Thursday, March 31, 2022

I am very grateful to have grown up in the 1950s. Why?

Because after that, the last 2 years don't seem so bad. There was a lot of blood, this is where I should start. It wasn't that people were dying a lot as I grew up it was more that a lot of them went to the hospital and I had to watch what sent them to the hospital. I luckily never saw anyone murdered, just get bloody a lot. But, people being punched in the face with teeth being knocked out was pretty normal. 

Like this was a perfectly normal experience. I think they call this Hazing or "Initiation" now.

Well. When you graduated Horace Mann Grade School in Glendale, California the 7th and 8th Graders from Roosevelt Junior High School Came with lipstick and put it on your face and if you were a girl they didn't just put it on your face they put it up your legs under your dress too.

I remember graduating that day from Grade school and bigger boys were there with lipstick that they put all over my face after they threw me to the ground. Not just one by the way but at least 5 of them. I was okay with them putting lipstick on my face that I would have to walk home with. If you fought them they were going to put you into the hospital. So, having lipstick on your face was a small sacrifice walking or riding your bike home instead of going to the hospital with a broken face or arm. So, I remember after they threw me to the ground I was lying on my back on the grass and the most beautiful girl in the school (also a 6th grade graduate was crying lying on the grass next to me. Then they put lipstick under her dress and all over her face. The boys were laughing sadistically while doing this while she cried in horror. I remember trying to reassure her it would all be over soon but I'm not really sure she ever got over this because she was so freaked out.

This is just one of 100 indignities we ALL had to endure back then.

Then that summer my parents moved because they didn't want me to be knifed or have to join "The Khaki Boys Gang because they wore beige pants and a white t-shirt and a switchblade knife in their black pointed toe ankle high boots that they wore. So, we moved away from Roosevelt Junior High school so I went to Woodrow Wilson Junior High instead.

What was Wilson like?

Well. it was a richer area than I lived in so then I had to deal with rich kids and if you are not rich you cannot break into their clicks because they have all been together since Kindergarten and pre-school. So, if you moved there "Forgetaboutit".

So, yes, then I was physically relatively safe I just couldn't make friends with the rich kids because people like myself were all shut out.

Anyway, I was always big for my age so at least kids my own age didn't pick on me unless they wanted me to punch them harder than they had ever been punched before. Because this is how I avoided fights.

If you think someone is going to kill you if you fight them people don't fight that person. This is what I realized fairly young and this works okay as long as you are not dealing with a gang or dangerous click that might kill you.

So, I guess what I'm saying here is the last 2 years of Covid and Putin were nothing to me compared to the hell everyone went through in public schools in the 1950s. 

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