Hubs and I were just talking about some of the neighborhood friends he grew up with.
Everyone had a nickname. And there were a bunch of them. Hubs was "Rev " because he wore a big gold cross. There was "Poet" who could whip up rhymes out of thin air. "Skinny" had the muscle mass of a Q-Tip.
And "Loser." He had been married seven times when I first met him. Thus his nickname. He was as unlucky in love as Elizabeth Taylor.
Loser was a typical man of the 70's. Drank, smoked and had long hair. They all had long hair including Hubs.
He owned an enormous Boa Constrictor. Darn thing scared me to death, but Loser talked me into holding it. I expected to be repulsed, but felt differently afterward. Six feet of smooth skin and rippling muscles. (My mother nearly fainted when I told her about it decades later.) As the snake slowly writhed about my shoulders, Loser quietly and patiently explained why it was so remarkable.
The man was incredibly well read. He had a BA from Boston College and knew his stuff-whatever the subject. But he never made anyone feel dumb if they weren't his educational equal. Loser loved to teach.
However I was always conflicted about what to do when the rolling papers came out. And they always did.
I was raised in a strict Methodist home where I was warned that anything sold in a Baggie on a street corner and those who smoked it should be avoided. As a result I gave Hub's friends a wide berth in the early days. I might sip a beer to appear sociable, but pot? All I could picture was what my folks would say if the house was raided and they had to fish me out of jail. The thought still makes me shudder.
I eventually realized that a bit of foolish indulgence was ok. It was more or less "if you can't beat em, join em." It was exciting to break the rules for a little while. It was part of our culture back then. It was part of a rite of passage into a more serious adult world where I would live out the remainder of my life.
Hubs told me tonight that Loser was in a rest home. My mouth flew open in shock.
"Why is he in a home?"
Hubs said that he was in his 70s and it was likely old age that put him there.
We celebrated Hub's 62nd birthday this evening.
I'm 54.
And it seems like only yesterday when a much younger Shelly held a big snake and realized that some of what she feared wasn't as scary as she thought.
A revealing retrospect. I believe his nickname was correct because, although he charmed the women and married easily, there was some flaw in his character that resulted in the divorces. Perhaps it was drug use. The 70s is too early to be in a rest home. Marijuana may have been the mild drug of use, but I have seen many intellectually gifted people who experimented and eventually got caught up in one drug or another thinking that they were above its affects. It's a trap.
I grew up earlier, when, in high school, the only marijuana was in a college town 30 miles away. The big thing was beer. While I liked almost every kind of wine and liquor, I never liked beer and refused it. My family was quite liberal and everyone drank beer and liquor at family get-togethers and at bars. It was considered a rite of passage. I watched many young men get sick on beer and waste their money. I also noticed that heavy drinkers were wife and girlfriend abusers, something I detested.
I stopped smoking when I was seven years old, determining that it was distasteful and a waste of my meager allowance money. Although I endured a lot of secondhand smoke from others who were addicted. I also bypassed marijuana when it was offered, primarily because it required me to smoke. Finally, when many of our graduate students smoked marijuana at the university I worked in overseeing research projects. I found these students to be very talkative and repetitive about their wonderful ideas that they seemed to have great trouble putting down on paper in a way that would get them grants to do real research other than their pipe dreams, often unfulfilled.
You don't have to be from a strict religious background--I'm an atheist--to avoid drugs. You just have to be intelligent enough to know that these wonderful stimulants can make you a loser.
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