Who you are is where you were when.

That was the title of something my mother made us watch through her employer. I think in the late seventies. It was corny when I was made to watch it, but I bet the premise of it stands. What of the time shaped you? What is shaping the youth of today? For me, we were poor so my mother never sent us to the doctor. Ever. I still today think a doctor is a quack only after my money. And it's hurt me.

 

I was raised by the blue light of the cathode ray nipple.

 

I was raised by parents who spent their childhood's under Nazi occupation. I am pathologically incapable of leaving food on my plate to this day.

 

My parents were never around emotionally (workaholic dad, social butterfly mom) so I'm pretty comfortable being alone and accepting that it's OK to be unloved.

 

Moving around a ton as a kid has had its benefits and drawbacks. It certainly carried over to my adulthood, because Gwen and I have been on the lam for the past 33 years.

I don't have a hometown as much as three "spheres of influence" that have played a major role in my life.

1. I'm a third-generation Detroiter who left in 1960 when I was 2 but because we went back to visit the grandparents and the cousins so often, I identify as a quasi-Michigander. I went to my first major league game at Tiger Stadium. The Detroit Zoo, the Bob-Lo Boat, Belle Isle, Hudson's, Sanders Chocolate, Vernors, Ernie Harwell and Ray Lane on the radio, the Lions on Thanksgiving Day, Bruce Martyn with the Red Wings on New Year's Eve. Those are my childhood memories. From the hospital where I was born to the place where my father grew up to the place where my great-grandparents and grandparents are buried is less than two miles apart. I can spell and pronounce Dequindre. John R is a street, not a person. I'm fluent in Mile Roads.

2. The Space Coast is where I stood with mom outside our house and watched Alan Shepard launched into space. It's where I watched Challenger implode as a news reporter 24 years later. It's where Mom and Dad have retired. It's one of the few places where I know all the roads and all the back ways to avoid the snowbirds, know exactly which restaurants I love, and still feel the pull of the tides and the smell of the seashore, even though I live a full day's drive away.

3. This one has faded the most quickly, mainly because it's changed even more than Detroit has. When we moved to the Bay Area in 1972, I immediately fell in love with the place. Going to school in the shadow of Mount Diablo. Taking the AC Transit bus or the BART train into The City for the afternoon. The A's, Giants, Raiders, Niners, Seals and Warriors. Day on the Green. Walnut Creek in the 1970s was a suburbian utopia, where we played street hockey and touch football and pickup baseball games far into the night -- or at least until the streetlights came on and Dad yelled our names from the garage door. No shortage of things to do or friends to share it with. It's the place to which I wanted desperately to return after college. And I came back again for our wedding, and three months later, to work while Gwen was still in school. But the allure of the place has diminished with time and distance. We were last there two falls ago, and Mount Diablo is as impressive as ever, but downtown is a mini Rodeo Drive and it no longer pulls at me. For the first time, I felt like a stranger in a familiar place.

I grew up painfully shy and socially distant, but going to 13 schools in 12 years can do that. I learned to be "the new kid" a lot. But the flip side of that is you never get pigeon-holed into a nickname or personality because everyone knows what you did when you were 12.

The best thing is knowing you can hit the road with the expectation that there's something you've never experienced before just waiting around the next bend. And there's nothing tying you down if you don't want it to. Embrace change.

 

Ouch. So sorry to hear. Sending some love your way.

 

lol thanks. It reads darker than it is.

But I am, of a time, when more and more mothers were everywhere but home when their kids were coming of age and could have used some parenting, and hugs.

In many ways that carried over. In many ... fucking ... ways.

 

You're absolutely on the money. I really think the "latchkey kid" generation has spawned a generation of adults who didn't get that parental guidance and are now trying to make it up as they go. Growing up, we were just as likely to be scolded by our friends' parents as our own if we got out of line. That might get the police called now!

I just don't understand the whole "competitive moms" thing at all. What is there to gain from the perception of being better than someone else at something that's unique for every individual? It's not like a baby comes with instruction manuals and routine maintenance.

 

I just told a kid that the other day. I always got aired out by people who weren't my parents.

Nobody thought anything of it. And you were still expected to shut the fuck up, and did.

 

Or they don't even try to get married and start a family. I'm never married, no kids (that I know of).

And if neither happens, well, so be it. Which is sad because as a kid into my teen years I wanted to get married and have kids.

But I'm 49 and pretty sure I'll die alone.