My godson’s son’s birthday was last week. Riley turned 13 and those with kids know that years shrink to minutes when nostalgia raises its weepy head. My own daughter, The Indy Pie? She’s 22 and graduating from a snooty upstate New York college days away. I remember dropping her off first day of kindergarten. Driving home? I sobbed like a lonely housewife in front of the 2 o’clock soaps.
The novelist Joseph Heller penned a wonderful novel after “Catch 22.” “Something Happened” was about an ad exec, wondering where life went. Heller’s answer? Well — obviously. Something Happened. I was 13 a blink ago.
It was 1963, the year President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was simultaneously living in North Hollywood, Chatsworth and Santa Clarita. Of all things, I remember the sidewalk, the grains and lines in the cement, and people stumbling as if entranced. It was rare to see a man cry 62 years ago. They let us out of gym class early, lined us up and solemnly shared that the president had been shot. With that one detail, I thought JFK had just been wounded, later learning the president was dead. Grown men were sobbing, steadying themselves against buildings. People helped women who had collapsed to the ground and everywhere I walked was this overwhelming, tribal grief. It’s as if we all knew that the country would be irrevocably changed from that moment on.
And it became so.
I am whimsically torn to warn anyone turning 13 to go back, it’s a trap. On the other hand, it — life, with all its miracles — is such a wonderful adventure. You start getting a sense of who you are, only to learn, decades later, that’s not who you are. Science should invent a magic screen we see in eighth grade health class to warn us who to marry — or not — what jobs to avoid or not only how to balance a checking account but also how to build, if not wealth, then security. The first year of teenhood, we should be handed a roadmap with directions to happiness. I learned to shave around 13. There were no YouTube videos so my first attempt ended up with my face looking like I was Victim No. 4 in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Yet, somehow, I learned to shave.
Did you know that 1963 has been dubbed, “The Year Everything Happened?” It was not uncommon to see “Whites Only” signs on drinking fountains and restrooms. The civil rights march on Washington, D.C., happened that year, after police in Birmingham unleashed attack dogs and fire hoses on marchers. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech. Beatlemania had escaped England and the current younger generations have absolutely no idea what a profound cultural earthquake, from fashion to sexual mores, that was. Hair slowly overlapped ears on men, lapels would grow a yard wide and our mouths ovaled at rumors of The Topless Bathing Suit. Well. For women. The war in Vietnam was expanding. Coca-Cola introduced their first diet drink — Tab — and the Kingsmen recorded “Louie Louie.” The Equal Pay Act was law, meaning women were paid the same as men for the same job. Hundreds of thousands were killed that year, in wars, natural disasters, mine explosions and the usual man’s inhumanity to man. I had hepatitis, turned yellow and went from 145 pounds to 113 at 6 feet tall. Nice having a student body ID photo where you look like a POW.
Then there were girls. I’ve read that men reach their sexual prime as early as 13 — useful as wearing horse shoes instead of Converse basketball high tops. At 13, one of the first things I noticed? Besides budding womanly curves, beautiful hair and that some coeds kicked themselves in the ankles when they walked? Girl Students carried their books differently than Boy Students. Girls rested their study load on their forearm, in front of them. Boys carried books like a football, with one hand, resting on their hip. There began the ancient question I’ve yet to answer this lifetime: “What the heck do you do with a girl?” I’m guessing, in God’s infinite sense of humor, girls ask the same question about us guys.
Where was my forewarning film when I was 13? I’m far from the smartest guy on Earth, but, I’m a pretty sharp cookie. What would’ve it have hurt to have all the knowledge and wisdom I now allegedly possess and start applying it in eighth grade? I could’ve been a cop instead of a journalist and started buying SCV real estate in the 1970s. Should’ve kept my dependable albeit boring 1968 powder blue Ford Falcon instead of that cash pit hock-ptooey red, white and blue racing repair-prone Alfa Romeo. Should’ve rid myself of all the insane colors in my crayon box so I wouldn’t have made the same mistake, over and over and over again. And yet, those madman hues make me who I delightfully am, created that wicked, take-no-prisoners, no-one-can-defeat-me smile I proudly sport today.
Should’ve taken up golf instead of basketball. Should’ve said “yes” when someone offered me a 60-acre ranch in the middle of town for free, absolute zero, nada. Should’ve put $100 on the ’69 Mets, bought Apple stock first day it went public and kept that giant mounted elk’s head in my office that one of my future ex-wives demanded I remove.
A thousand rejections or not, I should’ve written more novels, just for the undying love of it and I’d keep each and every one of my friends, just the way they are.
I’ve seen Santa Clarita mutate from a sleepy ranch town to a sprawling and vanilla suburbia.
I wonder what my godson’s son, dear Riley Kokot, 13, will look back upon in the year 2087 when he is 75? Flying cars? Teleportation? Mind reading? The one-piece bathing suit?
Heavens me. In 2087? I’ll be 137 …
With more than 11,000 columns and 100-plus awards, Santa Clarita’s John Boston is the most prolific humorist/satirist in world history. Visit his bookstore online at johnlovesamerica.com/bookstore.
