Recently, the 1970s paid an unexpected visit and hammered my psyche with a one-two punch. This forced ride down memory lane was mostly unpleasant.
The first blast from the past came from a Facebook post by my high school’s “memoriam” group. From it, I learned that fellow Class of ’77 graduate Sammy P. had died suddenly, a couple of days shy of his 64th birthday. I was surprised but felt nothing more than that — save a bit of sadness for the people who apparently loved him. I found evidence of these people after checking out Sammy’s Facebook page.
Sammy hadn’t posted a lot, but apparently, he was in a state of tenuous health for a long time, having received a kidney transplant six or seven years prior to his passing. I examined a few of the photos he had posted. He looked like a grown-up version of the sixth grader I’d met in the 1970s. He was tall, dark, and handsome. Honestly, I hated him for having these God-given attributes that I was not gifted with — even though we both had Italian-American fathers and red-headed Irish-American mothers.
The Clique of Bad Boys
I met Sammy in the sixth grade at Rose Elementary School in Escondido, California. He lived around the corner from me and my family. My then-alcoholic mother and alcoholic dip-shit step-father had moved my five siblings and me in the…
