There But For The Grace Of God…….
Read Time:2 Minute, 39 Second
He that has been called “I am” grew angry with Man and created a great
chasm separating him from all the other creatures of the earth. As this
massive gulf opened, one creature, Dog, jumped across the divide to join
man in his exile. It is all this that they give us, and so much more.
-Inuit legend
In 1971, I had a gorgeous mane of chestnut brown hair – the envy of every girl I knew – that flowed to the small of my back. I wore codpiece bell-bottoms, skin tight up top, over-sized flairs on the bottom. If I stood with my legs together, I must have looked like I was wearing a ball-gown. Every shirt was either tie-dyed, or carried a slogan eviscerating family values.
My politics were rehashed phrases that I picked up from the Media – references to the Military Industrial Complex and Che Guevara, neither of which I really understood. I was a Buddhist (or so I thought) because it seemed cool, and chicks dug it.
We listened to Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and ELP. Our young, uneducated ears rejected both Brubeck and Beethoven. The Religious Right – and yes, they were around back then, too – decried our music as the work of Satan.
No, we didn’t bring guns to school, but we did bring switchblade knives, home made explosives, booze stolen from our parents – and Gen-Y certainly didn’t invent drugs. I spent most of my Junior High school days in a daze. By the way, Brenda Ann Spencer – the 16 year-old girl who shot up a San Diego Elementary school, only to be immortalized by the Boomtown Rats in their song, “I Don’t Like Mondays” – did so, way back in ’79.
So what’s my point? Wolves – a noble and beautiful creature – are social animals. They live in packs, and those packs have rules and social mores. The Alpha wolf knows that eventually, a dominant cub will challenge his authority. He’ll put the rebel down, but the youngster won’t give up and in the end, the elder wolf will cede his power. He knows this. Instinctively, he’s known it all his life. It is the nature of the young to rebel, and it is the nature of the old to fear the young.
When we grew out of our crazy adolescent periods, we told ourselves we were finding our own identity. It’s no different now. You don’t like Hip-hop or House Music? It’s OK. My parents didn’t like the Grateful Dead. There’s nothing wrong with the kids today, that wasn’t wrong with us as well.
When I see a kid with his pants falling down and his hat on backwards, I think – there but for the grace of God, go I.
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Actually if I forget to put my belt on, my jeans end up halfway down my ass – it’s so good to be young again! 😉
I’m no longer an ‘Alpha Wolf’ but I don’t mind – I’m too old to care anymore.
I’m not entirely sure why but I really adored this post.
I will probably come back and read it again – and again – and again.
Probably because it is so true.
David? You’ve hit a proverbial nail right on the head mate. Nice one.
Thank you. I’m honored.
I like the way words change their meanings occasionally. I gave up trying to keep up with the jargon of youth many years ago and just started saying, “is that good? No. OK” Still though I have to agree with an elderly black lady who told a young man to buy a belt because she didn’t want to see his damned under pants. Truthfully, I don’t understand these kids keep their pants from falling off. Maybe it is because they actually have a butt left.
If you watch some of them how they walk it’s funny. They kind of waddle like really pregnant women or penguins and have their knees staying together so they don’t lose the pants. The other look I have never liked, is the woman that wears low rise jeans and has her thong sticking out the top of them. either go commando or buy your jeans a little higher on the waist, no one wants to see yer dirty white thong that you think is way cool.
Well, it (fashion) gives us something to laugh at – so on that level, it’s a good thing.
[…] There But For The Grace Of God……. June 4, 2013 […]
Funny thing about that pants falling down thing. I was just thinking the other day, after seeing an idiot trying to hold his pants up and pay his breakfast bill at the same time: what an idiot.
It’s like the cap on backwards thing. It looks cute until age 4 or 5. Then it simple looks as though you’re too stupid to know how your cap goes.
People have always allowed fashion to be dictated by people that neither know or care about them. Is it any wonder that Oscar Wilde wrote, “Fashion, a form of ugliness so severe we must change it every six months.”
It seems that every generation must find styles in hair, clothes, music, and everything else that is guaranteed to piss off their parents.
The want to be non-conformist as long as they can conform to what is held to be “non-conformist” by their peers.
Exactly my point.
I know and obviously, I could not agree more. 😉