- Not The Only One!
- Post # 67
- 23 Feb 23
- ” P F Fliers ”
- Howdy,
- I hope that this post finds you guys living the best life that you can. Today I want to transport us back to the late 60ties, to when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. If you remember the movie, ” Hot Tub Time Machine “, it would be something like that, but probably nothing so elaborate. Instead of a hot tub, we would probably be traveling back in time in something closer to an old dune buggy, but it is like, whatever gets us there ☺️☺️. And, yes, I’m seriously dating myself with this one here. So, back in the day , way before anyone ever thought about an Air Jordan, or any other of the well known high end athletic foot wear, be it Addis, Under Armor, Puma, Nike and you just throw your favorite in there as well, because there are just more well known brand name sneakers out there than you can shake a stick at, and whatever that means ☺️. This is the one area, where you can get straight men to be like women. We may own a pair or two of shoes, but when it comes to sneakers, we have to have some for every occasion , and color coordination is important ☺️☺️. When I was a kid growing up there were two acceptable choices if you were going to be cool and fit in under the peer pressure. The first was a pair of Chuck Taylor’s converse and they are still around today and in more rainbow colors than we had options for in days gone by. The second and more superior choice was a pair of P F Fliers, and I don’t know what happened to them, but they were the bomb, before the bomb was a thing. They had commercials on TV and these kicks were guaranteed to make you run faster and leap higher, than you could imagine or ever think possible. These were the shoes that put you in the same league as Superman and you could leap a tall building in a single bound ☺️☺️, boy were we gullible back in the day☺️. There was so much false or fake advertising in the sixties and seventies, and if you think not, can anyone tell me what ” magically delicious ” taste like?☺️☺️. The advertisements today are just as bad, but wrapped in much more slicker and well dressed presentations. I guess that the old stuff just didn’t hold up well, and it looks like something from a B movie, or it aged poorly because of technology or there is just to much information out there to believe all of the outlandish claims. Tennis shoes made a statement back then about status or lack of, and I guess the same is true today with people plopping down hundreds of dollars for something that looks nothing like a fine pair of leather Italian dream wear, you know the stuff made for fashion shows on runways. I think someone played a cruel trick on us, buy rebranding some old kicks as vintage and charging up to ten times the original purchase price, but I digress. Well,
- ,we live in the age of the knock off, you guys are familiar with this, it’s when you intentionally get something that resembles the real Mccoy, without the elaborate price tag. I mean it could be a Gucci purse, or a Rolex, that is not keeping very good time. This can also be incidental, sometimes people are duped . Did you see the one with the couple sitting Courtside at an NBA game, and the team’s mascot was walking around with a diamond tester that can tell if diamonds are real or not. The gentleman was trying to wave him off ,and his now ex fiance wanted it checked out, right there on the jumbo tron, for all to see, well let’s just say that it was extremely funny and embarrassing at the same time, but you can Google it ,it will live on forever ☺️☺️. Then there are the things that are so fake, that we have to make up a whole new word for it, you guys may be familiar with the word pleather, that’s right fake leather goods , something much more like plastic than leather. So, there are knock offs and of course now days we live in the age of the upgrade. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the latest iPhone or those plush seats in first class over being packed into coach, most of us enjoy the finer things in life, what is the cliche ? , wanting a Mercedes on a Chevy or Ford budget, and that’s not even so much a thing anymore with people now wanting to get a Lambo ☺️☺️. We can’t be talking about high end sports cars or an iPhone , because those things didn’t exist in the late 60ties, and that is where our dune buggy is still parked. Have you ever heard the saying that things could always be worse?, well of course you have. I told you what the two primo choices were for sneakers back then, but there was a third choice, I don’t remember what they were officially called , but the kids referred to them as” Bobos “. This is the equivalent to something that your parents may buy you off the rack at Wally World now . They look kind of genuine from a distance, but up close they weren’t fooling anyone.☺️. There is always that upon closer inspection thing, and all though the kids would sometimes take a permanent marker to the shoes, they just didn’t cut the mustard. I don’t believe that anyone in my audience, needs a refresher course on just how cruel kids can be at times. They have no problem on calling you out on your weight, four eyes if you wore glasses, train track teeth if you wore braces, and the list is just endless and at times they can be quite creative. So, this is how it went down one day, and isn’t it just always amazing how we can remember our bullies stories ☺️. So we were walking home from school one day and this girl , Janice Johnson, called me out on my Bobos, and the girl had jokes, way beyond, what you might think that a 2nd or 3rd grader might be capable of. I mean her material was on the same level as these professional comics who do these roast of other famous people, well at least that what it felt like to me anyway. After about a block or two, I had ,had enough of this future inspiring diva comic. I want to tell you that she sent me home in tears crying to my mother, but nope, that wasn’t my course or choice of action. I took the high road and pushed her ass down to the ground and told her to shut her pie hole, that’s right, can’t take crap from a girl ☺️☺️☺️. I know very little about physics, but I’m extremely familiar with every action is accompanied with a reaction, or should we say a consequence. So, this may have been my very first black eye, but I can assure you that I took the lesson to heart. Janice had an older brother, named Marcus, I can still remember this kid ,all these years later. While I only pushed her to the ground and yelled at her, her brother felt as if he needed to take things up a notch or two. ☺️☺️ I don’t believe that he was that much older than myself, but he was a really big kid for his age. The one thing I always remembered about him, wasn’t the black eye that he gave me, but how could a kid that big have absolutely zero athletic abilities in that big body of his☺️☺️. I may have got joked for wearing Bobos, but I was never the absolute last one picked when we were playing sports. I just figured that God had a sense of humor and was getting him back for giving me a black eye ☺️☺️☺️. Those were the good old days, when we handled our skirmishes with our fist, and we live to see another day. And as crazy as this may sound I remember people taking guns to school ,but it was in plain sight In a pickup truck, for hunting after school, I just guess we had a better hold on human life back in the day. As Paul Harvey would, say, let’s get to the rest of the story. When you go home with a black eye , you better have a really good excuse for that, and walking into a door wasn’t going to cut it. If you have kids around the age of my kids, and raised in a similar environment, you may be familiar with Veggie Tales. This is an Christian off shoot of Sesame Street and designed to teach valuable life lessons , I guess in a non-threatening manner. So they had this episode about the rumor mill. Anybody up for some juicy gossip? In my neighborhood it was called, bad news always travel fast, and yes faster than a speeding bullet☺️☺️. What I’m trying to say is , that the folks already knew how I had acquired my shiner. I don’t know when the whole thing started about snitches get stitches, but this clearly must have preceded that event☺️☺️. I have on occasions talked about being raised with tough love, so I didn’t walk into the house to any poor, dear, dear. I must have lived in some crazy warped period of time, because people were definitely unfamiliar with double jeopardy. I wasn’t expecting compassion and I received none, instead I got my very first stern talking to about how boys were not supposed to hit girls under any circumstances, and I mean we were talking zero tolerance. I couldn’t plead my case , about if they hit first, or if they were really super annoying and deserved it, it was a complete non negotiable subject. As a 2nd or 3rd grader, I got the lesson, and I want to say that it served me well. I want to say, but it seemed like one of those double standards, that I’ve never been to fond of, they can hit us, but we aren’t allowed to retaliate….hmm. My first wife must have been read in on this, because she took turns between me being a heavy bag to my head being a speed bag, those are both boxing terms and if you are unfamiliar, look them up. She was an angry woman and it would be years later, long after we had parted ways, that I would become aware of her emotional baggage. Again I digress. On that faithful day of acquiring my first shiner , and my mother reading me the riot act about how boys were bigger and stronger than girls, accompanied by the fact that sometimes girls emotions get the best of them, and they can act out without thinking. They can act out without thinking, but we are not allowed that luxury ,, again to the younger me, felt like a double standard, and we know where I stand with that. I spoke about a warped time period and the lack of awareness, when it came to double jeopardy. It seems like such a foreign concept, that I could be doing something that I probably shouldn’t have been, and probably have known better, have one of my neighbors or another random parent, give me corrective punitive discipline, and receive a second dose from my parents for bringing shame to the family by showing a lack of home training . Well, in this environment, I guess it makes perfect sense to be beat up by a girl and not being able to hit her back. ☺️☺️. I will go one better for you, any time a teacher sent something home or made a remark on a report card, I was guilty, there was no discussion about, whether the teacher was right or not. It was the complete opposite of our justice system, you were guilty, unless proven innocent, boy have we come a long way ,away from those days. My parents were definitely not interested in being my friend. They were more concerned about me becoming a responsible adult and some think the jury is still out on that one ☺️☺️. If nothing else, I greatly appreciate the lesson on not hitting the female persuasion. I from time to time talk about something known as a ” twofer”. This is like killing two birds with one stone, and as a parent myself I did pick up on the concept of teachable moments. I can also tell you , to this very day, that both of my kids absolutely hate this , as I did when I was in their shoes. The same will probably be said by their children down the road because you never stop being a parent regardless of how old they get, you just frame the lessons and conversations differently. We have all at some point as a kid probably had something set in front of us for a meal that we were less than pleased with. We got the whole conversation about starving children in Africa or China, which was followed by , could you send it to them,☺️☺️ which was usually followed by a slap to the back of the head, or go to bed without dinner, and depending on what exactly dinner was, possibly could have been a blessing. And as they like to say “There it is”, yep the blessing of having a meal and something to eat, which I was taking for granted. I know that some of you are thinking, what was the twofer? We can call this one the lesson of the Bobos, while I learned that boys weren’t to hit girls, my mom also spun it into , why give so much thought as to what other people thought about us. She said, that they aren’t doing anything for you, so why care about what they think. This is another one of those sticks and stones things, and I have said before, words carry weight, and at times can be more painful than broken bones, and last much longer in life. The point being, my mom was right, but what she left out was the fact that it would be a life long battle to not let yourself be gaged by others and their thoughts and opinions about you. So, I say, let them talk and judge , because that is what they do, and my mom’s thinking all these years later is still holding true, they aren’t doing a damn thing for me. They don’t put money in my pocket, food on the table, or anything else that requires a significant thought about what they think. I’m going to end this with an eternal lence or perspective and for any of you who are kids of the King, know that you are always loved, you are chosen, you are spoken for and that is something that you should give great thought too and be filled with gratitude about.
- Till Next Time ✌️, Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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