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I wombat - 2004-06-29 09:35:40
OK, you asked for it.

WOMBAT" the early years"

I was born into a 50's America suburban world, two and a half years after my only brother. We grew up running free among our contemporaries, while our parents tried on their standard roles. A near perfect, if disaffected, student through elementary school,I started to slack off in the 7th grade, found pot and to some extent alchohol in the 8th, and soon, other chemical disrtractions and enticements Learned, in an epiphany, that it was possible not to go to school, in the 9th grade. This was made easier by the distraction and pehaps beginning disintergration of my familly. By the beginning of the 11th grade I had stopped going to school, and within a couple of months I officailly dropped out. My plan(?): to be a guiter player (!). My parents separated, and I moved w/ my mom to Washington Heights, with some high hopes for urban life, I worked in my father's office, it sucked. Saved up, bought a VW Bus, lived in that for a while, parked outside of friend's houses on LI. Bus breaks down, moved in with freind's parents on LI got a girlfriend, stayed 10 months. Moved with girl to her sisters place in Fla., 2 Months. A month after my 18th birthday, the day Jimmy Carter won the election, bi-centenial 1976, I drove up to Brooklyn. And I haven't left.
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Paula - 2004-06-29 09:54:15
Thanks. And Brooklyn hopes you never leave. Wombat, I had no idea that you were in your 40s.
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Sharps - 2004-06-29 14:20:05
Taking a cue from Mr. Wombat, my life as seen through Presidential elections: I was born two months after JFK was inaugurated, and named after him (my birth certificate says "Jack"). I don't think I remember the assassination, or LBJ's election. Raised by solid lefty parents, I cried when Hubert Humphrey lost. I was teased for wearing a mildy psychedelic "McGovern '72" t-shirt to school in 11th grade in Dobbs Ferry NY, where 90% of the kids seemed to support Nixon. Nonetheless, I was denied any last laughs when he resigned in disgrace. My family moved to the D.C. suburbs in '76, and I recall being shocked when so many of my new school chums complained bitterly the morning after the election about Carter and all the Congress seats the GOP lost. They adored Nixon, still! In 1980, living in Ithaca NY I made the one-time supreme error of supporting the 3rd-party candidate, John Anderson (was I ever that young?). I've never fully bounced back from the 1-2 punch of Reagan election/Lennon assassination. Still hanging around Ithaca in '84, I remember thinking Ferraro was really cute but knowing they didn't have a chance. Living in Boston in '88, convinced that a Bush/Quayle ticket was utterly unelectable. Newly married and living on the upper west side, not quite trusting Clinton but actively campaigning for him anyway (I coordinated his healthcare surrogate speaker roster, which included the unknown J. Elders and H. Dean!). 1996, still UWS, still Clinton. 2000, divorced, now in Prospect Hgts Bklyn, stayed up till dawn watching the nightmare unfold. The people living under me came up and asked me to turn the TV down at around 3 am. In 2004 I think I'm supposed to play Freddy's election night, and will settle for nothing less than full homeland regime change with handover of sovereignty in January.
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No Lita - 2004-06-29 14:52:02
Um. Born in 1972 at Mount Sinai. "Heart of Gold" was #1 on the Billboard charts. Lived with my parents (and grandparents, in a neighboring apartment) in the Berkeley Towers in Woodside, Queens. We moved to Long Island in the summer of 1974, as Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" topped the pops. Tragedy struck in 1979 when my mom died. My ensuing catatonia was borne out to the soundtrack of Chic's inescapable #1 smash "Good Times." On June 28, 1980, my dad and my stepmom married, and I got an older brother and sister. Coming Up (Live at Glasgow) by Paul McCartney was #1 that day. My brother and sister taught me about the Beatles. When John Lennon was murdered my parents played "Imagine" during dinner and we all felt sad. I spent my teen years and college years studying and listening to Cousin Brucie. As an adult I developed new interests: guitars, boys, high heels. As a result, I have tripped and fallen from grace many times.
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Paula - 2004-06-29 15:02:42
This is great. More, people!

My ensuing catatonia was borne out to the soundtrack of Chic's inescapable #1 smash "Good Times."

I think you speak for us all.

I was born two months after JFK was inaugurated, and named after him

I didn't know that!
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Brooklyn of the Pacific - 2004-07-01 22:26:20
I was born in 1971, on Long Island, but typically tell people I was "born and raised" in my childhood home of Cleveland, because this is truer than the truth. Judging from the Super-8 home movies, the 70's were a relatively happy time for our young family. My mom was only 23 when I was born, my dad 26... they are both so baby-faced in the early films of my existence that it's almost heartbreaking. What were they doing playing house like that? I remember blizzard after blizzard -- snow drifts up to my 2nd story bedroom window. When I was six, we moved from urbia to suburbia, to a middle-class suburb without much character or personality, though it is achingly rich with memory when I have occasion to pass through it. Since we're talkin' politics, my parents were probably neutral-to-republican (though by '92 my father was supporting Clinton) and I recall playing Reagan in a mock-election in my 6th grade class, in 1980. Unlike real life, Carter beat me. I now wish it had gone the other way: Carter wins in real life & I win in my 6th grade class. I remember my mother crying when John Lennon died... but the most vivid national tragedy of my youth must be the space shuttle explosion. The '80s were a prolonged and vaguely hellish journey through puberty, adolescence, illness in the family, divorce and... well, there were some happy times, too, but they're harder to explain. College came as a breath of fresh air -- I found it so much easier to be on my own than to live at home. Learned how to play guitar, smoke pot, have sex... and began to wonder how I'd gotten through high school without these avocations. Clinton was the first president I voted for... (a thrilling victory followed by 8 years of downward spiraling disappointment. But I didn't really start to hate him until I read some excerpts from his disingenuous new tome. Voted Nader in 2000... Loved, loved, loved Nader until 2004, when he inanely threw his hat in the ring again. Now he's starting to seem like somebody's dotty uncle.) Back to the early 90's: If college was fresh air, moving to New York was an even fresher, breathier breath of fresh air... went to film school, much sitting around in Park Slope coffeeshops scribbling in notebooks, finished film school, made movie, dad died (september 11th 2000), trade center died (september 11th 2001), found girl to love, moved to Hawaii... am living here still. Further bulletins as events warrant.
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Brooklyn of the Pacific - 2004-07-12 21:17:39
Uh... I just did the math, and it must have been Reagan v. Mondale in '84, not Reagan v. Carter in '80.
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