Ahhh Groucho…
I’ve lived my life rejoicing in his words.
I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member
Despite the fact that Harpo is my favourite,
Groucho’s words have stuck with me.
As a boy of ten years old I was sent to the golf club. Perhaps for some that would have been quite a gift. For me, I may have well been sent to the Gulag to be tortured by some creepy Soviet monster.
The golf club was terrible. People wore ugly clothes. Garish ones. Hideous polyesters and plaids were everywhere. There were more tartans than the gathering of the clans.
Back then, as a golfer, Scottish stuff was cool - given that this ‘gentleman’s game’ was created by the entirely mild mannered and pleasant Scotts. People were into looking like what they figured ‘Scottish’ people looked like.
A golfers interpretation of Scottish fashion was much like Scottish nutrition. Deep fried Mars bars anyone? Simply terrible. And? It did not have room for blue jeans or t shirts.
You could wear the ugliest shirt in the world as long as it had a collar and the most garish pants just so long as they were not made of denim.
Apparently they didn’t fit in. I didn’t fit in. All of these ‘grown ups’ would get drunk and take their silly little game of ‘whack fuck’ seriously.
Wack fuck?
Wack the ball. Watch it enter the woods. Say ‘fuck’ loudly.
That’s how people golf their balls around these parts.
Wack. Fuck.
These grown assed men would break clubs, throw clubs and have temper tantrums.
AND YET blue jeans, or excited youth making noise?
That was a UGE betrayal of etiquette. It was a breach in ‘the code’.
I preferred my own little club. Skaters - those who rode skateboards. In the 1980’s we didn’t have ramps. We didn’t have skateparks. We didn’t have all the stuff that skaters take for granted today.
But we did have a code.
Have fun.
Run from the cops.
Run from the rent a cops
When they tell you to stop, run faster.
Once far enough away, that they can’t catch you, swear at them. Call them names and mock every life choice they have ever made. Insult their mothers, children and whole family. Spit if necessary.
Were we mean?
Yup.
Was it necessary?
Perhaps.
We were unwanted.
We were the fad that wouldn’t leave.
They stole our skateboards when they caught us.
Some cops even drove over them back in the day.
I do not regret a thing I said or did. Skating back then was exciting. And not because of the tricks. Fighting authority was it's own reward.
Polite society turned us into miscreants.
Polite society wanted golfers and hockey players who they could understand.
Skateboarding back then had a mystique of being rebellious. It was a thumb in the eye of our parents and a giant unreplaced divot in the fairway of polite society.
I still am not a uge fan of polite society. Especially today.
The rules are constantly changing. Conformity, uniformity, shame and status are the biggest tools of control.
I could continue to complain about ‘groups’ and status.
Instead?
Here’s an alternative.
Join the Remarkable Fools Society by adding your name to The Registry of Certified Fools.
We believe that people are perfectly imperfect, doing the best we can with what we know and that levity is the prime mover in the universe.
Find out more at the launch of our Certified Fools thing-a-ma-jig.
It’s taking place at noon eastern on April 1, 2022.
The meet up takes place on Zoom and will last 32 minutes.
Sign up here to get the zoom deets
It’s like the old saying goes:
Every time you find humour in a difficult situation, you win.
So, polite society has irritated most people at one point or another. Being acceptable was definitely something my Mom, not so much my Dad, cared about. My family did not fit in where I grew up. Okay, we never really fit in, period. I very much felt like an outcast. I learned that academic excellence was the most public and rewarding way to thumb my nose at the small people who judged. I entered professional life and now work for a large-ish local organization. In short, my outside of work behaviour is potentially cause for a discussion with HR and reason to loose my professional credentials. My response to the work overlords is to remove mention of current employment with them in any social media. They believe that anything and anyone that mentions them is subject to oversight. The message is "Be acceptable. We are watching." I have given much thought to my first days of retirement. What freedoms will I prioritize? Living by my own schedule? Check. Wearing t-shirts and jeans every day? Check. Sitting at the Tim's at my former workplace (conveniently located near a community mental health facility) and behaving badly while security debates whether it is acceptable to ask me to leave, yet again? Oh, yeah. Check.