I moved the stuff written here to beneath the post. I will have Three Word Wednesday up tonight.
This is the beginning point of my memoir though of course it’s not in these words
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“Who is everybody?” My father would ask that over and over again, through the years, when I would say that I wanted to do something because everybody was
I didn’t have the vocabulary or later the complete understanding to explain that “everybody was the masses that form every community. To be included in communities is a wonderful thing.
My father believed in building, leading and being parts of communities and yet he wanted his daughters to be staunch individualists when we were twelve.
“Who is everybody?” The friends that a twelve year old girl needs to feel complete. Twelve, if not done right is the age you will come back to through out life to make right. As you can only be twelve once, it doesn’t work.
I did think that my father was God when I was a child and into teenage years. I wanted to please him more than I wanted anything else, except to be accepted by the kids in my class. I couldn’t be until I was older as we moved on Halloween 1962 when I was in Seventh Grade, and I had a very mild form of Aspergers that prevented me from being as social I should have been.
I rejected friendly overtures. I shut down emotionally. Life was safer that way
My father had grown up on a block in East Harlem that seemed to be inhabited by both sides of his extended family and many from earliest memory friends. He had no idea what it was to be a twelve year old girl in a new richer neighborhood.
We moved fifteen miles but it could have been 3,000 for life in the mildly-affluent gateway to the North Shore, development houses of Long Island suburb was very different than life in the not-affluent-at-all garden apartments virtually in the North Shore.
My father couldn’t understand how the changes could affect me so much. In his eyes I was the brightest and the most beautiful who only needed to become perfect. Perfection is a state nobody can really achieve, and me less than most.
I survived those years and entered college in 1968, a most perfect year for somebody like me to begin a new life.
Everybody remembers the same events: the Tet Offensive, the racial riots, the assassinations that happened while I was still in high school, the rise of flower power from the summer of love in 1967. Everybody who lived through those days has their own story, for as each hand painted neon peace sign was just a bit different than the next, so was each person.
I have tried to pretend that my real life began later, but it began the year I moved out of my parents house and to the school just five very curvy miles down the road.
article about fashion bloggers isn’t what I’m about. Read about food bloggers in the New York Times. Love food and restaurants but I’m not about the next big place.
i strongly believe that blogging is too new to be be so conventional. People are using blogs to break into industries in a new way without acknowledging how inherently different blogging is.
Without publishing venues such as Grove Press or City Lights, people who could and should be published are being shafted.
People who use blogging as a pure PR venture come to blogging knowing what they want and reaping the rewards because they pick “hot” topics. I might have picked restaurant reviewing when I was 25 because I knew a lot more about restaurants than I did about life–or thought that I did.
I do believe that blogging’s an ideal medium to experiment with form, function and even fiction. It’s a place to experiment and play with verbiage in ways that might not be acceptable to msm, to me. It’s about finding a center
It’s said that I shamelessly self-promote among other things. This is the first time in my life I haven’t spent most of my time putting myself down so I will take that as a compliment.
I entered this contest Though I don’t have a chance in hell of winning, it felt great to have an assigned topic and 150 word limit. Press some button to enter the contest page.
The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t like bloggers Edwards hired. I really did think that they were among the most rational.
“I have tried to pretend that my real life began later, but it began the year I moved out of my parents house and to the school just five very curvy miles down the road”
i adore this line.
…for as each hand painted neon peace sign was just a bit different than the next, so was each person.
That painted such a vivid image, Pia. How do you continually come up with these lines?
I love reading your posts. You have a wonderful way of expressing your thoughts. Have a beautiul day!
This was typically pia, great stuff.
The “who is everybody” line is a parent’s staple.
yeah, ’68 was an important year–even for me coming along 7 years behind you–as a 5th/6th grader that fateful yet wonderful year, I was influenced and still am influenced.
I came by to wish you well on joining tag society and to thank you for the referral as well. I am surprised that Tag Society hasn’t already snapped your blog up, its awesome!
“twelve if not done right is the age you will come back to through out life to make it right”. Wow, so true and now I’m thinking back…Also love the line about your father wanting you to be stauch individualists at twelve. Great post. Oh, and good luck and mazal tov on entering the Contest.
Great and very insightful post, Pia, about the tortuous — and torturous — process of adolescence, particularly in our image- and status-conscious society.
Individualism serves us well later in life, as we assert our unique skills and strive for excellence. But, at the same time, there’s no forgetting the burning need we felt to be “the same” and accepted among even the lowest common denominator of our peers as young adults. You captured that very well.
I agree with you that all the categories people put blogs in will break down. The link to the contest didn’t work right for me, unless the prize was Harry Connick, Jr.
My main memory of 1968 is someone stoled my binky.