Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 12:21 PM
When I was a teenager, say between the ages of 16 and 18, my friends and I lived for those weekend house parties, where we would meet girls, dance to Otis Redding, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, rock steady, and all the wonderful music of the ‘60s! It was a time when we were overloaded with testosterone and bravura and lust and a taste for adventure! It was a time of banlon shirts and polyester bell-foot pants and English Leather and gold chains and wide belts and boots and handkerchiefs. What a time, and wat a ting!
It was also a time when most of us didn’t own cars, so we would walk to those parties; and if we got lucky, walked the girl home, although they traveled mostly in packs back then. But you would walk the girl home, and then walk home from any point in the city, to your house. There was never any fear or expectation of being unsafe at 1:00 in the morning. The streets would be empty, or occasionally you would run into someone you were familiar with, late into the night; but you never feared for your safety.
There was a certain exercise that was like a schedule back then. Friday night was house parties; Saturday was dance at one of the dancehalls or at a private club. Sundays were for going to the cayes or some afternoon beach party at Belizean Beach, and then Sunday night at the movies! The only thing that would interrupt this sequence was the weather. It was a glorious time. Youth, and expectations, and innocence and hunger, not for food, but for life!
It was the time when lifelong friendships were built, friends that were faithful and true to one another, through thick and thin! The core group of 4 or 5 friends who knew your strengths and your weaknesses and did not judge you, always had your back, and still do!
Meanwhile, in the United States and elsewhere, kids my age were being drafted, or were worrying about being drafted. To go fight in a senseless war with people whom they knew nothing of. Dying in Southeast Asia for a useless cause. So, yeah, our biggest worry was hoping it wouldn’t rain on the weekend. Lucky, lucky, lucky!
Every generation believes that their teenage years were the best. I know that my kids grew up differently than I did, and that their children will also have different experiences. But to grow up in Belize back then, with your parents trying to steer you in the right direction as you rebelled against their wishes. To know that you could go home, no matter what. To have that innocence which has long disappeared in teenage life, was a gift, a very special gift, in my opinion.
I would not trade my teenage years, my youth, my innocence back then, for anything in this world. I can honestly tell you that the good outweighed the bad. Those memories bring relief in times of trouble. They soothe my inconstant heart and soul, and make me grateful for life and living!
Glen