* Hanging Out

Stand Your Ground 

or 

Turn Around

Every generation has a "kid stage" through which it must pass and through which adults seem to mutter, "punk".

That's because adults know.  

When they were growing up they were either part of the smug, petulant know-it-all punk group or they were the object of their scorn for being too near the "mama's boy" stereotype.

I'm so old now,  that I recall my generation's form of  punk rebellion as laughably limp in retrospect.

The older boys who hung-out in front of Charlie Crook's Drug Store in Centerville when I was a kid wore tight jeans, a tee-shirt with cigarette pack rolled into one sleeve, and greased their hair with a defiant  "DA"  (Duck's Ass) in the back.  James Dean wannabees. (Little did they know that he was a masochistic guy with same gender preferences.)

They would laugh and joke in their 16-year old menacing magnificence when I, as an eight-year-old,would walk into the store.

I always thought their  laughter  and their greased hair meant they wanted to beat me up      ------------------just like George Zimmerman thought Trayvon Martin's hooded  presence  meant  threat.


It was just my  fear of being "little".

Guns don't kill people; people kill people George.