We all enter this world with a slap and a squawk, rudely roused from Original Sleep. In '59, they slapped my ass in Chicago, back when tailfins touched the sky. Welcome to the American Dream, kiddo. Study hard, get good grades, land a corporate gig, and buy a suburban home!
The Leepers were your typical nuclear family. Fun while it lasted, my American dream was disturbed in '64 by my Father's return to Original Sleep. That's when they started calling me the "man of the house," saying I had "big shoes to fill." Mom's subsequent austerity measures, like switching to powdered milk and generic mac and cheese, always felt like my fault.
Memento Mori
During the Summer of Love, I answered an ad in a comic book for the Junior Sales Club of America. Selling greeting cards on commission, I began to earn my own loot. This only helped Mom a little, but I really felt like The Man handing it over! Draggin' my wagon around the block, selling greeting cards door-to-door felt like... pirate adventure!
Selling has always been fun and easy for me due to a pamphlet of sales tips sent with the cards. Instructions from the JSCA not only included the expected reminders to smile and have fun but also contained the Master Key to All Sales:
Folks are always buying something.
Invite them to buy something from you.
Selling took me to my happy spot during America's darkest days. The bundle of suck during my formative years included many Deaths, The Vietnam War, The Draft, Free Speech, Sexism, Racism, Stonewall, and Espionage. Responding to violence at the '68 Democratic National Convention, Mom dragged us from Chicago to the god-forsaken hinterlands of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Culture Shock
My first retail gig at a McLellan's department store included bonus leadership lessons. Our manager, Mr. Smith, had me follow him to each department to get my to-do list for the day. He pushed a different "button" with each employee, commenting on the work done by one, the appearance of another, the efficiency of a third, etc.
Did I have a button? When a blizzard delayed our delivery, Mr. Smith told the driver at 4:35 pm, "I'll see you in the morning since there's no way this boy can unload 95 pieces of freight before five o'clock." When this boy handed over the signed bill of lading at 4:59, he confirmed that my button was labeled "Challenge."
Meanwhile, American industry was going full-tilt boogie, so at school, they were grooming us to be fleshy, little cogs for one of their many machines. Now, don't cry for me, Hialeah. Waldo had warned us all about the Status Quo: Beware of THEM!
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Socrates. Waldo. The Beats. The Hippies. The Punks. Free thinkers with somethin' to say, all daring to Question Authority. Musicians. Poets. Artists. Activists. Tellers of truth and agents of change. My Tribe was out there. Learning of them in the alternative press, like the Chicago Reader, Rolling Stone, and Creem, I heard them on AM radio stations from Chicago and international shortwave broadcasts.
In January 1977, The Ramones' prophetic second album Leave Home came out. Two weeks after graduation, I did, heading back to Chicago with a high school diploma, a decade of sales experience, and a lo-fidelity life of crime. Gabba Gabba Hey!
My shenanigans typically harmed no one, although a few brain cells may have been sacrificed in the name of science. Lessons in screenprinting led to the sale of t-shirts that I designed for a crew of underage drinkers.
"Been there, done that, got the t-shirt" is the participant's point of view. "Snuck in there, did no time, sold the t-shirts" more closely reflects my experience. Computer classes at DeVry looked like the best ticket back to Chicago. Departing from Ironwood, the Duster rolled under a railroad bridge desecrated with the word - Yahoos! Thanks to Krylon, it remained there for years. Now the Captain of my own Destiny, I shoved off into life's great adventure.
