A simpler life

[scaredyclassic]

the roach clip is kind of interesting, now that you mention it. I had a roach clip but i think it was just a clip left over from when we were into shooting estes model rockets, the little clips that held the igniter to the scarily powerful little engines

. The roach clip is a relic from a time when people were a bit poorer, and less wasteful, the 70s version of depression era thriftiness. smoking down to the very very end of the joint without burning your fingers,

heck, I remember inhaling hot embers trying to get the last tiny bit of joint, or saving roaches for a rainy day and making another joint out of old burnt tarry roaches. a little 35mm film canister filled with roaches.

now where are the 35mm film canisters filled with roaches, I ask you? WHERE ARE THEY???

the answer is they are no more, just as no one insulates their walls with newspaper like they did in the 30s.

Now, our decadent society has become so utterly wealthy and extravagant that they don’t generally try to extract every last tiny bit of smoke from a roach. I recall a guy on 8th street a few blocks from my house selling weed to kids—probably an offense for which he could’ve gotten lot of jail time.

wait, no, he was on 9th st. where is he today? i hope he’s well, Bless his soul, serving that desperate market a t great personal risk to himself, helping us establish ourselves as little pseudo nonconformists.

We paid him $5.00 for a little tiny bag, I guess a joint or two? Crappy weed. Brown and dry and seeds. Nice little manila mini envelope though, I can remember its small fatness, the beauty of holding that illicit little parcel…well worth 5 bucks.

I can see minimum wage was $2.30 then, adjusted for inflation about 9.50. so I guess that was a 20.00 plus baggie at todays minimum wage! expensive, but, our options were very very limited in 7th grade, until some people’s older brothers hooked us up.

I should’ve just gone in to the candy store there and put all the money into comic books. What a waste.

But yeah, if it was 20 bucks, for that little bitty bag it’d be worth getting a 30 cent roach clip to get every last bit of Mexican brick weed goodness out of that little bitty joint.

Kids today, they don’t understand the value of things; they go their weed delivered to their homes off billboard signs they call, get special deals for new customers, probably get a half ounce of 10x better weed for that price. these kids dont know what it was like to struggle for that one skinny joint, spoiled brats. no searching for a connection; just buy it like it was starbucks coffee.

Probably just toss their roaches in the garbage; sad really, the loss of the roach clip. also, it’s pretty common now for joint to have little premade cardboard quasi filters, so you wouldnt burn your fingers anyway, so probably no one would actually buy a roach clip. but back in the good old days, who used filters? never heard of such a thing.

Maybe the roach clip could make a comeback, like spats, or penny farthing bicycles. The definitive cinematic roach clip scene is of course in the big Lebowski where he’s doing a J to unwind in the tub, listening to his tape of whale calls:

there he is with his roach clip, until the nihilists come with their aggressive marmot to ruin his life and perhaps unman him…. so retro, debonair, like a long cigarette holder.

“Hey, this is a private residence, man!”

it was so fun to smoke that little highly illegal bag of weed. so boring and pointless now. the good old days of overpriced shitty weed, roach clips, and so little entertainment around in retrospect it was awesome. im glad i grew up then.

As Charles bukowski said I’d rather drive from l.a. to nyc in reverse than do that again, but it was beautiful man

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=scaredyclassic]

it was so fun to smoke that little highly illegal bag of weed. so boring and pointless now. the good old days of overpriced shitty weed, roach clips, and so little entertainment around in retrospect it was awesome. im glad i grew up then.
[/quote]

You wouldn’t rather have had what your kids have?

I think today’s world is better. Memories are better than the real thing.

[svelte]

ha ha I had forgotten all about the 35mm canisters!

Everybody had them!

Thanks for the memory resurrection, scaredy!

[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi]

You wouldn’t rather have had what your kids have?

I think today’s world is better. Memories are better than the real thing.[/quote]

It’s better in some ways. The weed is better. Easier to smoke with a vape. Cheaper. TV is better (both the content and the apparatus). You can carry most of the world’s information in your pocket.

And you’re right, memories are better than the real thing.

All that said, I wouldn’t trade growing up when I grew up with growing up now. Kids are under so much pressure now. They’re so overscheduled. There’s less freedom and free time. There’s less opportunity to figure things out for yourself. It’s tough for parents today to try to raise a kid the way my generation was raised. First, the neighborhood generally isn’t full of other kids roaming around. They’re all at piano lessons or playdates when they’re young, and, when they’re older, piano lessons or volunteering or joining clubs or otherwise building their college resumes. So a free-range kid is likely to spend a lot of his free-range time by himself. Second, you can get arrested for letting your kid go to the park by himself at ages we had been going to the park by ourselves for years. Third, you risk your kid being left behind in today’s much-more-competitive world.

We spent countless hours playing sandlot baseball, exploring field and forest, relaxing, riding our bikes here and there and the beach. Occasionally being bored enough that we’d sit around thinking of something to do. I wouldn’t trade that for all the information and great tv and cheap weed in the world.

Sure, parents can try to raise their kids like that today. But they generally don’t. No, I’ll take my childhood over today’s kids’ any day.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=zk][quote=FlyerInHi]

You wouldn’t rather have had what your kids have?

I think today’s world is better. Memories are better than the real thing.[/quote]

It’s better in some ways. The weed is better. Easier to smoke with a vape. Cheaper. TV is better (both the content and the apparatus). You can carry most of the world’s information in your pocket.

And you’re right, memories are better than the real thing.

All that said, I wouldn’t trade growing up when I grew up with growing up now. Kids are under so much pressure now. They’re so overscheduled. There’s less freedom and free time. There’s less opportunity to figure things out for yourself. It’s tough for parents today to try to raise a kid the way my generation was raised. First, the neighborhood generally isn’t full of other kids roaming around. They’re all at piano lessons or playdates when they’re young, and, when they’re older, piano lessons or volunteering or joining clubs or otherwise building their college resumes. So a free-range kid is likely to spend a lot of his free-range time by himself. Second, you can get arrested for letting your kid go to the park by himself at ages we had been going to the park by ourselves for years. Third, you risk your kid being left behind in today’s much-more-competitive world.

We spent countless hours playing sandlot baseball, exploring field and forest, relaxing, riding our bikes here and there and the beach. Occasionally being bored enough that we’d sit around thinking of something to do. I wouldn’t trade that for all the information and great tv and cheap weed in the world.

Sure, parents can try to raise their kids like that today. But they generally don’t. No, I’ll take my childhood over today’s kids’ any day.[/quote]

It does feel oddly pressured now. It was better to not matter so much

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=zk]

Sure, parents can try to raise their kids like that today. But they generally don’t. No, I’ll take my childhood over today’s kids’ any day.[/quote]

In the free market of ideas, parents have selected the superior way to raise their kids.

I wonder what you have chosen for your own children?

And also, if you had been more pressured as a child maybe you would have been a valedictorian, Rhodes scholar, concert pianist, etc…. at that time, your competitive advantage would have been so much greater.

We live in a competitive society and quantitative success they that can be measured by money what we value most. So I don’t blame parents for pressuring kids to become winners, not losers.

[scaredyclassic]

Personally we opted out for a long time. Our oldest was not liking 1st grade, the homework was dumb, I was writing snarky comments to the teacher correcting her grammar and grilling her on the purpose of the work. Around the time, we opted out of the System and did about 7 years of homeschooling, which was partly unschooled, part free ranging, part mixing with other families, part homemade curriculum. I was opposed in part at the time, not so much for the kids, who I thought were probably benefitting, but because of all the income we were foregoing from my wife not working fulltime. In retrospect, it was an awesome, unusual, somewhat expensive for us at least childhood experience to give them. They never quite bought into the school bullshit, the pecking order, the brand status, the peer pressure, because by the time we reintroduced them into normal reality in high school, we had already had them alone all that time to brainwash them into our reality. Long range, nothing they might have done in elementary school was omitted by us, and academically they were probably “ahead” of their peers, as if that has any meaning. Later they did great in high school, probably because their minds weren’t all encrusted with allt he nonsense and bs of modern schooling. They had an outsider’s amused viewpoint, and there was no “drama” from any of them. I think it’s probably wrong to say parents are “choosing” to be stressed out an dinflict that financial stress and anxiety on their kids ina freemarket sense. I’d say it’s more likely that they perceive themselves to be in a desperate struggle to ensure their kids don’t fall off the economic ladder, and with limited information, knowledge and no tolerance for error, are doing what they think in their deluded state is best. Seems intuitive to me that for long term mental health and success, it’s flat out wrong, but everybody does what they think is best. I’m pretty sure we could’ve done better, but I cant really judge parents for trying to inflict all kind of mental anguish ont heir kids. Moms and dads have been pinning their hopes and fears on their young charges since time immemorial, so now is really no different than the past. Just based on my high strung nature, it seem slike less pressure, more exploration, would lead to more thoughtfulness and better mental processing. But it’s not exactly a science, or an economics problem, this raising of children. More of a labor of love performed in an unconscious backdrop theatre of terror. don’t think of them as “winners” or “losers”, but humans given the best opportunity I could to have them be calm, stable, thoughtful, interested humans.

[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi]

And also, if you had been more pressured as a child maybe you would have been a valedictorian, Rhodes scholar, concert pianist, etc…. at that time, your competitive advantage would have been so much greater.

[/quote]

Maybe. But I highly doubt I’d be happier.

[quote=FlyerInHi]

We live in a competitive society and quantitative success they that can be measured by money what we value most.
[/quote]

I think most people would rather have their kids be happy adults (who are at least self-sufficient and productive) than rich ones.

[quote=FlyerInHi]
So I don’t blame parents for pressuring kids to become winners, not losers.[/quote]

Do you think someone who is happy, kind and self-sufficient but financially in, say, the lowest quartile is a loser? If so, your always-on-display intolerance is even worse than I thought.

[zk]

[quote=scaredyclassic] I’d say it’s more likely that they perceive themselves to be in a desperate struggle to ensure their kids don’t fall off the economic ladder, [/quote]

Totally agree.

—

I think home schooling is usually a bad choice. But that’s only because it usually seems to be very poorly done.

It sounds like you made a courageous decision, made some financial sacrifices, did some creative and effective home schooling, and had success. Success that will really help your kids throughout their lives.

Massive kudos to you for that. Really. Bravo.

[PCinSD]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=zk]
And also, if you had been more pressured as a child maybe you would have been a valedictorian, Rhodes scholar, concert pianist, etc…. at that time, your competitive advantage would have been so much greater.
[/quote]
Wow, Zk, I’m so sorry about the way you’re parents raised you. All that untapped potential . . . gone. Were you able to overcome the lack of proper parenting? Have you made peace with your parents?

I’d pick up a decent keyboard and start taking lessons asap. Hang in there.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=PCinSD][quote=FlyerInHi][quote=zk]
And also, if you had been more pressured as a child maybe you would have been a valedictorian, Rhodes scholar, concert pianist, etc…. at that time, your competitive advantage would have been so much greater.
[/quote]
Wow, Zk, I’m so sorry about the way you’re parents raised you. All that untapped potential . . . gone. Were you able to overcome the lack of proper parenting? Have you made peace with your parents?

I’d pick up a decent keyboard and start taking lessons asap. Hang in there.[/quote]

I think there’s an argument that if the kid has a burning desire to be rich or famous, its usually to fill some gap in the parents life. If your kid just wants to be unknown, you probably didnt lsy your failings on them.

Me I really wanted to be famous, and still do. Most days I walk around feeling like there’s something great in me if I could just get out

[scaredyclassic]

i wouldn’t really judge my kids’ success on whether they earned more money than me or had more accomplishments. if they were less neurotic, if they had more fun, if they were in the present more, if they had satisfying relationships, if they felt they had a purpose on earth, if they were caring of others and felt a deep connection to someone or some cause, if they were not dull, if they were funny, if they enjoyed real friendships, if they took care of themselves, if they weren’t mean, if they weren’t self destructive, if they were healthy, if they were nonjudgmental, if they were loving, if they were able to listen, if they were interested in some subject deeply,

i’d consider them a success.

however, I think it’s wrong to declare victory while kids are in their early 20s. I would say it’s not really a success until they make it to midlife intact.

I dont see that our 8ncome earned in excess of 200k has made us happier. However, life in the top 1 percent is more stable

[FlyerInHi]

Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld said that for success, you need the triple package:
1, superiority complex
2. Sense of insecurity. Some worry and anxiety that you’re not good enough or there is some danger.
3. Impulse control.

[temeculaguy]

My advice, don’t virtue signal. Do not seek the approval of others. Do what makes you happy if you are in your 50’s and feel you have done for others all your life, stop doing that. The caveat is that if you made children, you have an obligation to them, but once they are grown, especially once they are are out of college, it’s all you baby.

I spent a few hours on the internet trying to plan my spring vacation then I checked in here after and kinda got bummed out. I went from trying to decide on Rome, A London/Rome combo, Puerto Vallarta or Cabo. We have four couples that want to go but I refuse to fly at least in premium economy on flights over 6 hours yet not all of them are in a position to drop 1500 plus each for air. Plus only a few airlines have the full recliner with the calf support like a lay-z-boy that my short wife prefers because she can’t reach the foot pedals (air new zealand, singapore and a few others have them the rest only in the front row, but none go to rome) so I’m thinking two days in London on each end my work because london to rome is short and I can do coach as long as I can get to london on a higher class, I wish Alitalia wasn’t in bankruptcy because booking that far out is a gamble. I’m hesitant to drop 6k for a lay flat business or first class but intrigued by the bidding system for upgrades some Euro airlines are using. But in a group that can be a mess. I even checked into how I can upgrade to first class on my trip next month and upgrade my brother in law without him knowing because I don’t want to sit in coach to Boston but it would be rude to leave them behind in coach.

Scardey, those are 50 year old people problems, not home schooling or the girl from middle school that you were afraid to talk to. I had a middle school crush too. In the gap between wives I found her, she was lousy in bed and made me miserable, the one that got away is usually better off that way. Actually I found the elementary school crush and a few other crushes, same result.

Maybe it’s the great deal on the Prius, give that to a kid and get a car that warms the globe and your heart.
Use single use cups, plastic straws, buy a gun, just find whatever it is you need to make you happy. For me, it’s a swim up room at the hyatt ziva or zilaria, wine and pasta in Europe and not flying coach.

You want philosophy? How come Asian airlines are so much better than the others and their seats are bigger despite a having a smaller clientele? Once you’ve flown on Eva or Singapore or Cathay, especially in anything above coach it’s so hard to go back. When did British Airways start to suck? Virgin? $100 a bag each leg, F-You. Now that’s a 50 yo problem.

[scaredyclassic]

funny you should mention airline seating. for the first time in my life, I paid extra for more room. It was a nonstop overnight flight to nyc on jetblue. for $99.00, you could get “More Room” tm. I ran the numbers and didn’t just plunge into the deal. 6 hours, 99 bucks, about 16 an hour, 25 pre tax,hmmm. is the suffering of sleeping less worth 25 an hour. it would’ve been a close call 10 years ago, but today it was a no brainer. I would not suffer that night and over into the next day, even if it was just marginal suffering for 25 an hour.

it ended up being amazingly worth it, the whole row was empty, people were eyeing my spaces hungrily, the attendants actually put the seats up for sale at the eginning fo the flight but warned passengers that if they didn’t sell, they would be asked to leave if they snuck into my adjacent seating. it was SO worth 99.00. I didn’t sleep that great, but not awful, and I was pretty vertical AND peed in the middle of the flight with no problem getting up and down or disturbing anyone.

on the other hand, if the room were 1500 dollars, say for 6 hours, i’d suffer a lot for 250 after tax. would be very difficult for me to justify my comfort at that price. even though 1,500 doesn’t sound like a massive amount of money, and I’m not certain I could find something to spend 1500 on that would be as nice as the lazy boy recliner experience, probably better than 10 massages, in terms of overall body wear and tear.

I still would rather not let go of the 1500 on behalf of my comfort.

I cannot foresee having so much money that i’d pay 250 an hour after tax to be comfortable. id rather forego the trip.

on the other hand, with time in life running out, just so many vacations or trips remaining, maybe i’t better to see it as a nonrecurring rare expense, like the opposite of a tooth extraction. it’s difficult to tell what’s worth what.

as to the true problems of life, the problems of childhood and where the answers lie. those problems, rejections, pains and insights, those are the true work of middle age and beyond. almost hthe entire book 1 of REMMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST is about young proust being put to bed as a child.

we are all still small children inside. the suffering of children creates the mental problems of the middle aged.

did we get enough room in the rear seat of the family car and can I rectify that problem now with a better airline seat?

why did my mother not fully attend to my distress and would perhaps a large tip for this waitress somehow salve the wounds of my infancy and cause someone to attend to the long past but still reverberating distress that is now a distant echo in my heart?

what do I deserve in life? we are born to suffer and die, to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, with never enough leg room. this is man’s fate.

[Author]

Posts