A Coming of Age Story

 Pushing Back

The first of the posts that are scheduled to post well into the future -the last of which being slated for sometime in the year 8150, I believe has its posting date fast approaching.

It was about 4 years ago that I got the idea to schedule things to continue to periodically post  all the way up to 7,000 years after I am dead (unless I live to be 7,059...how to deal with the birthday cake candle thing, then, I wonder) and the first one of those is scheduled to post this coming April.

I am going to have to push this one back; which was just insurance in case I got killed before then. I don't want one of my "I am dead now, but I have a message for humanity" posts to pop up while I am still alive, that would be embarrassing.

And so, I will have to not procrastinate upon resetting the date on that. I should also make mention of when my next post is going to appear in each one, so that humanity can await them, like the arrival of Haley's Comet every 110 years or whatever its orbital period is....
I should also throw some Nostradamus type of stuff in there. I could be pretty ambiguous there, and I'm sure people will divine "hidden" meaning from it. But, what are people going to be like in 8,000 years -all organs replaced by synthetic ones, all just keeping the brain alive like a hydroponic plant for centuries?

It is such an enigma; if at some point mankind learns how to time travel, then it is possible that there are those among us who have traveled back to here from some point way in the future. This could explain Jesus...

1979

I encountered a gaggle of about 8 deadheads at the Ticketron at Searstown Mall in Leominster, Mass, in early September, 1979 and it made an impression upon me.

Little did I know what a foreshadowing that was.

A half dozen hippie-looking types, maybe 6 guys and 2 girs, stepped to the window in front of me, very interested in Grateful Dead tickets.

That's the band that did "Truckin'" and that "driving that train" song, I remembered thinking; and why would they want to see them as badly as they apparently do?

The guy behind the glass was initially trying to find blocks of 8 seats all in a row, but the hippies made it clear that they didn't care where the seats were; they would take 3 for each of them, for each of the 3 shows to take place at the newly built Worcester Centrum, regardless of how far apart from each other they were.

The concerts were selling out fast, and the blocks of 8 contiguous seats were disappearing.

The hippies didn't care, they all just wanted to get in.

I think they left there, visibly excited, in possession of something like 24 tickets, one for each of them for all three nights, scattered like the spores blown off a dandelion stem.

My curiosity was piqued. Why were they so adamant about hearing that "drivin' that train, high on cocaine" band that sounded on their records like the equivalent of today's auto-correct tools had been used, especially on the lead vocals?

I didn't know how much of a foreshadowing that was, at the time. For, within 4 years, I would go from looking like I was in the market for tickets to see The Cars (which I was) to looking, and smelling, like the very same deadheads in front of me.

After waiting my turn, I stepped up to the window next, unconcerned about all the Grateful Dead tickets having been already sold; and bought three tickets to see The Cars, at Boston Music Hall on October 1st, 1979.

The Ticketron guy didn't ask me why I wasn't in school, which was a relief. 

I had sneaked out of my high school, in order to be at the ticket place the minute it opened, so as to get the best possible Cars viewing seats. Only the Grateful Dead people, whom I now assume had camped out on the sidewalk in front of the place, wrapped in their hippie blankets, were in front of me.

My senior year had just begun -it was something like the 2nd day of school, but that was the day the Cars tickets were going on sale, and so that was the morning that I had to be there to get the best possible seats.

I had to sneak out of the school on the same day that the principal, Sister Joan, was giving the students her "beginning of the year" speech to all the students.

The seniors and juniors were treated to this first, which took up the first couple periods of the morning, and then it was time for the underclassmen to get what probably amounted to the same spiel, adjusted somewhat to their ages and naivety. 

During the speech, Sister Joan had stressed that "No one is to ever leave the building, for any reason, under any circumstance!" with concerns over "insurance" being the prime reason. If we were to leave the building and something were to happen to us, the school could be held liable and the diocese (with their deep pockets, at the time) could be sued, or something. This was about her most emphatically delivered point, eclipsing even gum chewing and not wearing the uniform.

I had parked my moped under the steps which led down from a kind of side-stage exit of the auditorium. This may have been by the design of architects, who might have foreseen the need to have perhaps large groups of actors enter "stage left" at some point in a production. They could all gather in the parking lot, and then file in at the appropriate point in the action of the play.

But it was the door I had chosen to park my moped by, and out of which I planned to slip during the period right after we got our speech and (supposedly) returned to class.

I had purposely not gone to my 3rd period math class, knowing that after the roll call was taken, my absence wouldn't jive with the list of kids, whose parents had called them in sick, and I would be summoned to the principal's office. If I wasn't absent, and wasn't in class, then, where was I? type of thing.

I went to the office, where the assistant principal, Sister Lourdes, was holding down the fort while Joan was giving the spiel to the underclassmen.

"And, why aren't you in class, Mr. McKenna?!"

I told her that I had had trouble opening my locker. She scolded me somewhat and implored me to get to my math class on the double.

Now, she thought I was on my way to class; and my math teacher had heard my name called over the intercom and must have assumed that I was either still at the office being scolded, or that maybe I was absent but my parents had neglected to call in sick for me. Probably the former.

That freed me for one 45 minute period, to make the 7 mile ride on the moped to the Ticketron and back.

The only thing was, in order to go out of that side door, with the principal at the podium on the stage at the time, it involved me sneaking past her behind the heavy curtain that was draped right behind her, as she spoke to the underclassmen.

Within Eight Feet of Joan

So, I tiptoed across the stage, passing to within 8 feet of her, behind the curtain and got to the door.

Honest to God, I was reaching for the handle to the door right as she got to the part of the speech about kids leaving the building. When she said "No one is to leave the building" my hand was on the handle. As she said "for any reason, under any circumstance," I was opening the door. As I closed it behind me, inserting a wad of paper to keep it open, so I could get back into the building under any circumstance, she was talking about the serious insurance related matters.

That was, I believe, when some kind of cosmic ball was set in motion. I would indeed be expelled later that same year for publishing an underground newspaper, an expulsion that could qualify as an equivalent to the modern-day "cancellation" by the cancel culture, 40 years before that term would find its way into the lexicon, and ostensibly because my newspaper had depicted the arch bishop of the diocese as Uncle Fester of Adams Family fame, in one cartoon, along with a few other journalistic atrocities.

That is a story for another post, but, out the door I went, under the circumstance of wanting Cars tickets, I guess enough to risk my enrollment at St. Bernards Central Catholic High School.

Again, there was some kind of foreshadowing there. I was willing to be expelled from my school, in order to get as close to Elliot Easton, in order to watch his fingers as he played the excellently crafted guitar parts that were the hallmark of all Cars songs. 

So, I ditched my sports coat (as we called them) in one of the janitor's closets near the back of the auditorium stage, so it wouldn't be flapping wildly, as I flew down Airport Road at 25 miles per hour and showed up at the Ticketron still wearing the shirt and tie, double-knit slacks and nice shoes, and took my place behind the long haired, tie dyed shirt wearing, patchouli oil, but still a little bit pot smelling hippies who were all about getting Grateful Dead tickets. One look at me, and the might have been thinking; well, at least we're not depriving him of Grateful Dead tickets by buying them all out from under him; he's probably here for Cars tickets....or John Denver...and, shouldn't he be in school right now?!

As things worked out, I made it back to the school and parked my moped in the same spot, and went to the same door, relieved that it was still ajar from the little shim of paper that I had wedged between the door and frame, and slipped inside right as the bell sounded for the end of my math class, and just before students flooded into the halls, where they might have espied me entering stage left. It all seemed so perfect. My mission had been blessed.

Not completely blessed, though, as the janitor's closet had been locked while I was away. I had to go back to my locker that was supposedly giving me trouble opening and grab one of my other jackets (I think I had two extra ones in there -talk about white privilege- but neither matched very well with the shirt and tie and slacks I was wearing, and so that was a source of slight embarrassment for me, but one I was willing to endure in order to see The Cars. And, oh yeah, the pope...can't forget him...

Within 12 Feet of John Paul II

The date of October 1st might be easy for almost one million people to remember, as the day they saw the pope; and for myself, as the day a girl rubbed her breasts against my back, as I was filing my way out of the Boston Music Hall, after seeing a Cars concert.

I was there alone, because, ironically, the two friends I had risked my whole darned education in order to procure tickets for, were disallowed to go with me.

Their mother was afraid that they would be in danger from the million or so people who were expected to turn out for the papal mass on Boston Common. Imagine that; she thought her dear twin boys, Jeffrey and Joseph might be trampled to death under the weight of a crazed bunch of Catholics trying to get close to the pope. The levels of irony there (and foreshadowing) are beyond any words I can conjure up now.

Jeff and Joe would never have come out alive...

At least if Jeff and Joe had been trampled nearly to death, they could have had the "last rites" administered by the pope himself...not too shabby, but not enough to move their devoutly Catholic Italian mom from her resolve to not let them anywhere near the scene.

Myself, I didn't really pay much attention to the mass, but after it ended, and I started making my way towards the music hall, and the pope's "cavalcade" started making it's way towards wherever popes go, I arrived at a street corner, right as he was approaching. He was in something like a convertible limousine, holding his right hand out in front of him in something like a peace sign, or the sign of a cross...or maybe a "V" for Vatican.

And, along he came.

The streets were so narrow at that point that the long vehicle had to kind of cut the corner a little to make the turn. The corner that I was standing right at the edge of.

I actually had to scoot back a few steps, to make room for the vehicle to make the turn. To hop over the edge of the curb where I had just been standing. In the middle of its turn, as the left side wheels bounded over the edge of the curb, after the driver had slowed way down to make it less jarring, I would estimate that I was no more than 12 feet away from his holiness. Gosh, if I could just get this close to Elliot Easton, I thought. There has got to be some more irony here, that still escapes me; me having to get out of the way of the pope...

A funny thing about that was, when I went to school the next day, our religion teacher, one Father Nichols, regaled us all with a story about how, as a nave-clad* Roman Catholic priest, he had been allowed to attend a special, private mass by John Paul II, which was exclusively for men of the cloth.

"For just a few seconds I could see him, obstructed, about 45 feet from me!" -father Ed Nichols

He gushed with excitement as he related that, at one point during the mass, the pope walked over to the side of the large altar, to get at the tabernacle, or something and "I could see him; unobstructed, about 45 feet away from me!"

Geez, I could almost have high-fived the guy, from where I was standing, I thought with amusement.

It had been no problem scalping Jeff and Joe's tickets, a half hour before the show, in front of the music hall. I had only asked the printed price on them; thinking that it wasn't illegal "scalping" to do so. 

Unobstructed!

Of course, once I had made it inside and found my seat, I found, sitting next to me, not the people I had sold the tickets to at face value, but another couple of people who informed me that they had paid three times that amount for their tickets from some guy out front, about 20 minutes before the show.

The Cars played their songs just about note for note the way they did on their records; so much so that I didn't see much of a difference between their concert and cranking their albums up over a really loud sound system. And they hardly moved -they all stood pretty much motionless, except for their arms and fingers and their mouths. That must have been choreographed as part of their shtick; usually at least one guy in a band is jumping off the drum riser and doing splits in the air; well, maybe not during songs like "My Best Friend's Girl," or any of their other songs, now that I think of it.

All the machinations to get to the ticket place as soon as it opened had placed me in the 23rd row, next to a couple people who had paid 3 times as much as I had paid for their same tickets, but not really close enough to gain any insight into any Elliot Easton guitar solos. Add to that, the people who had wound up with Jeff and Joe's intended tickets had passed me a joint at some point during the show, and I was in a fog, intensified by the fact that that was probably the third time in my life that I had ever smoked weed, and it had given me an altered sense of reality. That made it especially bizarre when, after the concert ended and everyone was filing out, using a center aisle (as the music hall was set up like a typical movie theater with one wide aisle down the middle) the girl who had been sitting in either Jeff or Joe's seat, on the other side of the guy who had passed us the joint, wound up right behind me as everyone tried to push their way forward.

Pressed Right Up Against Some Girl

I don't know if it was her own personal reaction to marijuana (mine was to lose track of Elliot Easton's fingers) but she started to press her rather copious breasts against my back and rub them side to side. I could feel both of them. I was just stoned enough to think; is this really happening?

Maybe my having been so close to the pope meant that he had imparted some of his Christ-hood to me, and the girl was just trying to soak it up- maybe so her babies would be blessed one day...I don't know.

After Father Nichols had excitedly told us students his astonishing tale, I thought about raising my hand and adding to it, my own personal account of the papal mass; but I suppose I didn't want to brag, or try to outdo him. 

Besides, a priest probably doesn't want to hear about a girl having rubbed her breasts against my back. Yeah, I was probably wise to remain silent...

So, that is the story of...I forget what the story was, but that was part of it...

The end.

*isn't that what they call that white collar thing, a nave? I guess I could Google it...