worshipping of dark lords. No drugging, no kidnapping and no other such pleasures such as those. My family just isn't that interesting. And no history of schizophrenic delusions, either, unless you count the ghost of Paul Lynde stopping by every once in a while to play checkers (and the bitch tries to cheat every damn time).
So what is it?
Being a nostalgia whore (like the rest of my Gen X ilk. Slaves to the zeitgeist!), I've been thinking lately of birthdays past, whether eventful or uneventful. I mean, how can I forget my 4th birthday, when I paraded around all day in a baby blue clip-on bow tie and my newly received Mork From Ork rainbow suspenders? Or how about my 15th, when I got into my one and only high school fight? Or my 21st, which I wasted away by going to Chili's with my then-fiancee and culminated it with...a beer. A Miller Lite no less. But one birthday memory does nothing but confuse me. Makes me wonder if perhaps I've been implanted with a memory chip and there's a bug in the program somehow (which, in turn, makes me ponder "how do I know that I'm not a paranoid schizophrenic?"). But does anyone else in my Audience of Nil remember strange, non-trauma producing memories of years past that hold no logic whatsoever and that no one else around seems to remember?
It was my 6th birthday, that I know. My aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., came over to feed my attention-starved childhood mind with gifts, cake and ice cream. Gifts, cake and ice cream: life was so simple then. Christ. Anyway, after the gathering was over, I remember one of my aunts taking me to the parking lot of a strip center that was in town. It was nighttime at this point, and there were people running around maniacally laughing and screaming away. Joy and debauchery were definitely in the air as if it were an early-80s version of a freak-out. The one memory that sticks in my head is of a guy pushing a girl around in a shopping cart, running at top speed, and the girl laughing her probably coke-riddled head off. The next thing I remember is getting dropped off and walking to my bedroom where my parents had neatly stacked my gifts of the day on top of my toy chest. Everyone was asleep, so it must have been late. No one bothering to wait up for a 6 year-old returning from a mysterious and bizarre excursion. As far as I know, I've never enquired my family as to just what the hell went on, and 24 years later, I'm sure nobody remembers. But what the fuck was that?
I know what you might be thinking, if you've gotten this far into the entry, and it's the same thing that I would be thinking. But no, no molestation nor worshipping of dark lords. No drugging, no kidnapping and no other such pleasures such as those. My family just isn't that interesting. And no history of schizophrenic delusions, either, unless you count the ghost of Paul Lynde stopping by every once in a while to play checkers (and the bitch tries to cheat every damn time).
So what is it?