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They Said Zig, I Said Zagnut
In the late 1970s, my family moved to Great Neck, Long Island, a community in New York where the majority of the families were middle class, the houses had nice lawns, and several areas had no sidewalks. That was fine, because the cultured youths either biked, were bussed, or found other transportation to their activities. Why ever set your feet on the street and hustle yourself when you could get somebody else to do it?
I was 15 and full of angst, frustration, and unanswered questions. Teenagers are programmed to reject anything from their parents’ generation as trite or unimaginative. Recall the famous exchange with Marlon Brando’s character Johnny in The Wild One:
Mildred: Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
Johnny: Whadda you got?
Musician Ben Folds faced a similar situation a decade later, and poetically set it to music on the title track to his CD, Rockin’ the Suburbs:
I’m pissed off, but I’m too polite,
When people break in the McDonald’s line.
Mom and Dad you made me so uptight,
I’m gonna cuss on the mic tonight.
For me, I somehow laser-focused on a candy machine at the back of Levels, a youth center in the bowels of the Great Neck main library branch, a short bike ride from…
