What a dork! Off to the Junior Prom in the mid-1970’s, he has his whole life ahead of him, believing everyone more or less lives by the same template; get an education, find a girl, marry, then settle down raise children. Repeat in the next generation.
With this presumption on board I got to college, where I was informed I had missed some Copernicus Moment, some sea change in the culture that made my world flat while everyone else was living on a blue ball orbiting the sun and having a great time. All that preceded us was wrong I was told, and my adherence to the quaint values of the little village of the parish I served mass in as an alter boy were no longer valid.
I relate here the experience of practicing family law in the aftermath of the maelstrom known as the “sexual revolution”. What was supposed to be a new “freedom” instead lead to a whole lot of trouble. Just go to the paternity calendar and see how “free” these people appear. I mean, isn’t that what was promised in this Brave New World? Freedom?
There is a lot of social science written about the state of societal decay I briefly mention in this podcast. But perhaps music best serves as a testament for how far a field my expectations were from how it all really turned out.
I found the sheet music to Don McLean’s American Pie that I apparently have held on to since high school, when it was still a hit and on rapid replay on the local AM radio station, KRKO 1380 on your dial. His lyrics look back on the 1960’s after all American innocence died in a 1959 plane crash in Mason City Iowa along with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. The Big Bopper Richardson.
McClean’s message I now find as prescient, described the decades that came after, that time when we came of age and raised our children, who now generally do repeat. Yet there is so many who did not follow any framework of life, ran with their freedom, and they and the rest of America pays the price.
But I have a lot of good memories about our town I relate here. I think I preferred it when the world was flat.
Parental Discretion is Strongly Encouraged.
Lawyers Road Review 