In which I will never understand my parents' generation

[zana16]

So, one of the things under the Christmas juniper bush this year was a copy of my mother's application to study in Trompso, Norway for her first year of college in 1966. Apparently they were going through old files at Friends World College, and sent my uncle their stuff. There was both the application and a review of her work. Said work consisted of a portfolio of poems, mostly in Norwegian, and a short story she wrote about an experience with LSD. The story, almost 50 years old, featured the unironic use of the word "groovy" and I had this moment of wow, this is the creepiest story about drug use I've ever read, and seriously I will never understand my parents' generation.

It was my dad who was the actual hippie, with the long hair and the beard and raising goats and apparently driving a truck for the Heighton-Ashbury Coop. I know my dad did LSD in the sixties, I know he got arrested as a draft protester, I know he almost got kicked out of Stanford for being part of the sit-in, but that's not really the dad I know. The dad I know is the white-haired guy who will tell you all the research behind a social problem and all the ways in which politicians and corporations are fucking up the world.

And I never really knew my mom, but my memories are that she was the stable one in the relationship, and reading her application to college at a time when she'd just lost both her parents and wasn't stable was really pretty weird.

...This whole digression brought on by a link I found on FS today in which Leonard Nimoy was doing some serious drugs back in the '60s. I was raised on Tolkien, I'd heard the song before, but never seen the video.

Comments

[rhivolution]

...oh god, I think I might be the reason you've heard the song, for which I apologize.

ETA: in penance I now have it stuck in my head

[zana16]

It is obscurely comforting that Leonard Nimoy has been known to be deeply uncool. :)

Argh, yeah, earworm.

[twistedchick]

[FWIW, a lot of the '60s drugs' weren't illegal for a long time. Acid started out being used for psychiatric purposes; Cary Grant took a lot of acid trips for that reason. John Wayne smoked pot, out on his yacht in the 1950s. There was not the stigma about taking drugs that there is now. And, compared to other stuff filmed in that era, this isn't really that bad. Really.]

A little context: in 1968, Star Trek TOS had been on for two years, it was iffy whether it would return, and the actors were looking around and doing fun things. Nimoy was, what, 30 or so? He was not an elder statesman; he was this obscure guy who for some reason looked good in pointy ears and green face paint. Why not do something silly and fun? Silly and fun were what was happening -- because the other side of what was happening was the Vietnam War.

[zana16]

I believe you; it's just, it's funny how drastically culture has changed since then. I can't imagine doing a lot of the stuff my parents did, even nontaboo'd things like Bread and Circus. Part of my inner conflict about Guatemala is that it's the kind of thing my parents would do that I just don't understand.

No doubt when I have kids, they will think me equally crazy for the stuff I do now. :)

[zlabya]

Fantastic that you got your mom's application and portfolio. It's an incredible way to get to know who she was at that age.

My parents grew up in the 50s and their stories are weird in the opposite way for me: the "scandal" that would have occurred if my mom had stayed at my dad's parents' house during a snowstorm, even sleeping on the sofa, when they were dating (she was in college; he was working.)

That Nimoy video really freaked me out. I'm wondering if it's part of the reason some people think hobbits have pointy ears. Tolkien certainly didn't describe them that way.