permanent records

Perhaps there is a permanent record.  Well certainly now there is in the internet.  Late at night I google old friends and classmates to see if I can discover what has become of them.  Sometimes odd little bits of flotsam and jetsam float into my browser and sometimes nothing.  And then there are those White Pages type entries where you get an approximate age and cities the person lived in and usually that is enough so that you can be sure that that's who you're looking for, but if you want to learn more juicy details like arrests and divorces you have to cough up some moolah, which I have never done.  It would seem sort of intrusive.  Googling is like causally strolling through the neighborhood, maybe glancing into an open window, but paying cash to probe is like breaking and entering.

In my full hippiedom back in 1965 I got up one morning and came across a piece of chalk, and trying to impress my hippie pals I started writing on the sidewalks "I believe in kangaroos," "I believe in nurses," profound stuff like that, and tiring eventually, I wandered back to the apartment where we hung out.

And minutes later the cops showed up.  They had been watching the apartment, they figured we were up to some hippie no good, probably smoking dope, which we weren't yet.  Seems like somewhat specious grounds, but they deemed my writing on the sidewalk was vandalism and this gave them an excuse to search the apartment.  To make it legit I was charged with destruction to public property and fined five bucks plus three bucks court costs.

Thirty years later for some reason they decided all us state workers had to have background checks, and bam, up popped that arrest.  Ten years after that when I was going through the hoops to become a substitute teacher and bam, there it was again.  In this case some committee had to clear me and that committee only met like twice a year so that set me back six months in my sub career.



I never saw the inside of a beauty parlor, that was part of the secret world of women.  For such delicate creatures they lived scary lives.  Remember girdles?  All women used to wear them, including high school girls like my sisters.  I used to wander innocently into the bathroom and there would be one of them hanging up dripping.  Certainly didn't look comfortable.  And then there was all that makeup stuff with pencils and brushes and powders and goops.  Didn't look easy.  Then there were women's bathrooms, God only knows, and I certainly didn't want to, what went on in those.




Wait a minute Beagles, you're hypothetical wife is helping you cut your hair?  Are you involved in the process also?  I don't know why people are so finicky about  haircuts.  I mean it will just grow out no matter what you do.