From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Not Your Father’s Automobile, Circa 1955

CD Review

The Rock and Roll Era: The‘50s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990

No question kids today grow up faster than we did back in the 1950s be-bop minute, the minute when the generation of ’68 began to twist and turn with the hard facts of life. The hard facts of life for boys being what to do about girls (and girls, or other combinations today, can chime in with their own sagas on the personal relationship heartache road). The thing consumed many an abandoned night trying figure out if Sherry this liked Willie that. Or if that glance from Lorraine meant what the Be-Bop Kid (my moniker for a while in middle school) though it meant when she passed him and looked back in the hallway between classes. Stuff like that. Purely kid’s stuff but the glue that held us together.

See a lot of stuff was from ignorance, willful ignorance brought to us by our parents, our churches and our school (acting as substitute parents, I won’t use the common Latin term because this is no dead language screed) to keep us in the dark about, well, sex, for openers. Nowadays every ten year old kid knows more real stuff about the subject (and probably as much unreal stuff as back in the day too) than you could shake a stick at. And I hope it helps them through teen angst and teen alienation time.

But I wonder about a certain period that period when for boys, some boys anyway, when girls turn from sticks to shapes. You know what I am talking about. When Jenny, who last year was nothing but a nuisance, a giggling nuisance chattering away with her girlfriends and making odd ball remarks about you being this or that, or maybe taking a hard punch at you just for looking at her the wrong way now looked kind of, well, interesting. And maybe she is taking her first blushed peeps at you too.

Here is where it all got really confusing though, that time when Jenny and her girlfriends invited you, you of all people, to her house for a party and you went, you trembling went. And as the evening wore on (maybe eight o’clock kid’s time late) the inevitable lights when out and the “petting” began. And then you would think about what old rock and rock king Chuck Berry meant when his latest single , Almost Grown, hit the airwaves (and was played a couple of times at said party). Jesus, kid’s today have it a hundred times easier. Right?