Son of a Hippie
short story, biography, non-fiction
Published on:
April 2, 7:54amWord Count:
3028Last Edited:
May 8, 5:58amWork Description
A memoir of my life. Forest Gump eat your heart out!
This work is archived and isn't accepting critiques or comments. Why?
Print
a valley surrounded by mountains. Brown moon dust covered
everything and got into everything. I would take a shower in a
tent with scalding hot water from an oversized bladder only
to be covered with soot before reaching the sleeping tent half
way across the compound. I'd do my laundry from a water buffalo so
my clothes would actually be clean. For most of my tour of duty I
lived in a tent with a dirt floor surrounded by the elements. This
included Camel Spiders and Vipers as well as Snipers and land
mines.
I'll always remember the complicated infrastructure of life and death. Like Swallows nesting in machine gun holes that riddled the side of a building. The people and how they lived. The soldiers who I served with.
I survived the experience and made it to the rank of Sergeant. After a six month stop-loss I was honorably discharged. If I were single I would have stayed in the army forever but I was married to the woman of my dreams way before I married the army. She'd followed her man through thick and thin and I owed it to my family to stop living life so recklessly and to be around for them.
My logistics and leadership experience in the military quickly propelled me to that career change I had been after. I bounced from job to job in distribution that eventually carried us to yet another state.
I’m currently a manager in a fulfillment center and I couldn’t hate my job more. Although I’m good at what I do -based on my team building skills, always getting results and reaching goals -I’ll never get anywhere in the company, nor do I have the ambition to do so. I believe that the greatest asset to any company is their people and that that isn’t just a superficial company slogan. I don’t want to be a corporate drone, drooling over numbers and giving myself pats on the back. I could give a shit less about making someone else rich. I find it quite silly that we as leaders go through all that schooling or life experience only to forget the basics on a daily basis. I want to scream out in every management meeting. I find myself daydreaming of becoming a writer and leaving all this behind. I daydream of getting up on the lavish boardroom table, yanking down my pants and pissing on my bosses. I imagine the shocked look on their faces as I douse them in my warm urine. Then I zip-up, jump down and announce over my shoulder that they don’t have a clue and I’m out-of-here while I exit for the last time.
It’s a wonder to me of how many twists and turns my life has taken. I never feel that it is too late to change my destiny but I can’t help but feel that I’m bogged down by it all. I believe there is still magic and opportunity left in the world but the daily grind makes it harder to focus on that part. It’s so easy to get caught up with being forty years old and having been through so much only to find myself dissatisfied in my career. Maybe it’s the hippie in me. Maybe I’ll never be satisfied.
Reaching sixty-five years, Dad still wears a loop or diamond studded earring. He can be seen driving around in his jeep wearing nothing but shorts, flip-flops, and a Miami Dolphin Tee-shirt. He looks like Mr. Clean yet with a Florida tan and many tattoos. He still cooks everyday and drinks Tequila and smokes pot.
One day soon we hope to fulfill our lifelong dream to ride coast to coast on a couple of Harley’s. My children are getting at the age where they could come with us. Until then we just go about our hippie lives, living six states apart.
As for me, I’ve written three manuscripts, seven short stories, four children’s books, and a few poems. It was only recently that I realized I had found my own place to finally settle down and buy a house -mere miles away from Woodstock.
If that’s not Hippie than nothing is.
Rate This Work
Your honest rating will help the author improve.
Please log in to rate.Discussion
My family moved around a lot.
This gets to be a rather long paragraph, and I this would be a great line, an important line, that could start a new paragraph.
If that meant moving to Bum-Fuck-Egypt we were there.
If that meant moving to Bum-Fuck-Egypt (coma) we were there.
My parents separated when I was young partly due to all the moves but mainly because they had grow apart.
"...when I was young (coma) partly due to all the moves (coma) but mainly..."
Also, another place I'd start a new paragraph. It help to start a new paragraph when changing gears or starting with a new idea, to beckon the audience to follow.
When she grew up and he didn’t they split-up
...and he didn't (coma) they split...
As a teen I was a long haired surfer-hippie kid who quit high school in the first days of my sophomore year, yet very un-hippie like, went out and attained a GED two weeks later and was in college while the rest of my class was finishing their uninspiring senior year.
This is one very long run-on sentence that gets a bit hard to follow.
I was named after Bob Dylan but it could’ve been much worse. Dad was also fond of the music styling of Alice Cooper. I was a statistical kid raised in the eighties by two parents living separately.
I wonder what the last sentence has to do with the first two. It seems out of place.
Now, that I am at that proverbial age where innocence has faded away to realism, I look in the mirror, I look at my actions and who I am, and I finally understand that I am the son of a hippie and therefore a hippie myself.
Another long, run-on, circular sentence that could use some cleaning up.
Okay, so I did read all the way through but struggled staying on task for two reasons. One is, as mentioned above, the run-on sentences. They are difficult to read, and in many places, are repetative. Cleaning these up would help this work immensely.
That said, I hope not to offend you with this next bit of advice. I know that your life and all it's details are very important to you, but I recommend reading through this and deciding what exact bits are necessary to make your point in this work for the reader. Not necessarily leaving out huge gaps, but just whittling it down a bit. Right now, it's just hard to plow through, like the lineage parts of the Bible. You have a great tone and wonderful way with words and I'd like to read it on a smaller scale.
Amber
loved it. certainly an enviable life.
*** It seems we have alot in common Mr. Moody....I've had career changes myself....and like you have always fallen back on my writing... Its the secret to our immortality, something we strive for without really thinking we are. I lost my true love to the angel of death, so I put him a novel, now he is alive and well and a hero in the the land of the written word. Maybe it's what was intended for us to do all along. I can live with that. I'm from upstate NY from a little town called New Woodstock, how weird is that? I wear my hair in true hippie style these days(it's length touches my butt). I salute you for your life and adventures and respect you even more! Maybe we are all hippies to some degree...what do you think? Thank you for sharing....I look forward to more of your wonderful writings....write on***