Wednesday, November 25, 2009

WE PEGGED YOU AS A PROTESTOR

When he was a young boy his parents deprived him of television and sugary snacks and all of the good things America has to offer, and for that, he was grateful. His parents were hippies, in the true sense of the word, they had spent their 20's fighting for what they believed in, which is more than he could say for himself. Now they lived in the country and raised chickens and grew pot in the basement of a house they had built themselves. I mean, he did his best to protest the way thing were, but the modern world had too many distractions, and not enough unity. His parents never showed their disappointment but he could tell they were less than impressed with their son's achievements (or lack there of). It's not that he didn't buy into the whole idea of starting a movement, he did, probably more than his parents ever did but it was hard to pick the right fight. In the '60's they had it all set for them. There was a war and a draft, the fight to choose was obvious. The fight had a name. These days things were just to fucking obscure. There were too many fights of equal importance and everyone chose their own personal “favorite” which didn't allow for as much unity as there was in the '60's. He had a girlfriend and she was fully invested in the environmental movement. His parents would probably love her, but they had never met her and he was going to keep it that way. He was afraid his parents would convince her that he wasn't doing enough with his life and that she should move onto someone more politically active. (And he really loved her, so that just wouldn't work for him.) He wrote angry poems and stories in secret, his own private protest against the modern world. Not everyone was born a fighter, he thought. Some of us were made just to float around and try to find the good things. His parents would never understand that, they considered protesting a part of one's civic duty. So he did his best to find his fight, but all he ever came up with was pages and pages of words. Perhaps, if he gathered enough of these pages, he could do something dramatic with them, like light them on fire. Maybe outside his parents house. See? He could protest with the best of 'em.