RITE OF PASSAGE - PART TEN - The Awakening

The Awakening...

Edited Jan. 18, 2011

This is a story that must be told. I really have no choice. Well I do, and I choose to share it.

Over the years, friends and co-workers have said - "you ought to write a book".

And yeah, I know.I should.

That was my original goal, in fact, in my early twenties. To write, become an author. Between 1974 and 1979 I wrote well over one million words, the number ascribed to what makes a hobbyist in writing different from a true writer. One million words...

I wrote in 6X9inch notebooks. I was always writing. One of the benefits from my job at the time, custodian at the Fine Arts Center was that I knew what work had to be done, so I made time in-between to go down to my office, and sit at my desk and write. Heck, my co-worker on the 3 to 11 shift worked on "projects" in our workshop at the time. Things like rubber band guns, birdhouses, doll-houses, and the like... that would be Oats, my work-partner, half Italian/half Apache Indian. He was quite the co-worker, as you'll discover.

In a previous post, a reader commented that I became who I became in large part due to the books I'd read. In general that would be true. But there's much more to the story.

In the entirety of my Blog I may repeat myself from time to time. Expect it. My blog is my story, it's me... so I'll repeat things, until I get it right. The best thing about being able to blog is being able to be a presence on the WWW. This is an age 50's fantasy, as when I was in my early 20's and this story was unfolding, there was no WWW (World Wide Web), nor even a hint such a day might come when such a thing - a medium of WW communication would exist. There was very little to any internet then, no e-mail, not even telephone answering machine, though all that changed quickly. Too quickly, really, for the average person to realize. Fact is, society was simply social back then, and there was little in the way of extensions, except for the opinion pages in news-papers.

My point - until approximately 1990, there was no WWW!!! We were strictly a social society. In 1975 when "my awakening" occurred, there weren't dating magazines, much in the way of support groups, and knowledge was dispensed in a limited number of ways - books, newspapers, magazines, word-of mouth, schools and colleges.

As a voracious reader since age 8, and experiences both very good and bad, I had a hunger for knowledge. My parents were the type that pushed, me, to become what they thought I should become. No blame there, they simply were the type to push. I got it, my sister got it. We both had our own ideas!

At age 16, as described in my last post, I smoked marijuana; yes, a common theme in my blog, and for good reason, the best reason, in that, it helped shape my life. And not in a bad way. Though some might initially be skeptical about that.

When you grow up struggling in school, with a C average as your norm, social issues that make you a target of bullies, limited self-awareness, and very little regard for life, nature and the environment, to suddenly "awaken" to all of that and more, to me, it's a miracle.

Well, I get ahead of myself. At age 16 I was pretty naive and mostly doing what was expected of me, or pretending.

So during a family vacation, in Sarasota, Florida, 1970, my sister and I enjoyed 10 day vacation days, with parties on the beach at night around a campfire. Groups of young people came from everywhere, and we drank beer, listened to music, smoked pot, and i'm sure aroused suspicion among the adult community. But we behaved, and the drinking age was 18 at the time, though I was only 16. Thing is - I didn't get stoned, just drunk, and every night we returned to the motel and simply went to sleep.

My point? "I didn't get stoned". I used pot, marijuana, "a drug", and nothing happened. Many people would agree the first time they may have tried it, nothing happened. That's the difference between and herb and a drug. Yet William Bennett, the 1980's Drug Czar, made the popular yet incorrect statement - "use it once and you're doomed..."

Yeah. "Doomed".

It was two years later when I used it again. In the meantime I remained a strict opponent to "drugs". While trying hard as I could to hold my liquor, which was impossible. Two beers and I was drunk. The 3rd and I got sick. Meanwhile, my friends counted the beers they drank at the keg-parties we had... the usual bravado was 20 - 35 beers... and then while I stayed where we camped, they went off driving, to pick up girls which they found walking, for sex. This was routine in the late 60's... and if one reads current police logs today, one would find that DUI is still one of the most common offenses police are involved in.

My failure to be able to hold my beer was a real setback, socially. I was shy as it was, and not being able to hang out with my friends, drive around drinking and picking up girls was quite a blow. Of course, looking back now, it was a Godsend. That wasn't me. I was the shy guy.

Today, most right-wing conservatives would look upon me and say this is exactly the person we are trying to save. Me. My friends today, would by now, todays standards, would have been arrested for DWI, many times over. Would have quite the rap-sheet (They don't). But me, DARE we say, at age 18 or 19, I discovered marijuana was much more that the Devil's Weed... Recall earlier I said I had very little awareness of myself, nature or others. All that changed.

Fortunately, there was no DARE at the time to intervene. There was considerable attention to illicit drug use, no doubt about that, but then, and until "my awakening" I would have been the perfect narc, except, I was straight as an arrow; I almost turned in my own sister when I discovered she used "drugs"...

I didn't. So, sometime around age 18/19 I found myself with two close friends, on an average summer night, with the one friend having a "dime-bag" of Panama Red, marijuana. I almost screamed out loud like he had a gun on me; but fortunately I thought twice. By then i was able to "question authority"... I'd had enough exposure to the real world to take an objective look at life. What i saw was a plant in a baggie... and I realized, here was a risk for experience in the real world that is being offered. And if there is a God, and I mean that, then here is an opportunity I have to make a decision on.

I chose to use it... my second time, and this time was different. This time the effects changed my life. I became aware of myself. I experienced the world in a way that suddenly i saw I wasn't an isolated, bullied, shy kid, but rather, everything I'd ever experienced, read, imagined fell into place. I saw myself as an "agent", not "a victim". I saw myself as an individual in society, and that I had choices to make on how to best become a part of my society. Beginning with, I wasn't a child anymore... I was an adult.

Next Time - "Follow Your Dreams..."