Fifty years later, what advice would a 65 year old man tell his 16 year old self
It's the final Wednesday of the month so it's time for ChicagoNow's Blogapalooz hour. Someone comes up with a topic and we get an hour to write about it. Tonight's topic "What are three pieces of advice you would give to your 16 year old self?"
I turned sixteen in 1968. It'll be 50 years in less than two weeks. FIFTY YEARS!!! Thinking back that far gives me a headache. But here are a few things I know now that would have helped me back then....maybe:
1. You aren't the only one who thought they were geeky. Oh man, did I want to be cool. I was insecure about everything. I wanted more friends...cooler friends. More girls...okay I'm not fooling anyone...any girl. JUST ONE!! And I thought I was the only one who felt that way...
WRONG!!!!
Far from it.
In this age of re-connection, you find out a lot about the people you once knew back in the day. Guess what, everyone had insecurities about something. Who knew? I was recently looking at a couple of my old yearbooks. Yeah, I was a pretty geeky looking kid in my teens. But ya know what? Almost everyone else was, too!!! Why didn't anyone tell me? Life would have been so much easier. PFFFT!
2. I would have taken school more seriously. I'm a pretty bright guy. I liked school in the early years. By early years, I mean K-5...and really only half of 5. I liked the reading, writing and arithmetic...well maybe not so much with the math. Lunch! RECESS!! Playing ball at recess!! Yeah, I liked all of that. But then I checked out.
Most kids check out on public school second semester of their senior year in high school. I started a little earlier...about seven years earlier. I have no idea why. I just lost interest.
I wonder how my life would have changed if I stayed involved? Would I have gone to a different college? Would I have different adult friends? Would my career choices have been different?
Who knows but I wish someone would have given me this advice. To be honest, they probably did but I wasn't listening.
3. I would have gone to Woodstock. If you're sixteen years old in May/June of 1969 and someone tells you there's going to be a music festival a few months later, you might want to think about going. If someone tells you it's going to be three days of legendary musicians, lots of girls and lots of smoking pot, you might want to think about going. Plus add in that after a while they were letting everyone in for free, you might want to think about going!
Add them all together and you should have done whatever possible to go to Woodstock.
Let's just focus on the music for now. Janis, Santana, The Who, The Dead, The Band, CS&N, Joe Cocker, Jefferson Airplane and this:
Gimme an F...Gimme a U...
Seriously, How could you miss that? Wouldn't you do anything possible to be there? Would it be worth it to be grounded for months to see this? YES!!! For every second of each month of the grounding.
So that's what this 65 year old man would tell his 16 year old self. I would also tell him that when at Woodstock, when Jimi Hendrix plays this, you can stand at attention or kneel in protest. Whatever works for you. Oh yeah, one more thing young Howie...stay away from the brown acid.