Early Normal Drop-out

Do you remember a time when life was simple? People like to say being a kid is simple, but I think that's bs. Maybe it gets simple in old age, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Kids have to deal with school, and in my case, public school in a small town... and my parents are, and were bohemians, so I just didn't "get" certain things.

I remember going to school in my pajamas in Kindergarten. I didn't feel like getting dressed, so I wore my nightie to school. It made perfect sense to me. It looked like a dress, except it had a big silkscreened moon on it. Once I got to school I quickly found out that was too "out there" for the rest of the kids. I remember this being my first indication that I didn't think like most kids... and neither did my parents think like most other parents.

Then there were the words the other kids used, like "faggot", and sentences like "I ain't seen...". I found this incredibly facinating. They used combinations of words in ways that sounded poetic, yet obviously crass. I remember studying these combinations so I could try them out... and I chose my mum to start with.

That was the best mistake I ever made. I used the "I ain't seen" combination, or something to that effect. I have to explain that my mum is one of the most easy going people I know... except for certain things like speech, which I found out directly after laying the "I ain't seen" bomb. She lost it like most parents do when kids swear (which I was aloud to do as long as I wasn't swearing at someone). In the quietest yell ever she hissed, "You will NEVER speak like that again, do you understand?"

So much for integration.

I quickly learnt not to fight the differences. They were from the other side of town, and I was from Camp road... where the hippie kids lived.

I was born to be an early normal drop-out.