Your Grandparents Were Badass

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My high school class of 1972 had a special reunion last weekend. It was called ’72 turns 70. Looking at the photos from the event I realized that our generation has become very different grandpas and grandmas. Blue curls were no where to be seen. All the women wore stylish doos and if I didn’t know better, no one in the crowd had gray hair. No comb overs on the men, either. They were either benefitting from Monoxidil or clean shaven.

The women wore short skirts and sandals, while the men wore the signature uniform of the seventies, blue jeans and graphic T’s. Motorcycles were abundant in the parking lot, parked next to electric cars of all types.

Don’t forget, we were the generation to bring you the first Earth Day. Remember that when you’re lecturing the grands on the environment, global warming and disposable packaging.

We protested the Vietnam War, holding universities captive to our demands while we took over their administrative offices. We were the kids who turned against the government when we believed them to be wrong. Seven out of ten of our fellow classmates were drafted into a hideous war America had no business participating in. Those who weren’t drafted burned recruiting offices to the ground and marched in the streets.

Those who were drafted were dropped off by troop transport ships to a place they previously couldn’t have found on a map and forced to kill or be killed in swampy jungles. Creedence Clearwater Revival songs, Fortunate Son and Run Through the Jungle were battle cries against an unjust war that took the lives of thousands of America’s youth.

In the seventies, there were no safe rooms for our warriors. The only way out was in a body bag or shredded on a helicopter evac.

We marched for equality of the races, equality of the sexes and burned our bras for equality of the boobs. Your grandma smoked Virginia Slims, wore mini-skirts, went bra-less and wore go-go boots. She wore her hair stick straight and long. She achieved that look by winding her hair on orange juice cans and then finished the look with a hot iron… not the hair type either.

Dippity Do kept our hair straight and Noxema kept our skin blemish-free. Black eyeliner was all the rage. The thicker the better. Bell bottoms were coming into style — also, the wider the better.

We rocked out at Woodstock, a muddy farm in the middle of upstate New York, where you could hear the likes of Janis Joplin, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Who, Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimmy Hendrix if you were willing to bathe in the mud and hold your pee for two straight days.

We opened our legs for Free Love and started Agri-communes, living naturally with organic vegetables and herbs.

Lots of herbs.

Our generation was constantly at odds with our parents, who came from the Greatest Generation, having lived through the Depression and at least one major World War. Our reply to their requests of being sensible was, “Don’t bring me down!”

We are now the older generation, having lived through the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and RFK, Vietnam, Kosovo, The First Gulf War, 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Pandemic and replacement of a sitting president due to dementia.

If we haven’t seen it with our own eyes or lived through it, someone from an earlier generation has told us about it. Don’t feel sorry for us old folks; given the right incentive, we will crush you like bugs.

Signed, One Badass Granny