Search Results: shaggy hair

Every generation has "trademarks" which distinguish it from the preceding generation. When I was a young man (shortly after the Spanish-American War,) we wore long, shaggy hair and bell-bottom jeans. We adorned everything with peace symbols. Our rock and roll was radically different from the music of 10 years earlier. We said "man" very frequently, like "Hey, man, what's happening? Man, I'm so freaked out, man!" We said things like, "Do you have your shit all in one shoe?" and "Groovy, man, groovy!" And we thought that we were SO RADICALLY DIFFERENT from everything that preceded us!

The truth is that we were mostly like the preceding generation. Just as our parents had done, we rebelled in our teen years. We did not want to do any activities with our family. We went to great lengths to "prove" that we were different from "the old fogies." Some of us got obsessed with alcohol and drugs, some of us had a mild flirtation with alcohol and drugs, and some of us were as straight as an arrow. Did you know that people were having premarital sex 100 years ago? My generation did not invent premarital sex and neither did your generation!

Some of us "dropped out" and became "hippies;" the preceding generation called its dropouts "beatniks" and an even earlier generation had dubbed its dropouts "Bohemians." When we reached puberty, most of us were obsessed with the opposite sex. Guys constantly talked about girls with big boobs and getting laid. Girls wanted to have the coolest-looking boyfriend who was at least a little bit of a rebel. . . and he HAD to have a car. Girls started mentally planning their wedding by the time they were 8 or 9 years old. Guys started talking about what kind of car they wanted to buy when they got older. Does ANY of this sound familiar?

Of course you grew up with cell phones, PCs, tablets, social media, and we didn't. . . but those differences don't make us significantly different, do they?