Ugly part 7

1969.

The year when everything changed.

A person can say that about ever year of there life.

Every year we grow, we change, those around you change.

I may say 'The year when everything changed' again and again.

Simply, because it is true.

Nothing stays the same.

If I close my eyes for 5 minutes and open them again worlds have been destroyed and new ones have grown. That is how I felt that year. I think I closed my eyes too many times. If I just kept them open maybe it wouldn't happen so often. Maybe I could see what it was that made it all change.

Everyone has to sleep sometime. That's when they get ya.

Who ever the hell 'they' are?

Sometimes I think there are some nasty little demons running the place. Lord help me Jesus, sometimes I do. Jesus, sometimes I think your Daddy just looks away too often. How else to you explain all the bad things that happen.


As a child things change quicker than most other times in your life, you are learning and growing and such a fast rat it seems lifetimes have passed since the same time last year. You have yet to get stuck in any rotten. Days go slow as you try to rush to your future. While those who are there spend their ending time trying to make the days slow as they rush by.

Die young and leave a good looking corpse.

That's what they say. Seemed to come in to practice into the 60's.

Sometimes in the commune people would disappear forever. Too many drugs or getting involved with the wrong people or just getting on the wrong side of the wrong cop or FBI agent. Sometimes I saw them in their finest clothes before the box was closed. They looked very different. Their parents would come in cut their hair, change their clothes, shave their faces, make them look like the children they knew. Some were sent off to the land of the beyond with the way they lived in the end. Some parents didn't claim them. Some of their families wrote them off long time before. Looking back I don't know which I hated more, the ones who could not except their child and respect them in the last moment or those who had their wakes years before and never thought any more of them. To have ones parents hate who you are or rather you were never here.

There I was just this little kid. Able to form sentence to go with my thoughts. There is no better place then with hippies when you are 3 and 4 years old. The colours are brighter, the laughter more often, and you are accepted as a human being with thoughts and ideas. People around me, for the most part, loved and took care of me. They took me with them where they went.

They sat me in front of the television to watch men in space suits walk on the moon. They were ecstatic at the prospect we made it to the moon. My reaction was different. So different. They said they could not believe we made it.

"What is the fuss? " I said. I really didn't understand it.

They tried to explain their hopes and dreams. They tried to explain watching science fiction movies. They tried to explain a lot.

I just replied " We can beam all over the place, why is this a big deal?"

A year before they had pulled some money together for a television and I was glued to it every night. I loved the bright colours.

Oh. you didn't think I had a bedtime, did you?

People didn't get up early there, as a rule, they sure didn't want me to once I could get out of my crib. I stayed up late. The television distracted me enough for them to have , well they didn't really thought I knew what was going on or watching. Let's just say by the time people wanted to have 'the talk' with me I could explain far more to them. I just saw it as almost clinical. Something adults did, like smoking or drinking. I was never allowed to drink or smoke anything I didn't see this as anything different. There were so many fun shows that seemed just geared for kids back then. The television interested me more.

I went to a lot of protest over the years. Love, peace, understanding and end of the war. The last reason to protest. That was the one that got more and more dangerous as time went on. As the police and national guard got more violent so did people in the protest. The last one they took me to, several of my mothers and fathers got hurt. I almost got hit too.

They, the uniformed men, were screaming at my family "What kind of dumb ass brings a kid to some place like this?! That kid could get hurt!"

Before my family could reply they were already being hit with clubs, including the one holding me. I started screaming. But they didn't stop hitting. They just screamed at them more and more as they hit. I was passed from father and mother as they were being hit. The men in the uniforms wanted to take me.

They screamed to each other for someone to get me "We have to save that kid from this freaks!"

My fathers and mother were afraid. They moved quickly. I was even passed to people I did not know.

I was home with in an hour. It was actually a woman who lived down the street that brought me. She hid me under her poncho then pretended she was my mother until we got home, hiding my face every time we passed by anyone in uniform. My heart was racing. I was so afraid. I didn't want to live with those men in uniforms. They would beat me too with the clubs.

No-one was home when we got there. They were still at the protest being hit or dragged or arrested or just blocking the men from getting me.

The women who brought me home grew impatient. There were places to go and people to do. She sat me on the front steps for about an hour.

She told me "Be a good girl and someone would be there soon. Just stay there. O.K."

She told me to hide behind the pillar if someone in a uniform came so they could not see me. Then she left. She waved happily as she walked away trusting in the universe that I would be safe.

Afternoon turned into night. I was scared I was crying. No-one had come. I was hungry. No-one came. I had to go to the bathroom. No=one came. I banged on the door and I screamed and wailed. No-one came. I ran to the back door and banged again. No-one came. I sat on the back step and cried for about 5 minutes.

I went back to the front steps. To the little porch. I curled in a ball, so small, I wet and soiled myself as I cried and cried. I finally fell asleep. Hunger subsided. I was no longer wet. Sleep of a child make the bad go away temporally.

I was woken up by my mother.

"Where the hell were you?!" she screamed as she shook me up.

I looked around it was still dark but light was creeping in. I started crying again. Some of my mothers and fathers were with her, some were not. Later I found out why, they were arrest for obstructing justice. They were obstructing the uniforms from stealing me away was the reality.

I have to say I have never trusted a person in a uniform since that day, especially those in military or police uniforms.

"We saw the chick who brought you here, she said she told you to stay on the front step! Where the hell were you!?" She is still shaking me, but now I am off the ground.

A new mother in the house, a big woman, took me from her with a stern look to my mother.

"Look at you. You are soiled and wet. You are propably hungry and tired. Let's fix that." She said in a calm voice. She started to bring me into the house.

I looked back at my mother and the others, they looked exsausted. "I was right here! I was crying and you didn't come for me!" Defiance, pain was in my voice and heart. They all had abandoned me. She had some nerve to get mad at me.

"We came here." she screamed back. "You weren't here! We searched the whole neighborhood, We searched the city. No-one saw you anywhere but here. Where the hell were you!?"

"Come on, little one" the big mother said "it's all over now, we are all tired and we were all worried. Tempers are high and you need a bath."

She was the one who brought me to the bathroom and cleaned me up, got me clean p.j.s, gave me some bread and milk and put me to bed. She explained to me that they thought the uniformed men had found me and taken me away. They feared they would never see me again.

Looking back, I can only think the one time I left the front steps to bang on the back door, that must have been the time they came looking for me.

I closed my eyes. Love turned to worry. I closed my eyes worry turned to anger.

Big mother put me to bed with her. She hugged me all night. I felt safe again. I felt it was only temporary. I closed my eyes again. Maybe if I don't open them nothing else will change, it will all go back to the way it was before.

A piece of me stopped trusting that day. I piece of me turned hard and cynical in the land of hippie optimism.