Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way
Epistle 13 – The Hula Hoop Craze
George Carlin believed man was created so he (or she) could create plastic. George was almost right. Man was created so he could create plastic so somebody could make a long tube so somebody else could stick two ends together in a 4-foot circle. And make a bloody fortune. It was called a Hula Hoop and every kid could make it go around his waste by wiggling her (or his) hips like a Hula dancer but without the grass skirt.
Except me. Some kids could even make them go around their arms and necks and knees. A few wiggles of my hips and the damn thing just lay stupidly around my ankles. That wouldn’t have been so bad except Hula Hoops were neon pink and everyone knew you didn’t just walk into the middle of it by mistake. Maybe I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have hips. Or a backside either. Actually, I was a stick figure with hair. But even so, once again I was not part of the mainstream, as my childhood chums went blithely down the sidewalk with a 4-foot plastic ring whirling about various parts of their anatomy.
So what’s my point, you ask? Where’s the emotional scarring in that? The Hula Hoop craze couldn’t have been that big a deal, could it?
Well, no, it wasn’t. But it was the first of many social trends from which I was cruelly excluded. Take the sexual revolution, for instance. Now there’s one trend a person could really get excited about, so to speak. Free love and all that. Women boldly inviting themselves to “your place or mine”. Where was I during all that? It must have been your place because it sure as hell wasn’t mine.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was the great economic boom when everybody got filthy rich. Except me. Why was I left out of that one? I’m just as greedy as the next guy. In fact, greed and lust were my strong points. How could I be a true Boomer and miss so much of the fabric of our generation?
What cosmic force shaped your destiny? Wealth? Lineage? An SAT score?
Mine was the Hula Hoop.
We Will Win
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