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-   -   Editorials - Scenes Of My New England Boyhood (http://i-mockery.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69698923)

MockBot Jan 29th, 2008 03:05 AM

Editorials - Scenes Of My New England Boyhood
 
Automatically generated comment thread for Editorials - Scenes Of My New England Boyhood.

stevetothepast Jan 29th, 2008 04:18 AM

I may only have been born in 87' but I still remember cell phones being a strange thing to have, Dial-up internet and windows 94 being "the shit" and even indoor plumbing was strange to see, well no I'm not that old, but great peice Max, enjoyed it.

" "Canucks" I'd whisper under my blankets in the flash lit light, imagining their ridged brows, their ruddy skin, their beaver pelt coats, their hockey sticks."

Better watch out for us Canucks, we are biding our time, when you least expect it, we will strike.

greenimp Jan 29th, 2008 05:45 AM

y'know, the school playground hasent really changed much over the years...

Pentegarn Jan 29th, 2008 06:55 AM

If you think canucks are scary with "their ridged brows, their ruddy skin, their beaver pelt coats, their hockey sticks" are scary, wait till they come at with their round bacon, maple syrup, and those funny hats. *Shudder*

Did you know they have a place where they harbor the French?!

stonewar Jan 29th, 2008 10:33 AM

using a cassette tapes on Vic-20

My Dad's Dumb joke whenever we were in a store that sold computers to command them to scroll "Terry is Cool" Terry is King" "Terry is the Best" But it suddenly being the coolest thing ever when he taught me to do it. "Lou is Smart and Monica is Dumb" :)

1984 in the house.

thecatillaccat Jan 29th, 2008 10:35 AM

I've got one of those funny hats...I wear it when it is cold, to keep my ears toasty...
Wait. Does that mean I'm a communist?

bertleman Jan 29th, 2008 11:50 AM

My name is Mike. I am the best friend in the story. It is all true, and he left out the time we played dyanmite tag in the crumbling two hundred year old barn, and the time my elbows got ground down to the bone skateboarding in the graveyard.

incognit000 Jan 29th, 2008 12:24 PM

This reminds me of Pete and Pete.

mburbank Jan 29th, 2008 12:29 PM

Mike is correct, and there's a bucketload of other stuff left out too.

Nktalloth Jan 29th, 2008 06:47 PM

When I talk to my grandchildren about the good old days, I'm just going to make shit up.

They'll be all: "Gwanpa, what was two fousand like?"

And I'll be all: "Ah, two thousand... the year the time-traveling Nazis invaded DC..."

Colonel Flagg Jan 29th, 2008 07:48 PM

The only characters missing were Soda Pop, Darry and Pony Boy.

Hell, back then we didn't have "eye-pods", the interweb or "sell-phones" - we had to tough it out with M-80's, beer bongs and porn for entertainment. And rocket-propelled grenades, of course (how silly of me to almost forget!).

You "whippersnappers" have it so easy.

Captain PirateFace Jan 30th, 2008 01:19 AM

Max Burbank.... I am only 27 with a 4 year old and a mean ass... I mean, 29 year old wife.
I have to say though... I wanna be just like you when I grow old and angry.

Oska_Go_Wilde Jan 30th, 2008 03:11 AM

Max, I may not have been alive, but I remember it all as well as you do because I am secretly a time-traveling dinosaur.

mburbank Jan 30th, 2008 09:32 AM

Flagg; Astute comment, as "The Outsiders" was like a bible to me and my gang. A couple of years later, they actually introduced it into the English Curriculum, giving it's coolness cache a nasty chest wound in the process, but also a much wider readership. Not that it wasn't very popular when the 'Mike' from the story loaned me his copy, but it hadn't yet become as ubiquitous among my demographic as re-runs of 'The Brady Bunch'. I haven't read it in at least 30 years and never saw the movie. I've been meaning to do both.

Pirateface; I'm nowhere near as much like me when I grow up as my writing is.

Colonel Flagg Jan 30th, 2008 09:09 PM

I like the movie, not because of the acting, but more for the unintentional humor value. Everytime someone refers to "Ponyboy" I break out into uncontrollable laughter.

mburbank Jan 31st, 2008 09:54 AM

Yeah, that name didn't have a lot of shelf life, did it? It's friggin' hysterical to call someone 'Ponyboy' now.

Dungeonbrownies Jan 31st, 2008 11:29 PM

honestly, this was the most ridiculous pile of words i have ever read, but for some reason i could imagine it all vividly in my head like some kind of mad max of ww2 + galactica and schizophrenia.im pretty sure this isnt good for me. but i read it anyways. =[

Autrach Sejanoz Jan 31st, 2008 11:52 PM

'The Outsiders' is one of the best novels/movies ever.

mburbank Feb 1st, 2008 10:18 AM

Dungeonbrownies; You like me against your better instincts. It's okay. Go with it. That's how I met my wife, and fifteen years later she only regrets it most of the time.

JakeOfAllTrades Feb 2nd, 2008 05:10 AM

Firstly, in a "New England Boyhood" article, I would have expected Shoggoth-fighting involved, but you showed incredible restraint Max!

Yeah, at my age (I was born in 1990) I'm old enough to remember a time without the internet and iPods. If you told me you could fit 500 songs on a gizmo of a size less thick than a GameBoy Pocket... I would have believed you, because I was very imaginative back then. I still am in a way. Back when I was a kid, I thought you really could fit cute monsters in a tennis-ball like item, and it wasn't that out of the question for Superman to fly, because I knew the secret to his flying was not that he was fictional, but because he was an alien. This was why I never attempted flying like him myself, while other kids had broken arms in droves. It was because I understood the mythologies of the modern age. Not just because I was a gullible wide eyed kid.

I didn't even have a Game Boy Pocket as a kid until my brother got one for his 13th Birthday, and then Colour ones were released and Pockets were out of vogue. I remember a simpler time when a piece of electronics could last ages without being obsolete. I keep my simple phone that doesn't have internet access or a flip-screen in memory of when phones were real phones, not overpriced media centers, you were supposed to use them to talk to people. Now you use them to avoid talking to people as you download annoying ringtones for them.

I still consider myself an elder-innocent. There are some things that I don't think I want to be exposed to, because I already know well enough they're not good for me. Alcohol was one of them. I waited so long for my 18th Birthday (the legal Aussie drinking age) so I could drink my first legal beer with my friends (my first illegal alcohol was wine at an art gallery, which ended up with me annoying Ex-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in drunk happiness. This is not a lie, this really happened), only to find that I didn't like the taste of beer at all. I suppose its one of the mythologies of society that beer + friends equals fun, but I never figured out why that was. Maybe I just wasn't drinking enough of it.

People at school sometimes make fun of me because they think I'm too stupid to know what they mean by "do you do it with girls?", but I do know full well what they mean, and when they ask stuff like that I hate the way that they believe asking this to prove my naivety will make them laugh. I learned the hard way that even if you are a high-functioning Asperger's kid, some people are just bastards.

But it's not all bad news. I learned that there was honour amongst geeks and nerds. In Australia you don't get the stereotypical geeks who never had a girlfriend because nobody likes them, a geek/nerd is usually defined as a reader of books and watcher of cinema that has merit. Geeks and Nerds don't tease you like Jocks will because they know how it feels to be left out.

One of the other mythologies that I found untrue is the myth of the lesbians who swing both ways. Female homosexuality is called homosexuality because they have no interest in dating men. They'll be your friend, for sure, but they won't love you the same way a straight woman will. I discovered this when I asked a girl out. She liked the same Anime and books as I did, and she was really nice too. Then she rejected me on the grounds that she "already had a girlfriend". She wasn't bluffing. She really did have a girlfriend. And she was happy with her. I stayed friends, because I soon learned this truth: a girl can be your friend without being your girlfriend.

Besides, out of all of the mean teasing and being stood up I endured from the opposite sex, that girl chose the most honest and thoughtful way of letting me know she wasn't romantically interested.

After a life such as this, I can begin to understand why you feel the way you do Max. Your experiences have shaped you, whether this article had any truth in it or not. I just hope that you have some cheer in your life, like I'm trying to find, and being more successful at finding it than you may believe.

Protoclown Feb 2nd, 2008 02:51 PM

Haha, Max, I only just read this, but it was great. I loved The Warriors reference.

Count Mek Feb 2nd, 2008 03:47 PM

Woah, epic!

sspadowsky Feb 2nd, 2008 06:29 PM

One of the best pieces I've seen from you in a while, Max. It was sort of like Alzheimer's with the fast-forward button getting stuck.

JakeOfAllTrades Feb 3rd, 2008 04:12 AM

Max scares me even more each time he makes a new article. He should write more novels.

autodidact Feb 4th, 2008 12:59 AM

Just remember kids; These ARE the [your] good old days.


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