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EXCERPT FROM THE
BOOK:
MOST PEOPLE TALK
BULLSHIT - One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
CHAPTER SEVEN
1960 – The Year I Turn
Four
This year my development had progress at an alarming rate
insofar as my mother was concerned. I was climbing and running,
and bothering her constantly to read to me. I was also beginning
to pickup bits and pieces and fragments of conversations from my
parents, our family and the television about issues beyond my
primitive needs. Some of these conversations of events begun to
sink into the Dos-programming platform of my bio-computer.
Unknown to me at the time, the Illuminati creates a profitable
scam and the Commonwealth and Reserve Banks are
created.
Racism rears it’s ugly head once again when four black
students in Greensboro, North Carolina began a sit-in at a
segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter. They were refused service
but they were allowed to stay at the counter. After their
sit-in, many similar nonviolent protests continued throughout
the Southern states continued and within six months the original
protesters are finally served lunch at the same Woolworth.
Even the entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. is not immured by such
bigotry when he married Swedish actress May Britt despite the
fact that interracial marriage was illegal in thirty-one states
in the U.S.
The folly of Vietnam begins as there is talk that the
U.S. will be sending thirty-five thousand American soldiers to
Vietnam.
The rise of the Kennedy Klan in politics and
Senator John F. Kennedy was on the campaign trail in West
Virginia, a question about his Catholic faith was asked and he
responded by stating, “I don’t think that my religion is
anyone’s business.
Senator John F. Kennedy is nominated by the Democratic National
Convention in Los Angeles, California to be their candidate for
President of the United States.
John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon engaged in the first
televised presidential debate. It is said that if television had
not been introduced, Richard Nixon would have won the presidency
hands down. On television Kennedy presented a calm, and
reasonable manner, while Nixon appeared to bluster and seemed
unbalanced. Kennedy’s television presence impressed my mother
and father.
During one of his debates for the presidency, Senator John F.
Kennedy first proposes the idea for the Peace Corps.
This year freedom from reproductive tyranny for women began when
the Food and Drug Administration approves the sale of birth
control pills and women around the country breathed a sigh of
relief that they finally had a say and control over their
bodies.
The
space race continued as more cold war machines of destruction –
(To keep us safe?) are created.
The King of rock - Elvis Presley returns from Germany after
serving military duty for the past two years.
The conception of Muhammod Ali happened this year when
Cassius Clay wins the gold medal in boxing at the Summer
Olympics in Rome.
These last four events I do remember vaguely from my mother
chatting with her friends as they watch TV while she held my
squirming body fast in her arms.
Nobel prizes were awarded
to Donald Arthur Glaser for Physics, Willard Frank Libby for
chemistry, Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Peter Brian Medawar
in Physiology or Medicine, Saint-John Perse in literature and
Albert John Luthuli for Peace. The scientific buffs were happy
that the method of carbon-14 dating was created and that the
bubble chamber was invented.
Mystical Awakening for
Mankind
Unbeknownst to me at the time a man by the name of Timothy Leary
traveled to Mexico and after several shots of tequila and
ingesting psilocybin mushrooms which gave him an experience that
was to drastically alter the course of his life and then the
life of millions of people since. Later in the year, he and a
fellow professor, Richard Alpert of Harvard University would
start a research program know as the Harvard Psilocybin Project.
Both Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert convinced Albert Hoffman a
research chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals to synthesize the
compounds responsible for initiating mystical experiences into
what is now know as LSD.
The new songs of this year were; El Paso by
Marty Robbins, (A song that would have special importance for me
thirteen years later), Running Bear by Johnny Preston,
Teen Angel by Mark Dinning, Stuck on You by Elvis
Presley, Cathy’s Clown by Everly Brothers, Everybody’s
Somebody’s Fool by Connie Francis, Alley-Oop by the
Hollywood Argyles, I’m Sorry by Brenda Lee, Itsy Bitsy
Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by Brian Hyland.
Exciting movies were
Ben-Hur
with Charlton Heston, Psycho, Operation Petticoat, Suddenly,
Last Summer, On the Beach, Solomon and Sheba, The Apartment,
From the Terrace, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Ocean 11.
Elmer Gantry with Burt Lancaster; and Butterfield 8
with Elizabeth Taylor.
New cool shows were
added to the popular ones of the year before and they were;
A new show added to the list, The Andy Griffith Show
starring Don Knotts, Andy Griffith, and Ron Howard as Opie,
Rawhide, Candid Camera, The Untouchables, The Jack Benny Show,
The Bugs Bunny Show, The Flintstones, Klondike, My Three Sons,
National Velvet, The Outlaws, Route 66, The Tall Man.
A
notable person born this year was:
Bob Paris - American bodybuilder and gay rights advocate and a
person of immense courage.
My parents Have Three Kids
Many people have pets to lavish their affections on. They love
to come home to dogs, cats, canaries, parrots, ponies, hamsters,
rabbits, and fish. People seem to need to care for something
other than themselves; To curl up on the couch with their cat,
to play catch with their dog, to hear their canaries sing, to
marvel their parrots mimicking others, ride and show off their
ponies, to feed their hamsters, rabbits and fish and look upon
them with wonder of their uniqueness.
People seem to have some reflexive instinctual need to love and
care for animals, to teach them various tricks for their
amusement, to be loved back with obsessive unconditional
devotion. Most people enjoy the control that they have over
their pet’s lives, indeed it may be the only time they have any
real sense of control over anything.
Perhaps it is because they do not feel adequate control over
their own lives.
Some people would ask, “Is it really so bad that people have
pets to fill an abyss within them, to facilitate therapy for
their emotional growth and fill that aching void within?”
You
may say, “What is the harm, it’s a beautiful symbiotic
relationship; the pet owners fill their needs and the pets are
cared for and given loving homes.” Yes that is true. This can be
mutually beneficial to both sides, as it has been for many
prisoners and elderly people.
So I say that in these scenarios, it is quite healthy, provided
of course that the animals are not subject to any abuse or
neglect.
However, a lot of people are not satisfied to care for only
pets. It is not enough for them to be loved back with obsessive
unconditional devotion from a dog, cat, or any other animal, so
they go to the next level and have children.
Children can provide and fill every need that adults get from
their pets, they can do this times a thousand-fold. You can curl
up with them on the couch, you can teach them to play catch and
retrieve, to sit, roll over, and heel. You can teach them to
sing, and will parrot you and other people. They can be paraded
about and shown as the finest pony.
The finer the pedigree the louder a parent can crow bragging
rights. Children can even learn to be somewhat self-reliant like
cats. In fact you can pretty much tell what kind of animal
person an adult is by the way the treat their children.
Children are also something to behold with wonder of their
uniqueness. They are just the most fascinating creatures. Yes,
they are needy and troublesome;
they
have to be fed, clothed, bathed, wiped and dried. They are in
fact, needing machines. It never stops. As babies; they are the
gift that keeps on shitting.
Nevertheless, the pleasure that they bring for many parents is
that children will move heaven and earth, for better or worse to
please their parents, but more accurately to be as much like
their parents as possible. Ironically that is often the cause of
many parents frustration. Their children listen more to what
they see and hear their parents do, than what their parents tell
them to do.
Yes, children are filled with a myriad of potentialities, and
lots of parents tell themselves that they are motivated to have
children so that their children can become more than they
were, to have a better life than them, to repair their own
short-comings and the disappointment in their lives by proxy.
Yes there are many reasons why people choose to have children
instead of pets.
My parents were not any different than most people and they also
wanted children. My mother’s needed to fill her aching void, to
escape a childhood of early emotional and physical deprivation,
to escape the memory a loving father’s life cut short, of an
alcoholic mother’s physical abuse, to escape the memory of
turnstile foster homes, the loneliness and homogeny of the
orphanage, the repulsive intrusions of adult male relatives who
sexually abused her, the neglect and the loneliness that
consumed her.
My mother fantasized about the perfect family, kids and a man
who was rugged, dashing, romantic, loving, and stable - forever
and ever until the end of time. She thought she found all of
those qualities in my father.
She
had many fantasies along with the deep well of love that she
wanted share with others, and to fill the deep well of her need
took the space of mindful planning. She also wanted to love, to
give, to repair her past by proxy.
It may sound that I am being a bit harsh. I am not. I am simply
sharing what my mother and others have shared with me. I am
simply sharing with you that my mother did what most people do
and for the same reasons…at least in general when it comes to
making a choice to have children.
My dad also chose to have kids instead of pets. My father’s
reasons were varied for having children. I think he really did
not give it much thought. Some of his reasons were mostly the
same as most adults, some quite different and even more
superficial than many adults.
So
there we were, one big happy family.
Our dad did loved us, we were in fact the tax-exempt apples of
his eye, his cherished dependents for which he could count on
for not only tax breaks from the government, but also, we were
living proof of his virility, proof that his stuff worked.
An added feature he liked was that people could see some of our
physical features mirrored with his. Even I was called
Vincenzo’s chip off the ole block.
We
also provided my dad with all sorts of amusement when he was
home on leave, like a group of affectionate clever monkeys.
We also provided our dad with a commonality with his friends,
dog and pony stories to be exchange.
Yes,
children can provide more than pets. Without malice, I simply
state that my mother would have done better to wait at least ten
or more years before having children. My father, bless his
heart, is not really suited to have children. He’s not half bad
with dogs and cats, however.
Again, I am not being hateful. Most people should either wait
longer to have kids or not have them at all. It is not entirely
their fault that their impatience compels them to have children
sooner than they should, if ever. No, it is mostly the fault of
their selfish DNA. Their DNA sets the initial programming and
for those human primates that suffer from less than optimal
child-rearing, coupled with the inexperience and naiveté’ of
youth is the cause that does not allow them the minimal
sentience that is required to make the best of plans. But never
mind all of this, the five of us made up a family and, ready or
not, we were loosed upon the cosmos.
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