I Was a Teenage Hippie - PortlandBarFly.com
By Anne Marie DiStefano
In the movies, crazy things happen to teenagers: They turn into werewolves, vampire slayers and sometimes, they even use telekinesis to kill the entire senior class. In real life, similarly inexplicable high-school transformations do occur, although they're usually limited to wardrobe choices. In my case, I underwent a terrible, if mercifully brief metamorphosis into one of the Earth's most misbegotten creatures — I was a teenage hippie.
I had long hair with little braids in it. I walked around barefoot, making jingling noises with my gypsy anklet (purchased from a street vendor on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley). I also had a yin-yang charm bracelet made of Tibetan yak bone and some other jewelry involving macrame and driftwood. Oh God, I can still remember the feeling of that gauzy, Indian patterned skirt swirling around my ankles! The shimmy and shudder of riding in a VW! The smell of incense!
I sat in a circle with my friends and sang "Blowin' in the Wind." I spray-painted the word "war" underneath the word "stop" on stop signs. I went through a big tie-dying phase where I tie-dyed not only T-shirts, but also my long underwear, denim jacket and even — I'm sorry to say — my bed sheets. And there was a lot of flower-picking, back-rub-giving, and other crimes against nature.
In my defense, it was the 1980s, and Reagan ruled the world. I also want it on the record that I was not a Deadhead. The soundtrack was mostly Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and some Simon and Garfunkel. In my own mind, my atrocious taste went hand-in-hand with my political ideals: rudimentary beliefs like "nuclear holocaust is bad" and "cutting down every tree in the world might have unfortunate consequences." In my feebly developed brain, listening to folk music, wearing a bandana and giving five-minute-long hugs to pimply, shirtless teenage boys was somehow going to help me save the world.
And now I have the opposite problem. I steer clear of environmentalism altogether for fear that it will be viewed as a fashion statement. Or worse yet, if I start talking about protecting the watershed, I'll black out and come to lying on a batik bedspread, staring up at a yarn godseye, with a set of bongos lying next to me. Maybe it's throwing the baby out with the bath water, but hey, I can't be too careful. I might be a backslider.
In the movies, crazy things happen to teenagers: They turn into werewolves, vampire slayers and sometimes, they even use telekinesis to kill the entire senior class. In real life, similarly inexplicable high-school transformations do occur, although they're usually limited to wardrobe choices. In my case, I underwent a terrible, if mercifully brief metamorphosis into one of the Earth's most misbegotten creatures — I was a teenage hippie.
I had long hair with little braids in it. I walked around barefoot, making jingling noises with my gypsy anklet (purchased from a street vendor on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley). I also had a yin-yang charm bracelet made of Tibetan yak bone and some other jewelry involving macrame and driftwood. Oh God, I can still remember the feeling of that gauzy, Indian patterned skirt swirling around my ankles! The shimmy and shudder of riding in a VW! The smell of incense!
I sat in a circle with my friends and sang "Blowin' in the Wind." I spray-painted the word "war" underneath the word "stop" on stop signs. I went through a big tie-dying phase where I tie-dyed not only T-shirts, but also my long underwear, denim jacket and even — I'm sorry to say — my bed sheets. And there was a lot of flower-picking, back-rub-giving, and other crimes against nature.
In my defense, it was the 1980s, and Reagan ruled the world. I also want it on the record that I was not a Deadhead. The soundtrack was mostly Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and some Simon and Garfunkel. In my own mind, my atrocious taste went hand-in-hand with my political ideals: rudimentary beliefs like "nuclear holocaust is bad" and "cutting down every tree in the world might have unfortunate consequences." In my feebly developed brain, listening to folk music, wearing a bandana and giving five-minute-long hugs to pimply, shirtless teenage boys was somehow going to help me save the world.
And now I have the opposite problem. I steer clear of environmentalism altogether for fear that it will be viewed as a fashion statement. Or worse yet, if I start talking about protecting the watershed, I'll black out and come to lying on a batik bedspread, staring up at a yarn godseye, with a set of bongos lying next to me. Maybe it's throwing the baby out with the bath water, but hey, I can't be too careful. I might be a backslider.
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