Growing Up
I have a fascination with unrealistic cautionary tales about drugs aimed at young people. The type where somebody attmepts to fly or rip their skin off or some such nonsense.
I grew up in the 1980s. I was 7 when the decade began and 17 when it ended. Back then this type of thing was always getting shown on TV. I was totally naive about pretty much everything, drugs being very high (no pun intended) on that list. I remember my mom telling me about a guy she grew up with who "took drugs" and apparently now does nothing but sit on his mother's couch and stare vacantly forward. Hilarious!
Being a naive kid was an endless source of embarrassment for me. It was constantly used by other kids to put me down and keep me in my place. I always envied the older kids who seemed to have "done it all". They'd vandalize stuff, fight, steal, shit in the middle of the road, you name it. No one fucked with those guys. I wanted the respect the other kids gave them without having to...well, shit in the road.
By the time I was a teenager I had placed very high value on being street-smart and worldly. It was hard for me to achieve these things though, because my parents were pretty strict and I was scared of what they might do to me (probably not much, looking back). Most of the time I just had to fake it. Absorb as much info as possible from "bad kids" so I could at least know what evils were out there, even if I didn't partake in them myself. This was a defense mechanism I continued to use even after I really needed to. Probably as late as grade ten.
Most of the anti-drug propaganda I was exposed to in the 80s seems in retrospect to be aimed at (if not WRITTEN by) very naive people. That's why the following clips have special meaning for me. Does drug education today still assume kids live in some Leave It To Beaver world? I certainly hope not. The clips bring out really strong emotional reactions for me. They're mostly funny, but I think on a deeper level they remind me of my struggle to get out from behind mom and dad's blinders so that maybe I could finally be treated as an equal by my peers. Or maybe even looked up to.
Fucking enjoy!
Here's a very well-known actress, early in her career, doing an after school special. My brother and I have this running joke about youth-oriented TV shows where someone "takes drugs" and goes bonkers. We figure there is one particular drug causing all of the trouble: after-school-special acid. Or, after school acid for short. After school acid is any drug that makes you jump out a window, try to claw your own eyes out, etc.
Here's another gem, in three parts:
I grew up in the 1980s. I was 7 when the decade began and 17 when it ended. Back then this type of thing was always getting shown on TV. I was totally naive about pretty much everything, drugs being very high (no pun intended) on that list. I remember my mom telling me about a guy she grew up with who "took drugs" and apparently now does nothing but sit on his mother's couch and stare vacantly forward. Hilarious!
Being a naive kid was an endless source of embarrassment for me. It was constantly used by other kids to put me down and keep me in my place. I always envied the older kids who seemed to have "done it all". They'd vandalize stuff, fight, steal, shit in the middle of the road, you name it. No one fucked with those guys. I wanted the respect the other kids gave them without having to...well, shit in the road.
By the time I was a teenager I had placed very high value on being street-smart and worldly. It was hard for me to achieve these things though, because my parents were pretty strict and I was scared of what they might do to me (probably not much, looking back). Most of the time I just had to fake it. Absorb as much info as possible from "bad kids" so I could at least know what evils were out there, even if I didn't partake in them myself. This was a defense mechanism I continued to use even after I really needed to. Probably as late as grade ten.
Most of the anti-drug propaganda I was exposed to in the 80s seems in retrospect to be aimed at (if not WRITTEN by) very naive people. That's why the following clips have special meaning for me. Does drug education today still assume kids live in some Leave It To Beaver world? I certainly hope not. The clips bring out really strong emotional reactions for me. They're mostly funny, but I think on a deeper level they remind me of my struggle to get out from behind mom and dad's blinders so that maybe I could finally be treated as an equal by my peers. Or maybe even looked up to.
Fucking enjoy!
Here's a very well-known actress, early in her career, doing an after school special. My brother and I have this running joke about youth-oriented TV shows where someone "takes drugs" and goes bonkers. We figure there is one particular drug causing all of the trouble: after-school-special acid. Or, after school acid for short. After school acid is any drug that makes you jump out a window, try to claw your own eyes out, etc.
Here's another gem, in three parts:
posted by the baron ash von foolishness at 5:28 PM
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