70s-child: I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens, and high school girls with clear-skinned smiles who married young and then retired.

Friday, May 30, 2014

I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens, and high school girls with clear-skinned smiles who married young and then retired.

... and those of us with ravaged faces lacking in the social graces, desperately remained at home inventing lovers on the phone who called to say "come dance with me" and murmured vague obscenities. It isn't all it seems at seventeen.

Don't expect much out of me for a quarter:

As a kid, I never got an allowance. That's something my folks weren't into. They were very generous with me, I never lacked anything, and usually when I asked for something they'd get it for me, but an allowance just wasn't going to happen. In '76, just before my folks split up, dad decided to give me a "job". It was sometime in January and the weather was pretty brutal, so he told me he'd pay me a quarter if I'd open the garage door for him when he got home so he wouldn't have to get out of the car and open it himself. We lived in a split level house (a raised-ranch), and the garage was in the lower level. The very first night, I was watching TV and I heard him pull in and stop at the garage door. I didn't want to leave my show, and it was pretty cold down there in the garage, and I was rather warm and cozy and comfortable sitting in front of the tv, so I basically ignored him. He honked. He honked again. And again. And again. Finally I heard him open the car door, open the garage himself, pull into the garage and slam the door shut. The way he slammed the door, I could tell he was angry and that I was in trouble. He came upstairs and just looked at me. Let's just say I lost my job that night, which didn't really bother me. A QUARTER??? I didn't get out of BED for that kind of money...