Rebels Aging Badly

I veer off topic for the following news break: I have officially entered middle age. As proof I submit the above photograph, taken just last night at a summit of former revolutionaries somewhere outside Capital City. They may be the picture of Caucasian Paunch now, but these upstanding taxpayers were once a raucous gang of pseudo-intellectual hoodlums, smoking-area prophets of their mid 80’s high school scene. I know, I was one of them. Fueled by the music of our heroes and all things illicit we skipped class and held court in seedy locales across the southern fried landscapes of our youths. Back then, we thought we’d never grow up.

The best of us didn’t, instead falling victims to abuse and accelerated living. But those of us who did survive somehow flourished, becoming scientists, cops, journalists and such. Today the hazy rendezvous of our past feel like outtakes from ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’, an early masterwork that fairly accurately illustrates the environs of our adolescence. But ‘cool buds and tasty waves’ are no longer the order of the day. Instead we find ourselves pre-occupied with mortgages, wives, careers and children. I guess anyone outside our circle could have predicted this familiar story arc, but I for one never saw it coming.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have some old pictures to burn...