"What the Fork Was I Thinking?"

"Take this brother; may it serve you well!"

I was a mere lad of 16 back in the haze of the late 60's. I was a normal [ ? ] teenager. Obsessed with dames [ sorry, Bogie ]; infatuated with Playboy magazine; hooked on Phonics, er, cigarettes; and dumber than dumb, er, naive to the world around me.

I missed the polio craze, but my country was embroiled in a war in SE Asia. The younger generation's musical tastes had shifted dramatically. No longer were "Herman's Hermits" and "The Dave Clark Five" in demand with their simple lyrics and melodies. They had been replaced with "The Grateful Dead," "Cream," and Jimi Hendrix. All along the watchtower, eh? Lyrics went from "I love you, and you love me, to "light my fire" and "god damn the pusher, man."

The world was morphing; where she stopped, nobody would know. All of [ us ] young dudes were going through dem changes. There was no blueprint; our course was uncharted.

I happened to run into an old friend from Rowdy High at a concert featuring "Steppenwolf," the summer after I graduated.

"Hey, Randy. What's happening?" I asked me old chum.

"Hey, dude. I'm trippin' on some heavy animal tranquilizer. Far out."

I'm thinking, "Wow. What the fork happened to him?" Evidently, he was on a magic carpet ride. I would never have thought he was born to be wild. Cos he was Mr. Preppie at R.H. and had come from a straight-laced family, whose dad was a prominent architect.

"Heavy, dude," was all I could muster.

"Far out, dude." he said and stumbled away into the darkness.

Animal tranquilizer? King Kong came to mind, and a man-eating tiger a'loose in NY City, or a crazed elephant attacking its trainer at the zoo. But a fellow graduate from my alma mater? What the fork was going on?

It is well-chronicled in "WTForkWIT" that my sister is a liberal. Not just a liberal, but a livin' on the edge over-the-top one. And it behooves me to reiterate I was 6.25 years her junior. Not 6.75 which caused her to demand a retraction in an earlier foray. Because of the age difference, she was more mature and worldly than me.

So at the tender age of 16, she was 22.25. One fall day [ circa '68 ] she and her artist boyfriend paid a visit to my sleepy hamlet, smack dab in the middle of suburbia. My mom was at work, so we had the house to ourselves. She was attending nursing school at the time, with visions of becoming the next Clara Barton or Florence Nightingale. He was a tall forker, 6 feet 5 inches, with semi-long hair that didn't touch his shoulders. On top of his head a round hat he wore, a mack perhaps. And he wore small oval John Lennon glasses.

"Hi, Sis. What brings you here?" I asked, as she wasn't one to drop back by the old homestead.

"Hello, l'il brother. This is my boyfriend, John."

"Er, hello," I said, a bit intimidated by this tall hippie forker.

John immediately lights up a cigarette and we all take a seat in the den. I am amazed when he flicks his ashes on the hardwood floor. Evidently, John felt there was no need for an ashtray when LBJ was escalating the war in Hanoi. And Lt. Calley was committing atrocities in My Lai. And servicemen were enjoying the smell of napalm in the morning. And women were burning their bras and shedding their girdles. And blacks were rioting in the streets of Selma, Alabama.

After a few prolonged seconds, my liberal sis looked John squarely in the eye and said, "let's do it."

He was quick to oblige and pulled out a small bag which looked like something that comes out the end of your lawn mower. I may have been 16 and naive as hell, but I knew it was a bag of marijuana.

What a predicament. One part of me said, "let's get it on. Hey, the lads from Liverpool and Bobby Dylan indulge and look what great music they make." Another part of me said, "it's wrong, vee. If you take a toke you will never be the same. You saw "reefer madness" last week at Rowdy High, and you will become a pyschopath or a 20th century schizoid man. Don't do it, vee. You are letting your mom down and the rest of your family. If you smoke, you will follow in the worthless footsteps of your dad. Don't do it, vee."

My curiosity aroused, I partook in a few tokes.

"Do you feel different, l'il brother?" sis asked?

John chipped in with: "He won't get stoned on his first 'foray.'"

"I think I'm stoned," I said.

John lit a few more cigarettes, dumping each ash on top of the others, and soon they said they were ready to go.I gave them a ride home and dropped them off. I was feeling a bit risque, and instead of going straight home, stopped by the old soft porn theatre, where your feet stuck to the floor. Coke syrup spills, naturally.
I was diggin' the twinbill while under the effects of this new sensation. Watching young women with large breasts and having sex was every young boy's dream. Even tho' some of the flicks were a bit on the macabre side.

My first foray turned out to be uneventful. My sis has apologized to me throughout the years "for turning me on." I thought nothing of it, cos I wanted to break on through to the other side. And soon I would be breaking through and then some.