I was born in 66 in SF CA. I was bussed to the Haight Ashbury in '71-'73/4(?). I remember all the hippies begging for our lunch money without shame and how genuinely impressed they used to be as the audience to our Halloween costume parades around the panhandle of GG Park.
I remember my first parent teacher night. I insisted on wearing the white three piece suit my parents had bought me for a wedding the previous summer. ..one of the girls in my class pointed me out and said i looked like Superfly. My dad got a kick out of that . My mom, on the other hand thought she was clever by calling me Robert Magentaford. It was an inside joke becsuse I had once corrected my two sisters who were arguing about a color of pink and i had just learned about it in school that day. ..both nicknames stuck, by both parents well into my adulthood
I remember tasting paste but never really developed a real taste for it. It wasn't as sweet as it seemed it would be
I remember melting crayons on the cast iron radiators and the Esther smell of the fresh oily dittos or mimeographs ..and my teacher's breath smelled like coffee and cigarettes
I remember the lion dance on Chinese new year used to scare the shit out of me. There were always four of those dragon looking lions. Two in color and two in black n white with those big blinking eyes and the snapping, bearded jaws and all the drums beating and that clanking and all those firecrackers . ..and we'd all get a little red envelope with a penny in it (thanks for the gumball, lion)
