environment. I was hoping to obtain a volunteer position as a candy striper, delivering reading material and snacks to patients in a cheerful way, but this volunteer position was eliminated some years prior.
During the latter half of the 1970’s a “new” method of giving birth to a child was promoted by media sources to women as a less painful and a more natural way to deliver a baby. This method of childbirth was to give birth in a pool of water. Magazines illustrated infants floating underwater in pools after being newly born. After viewing these pictorials I stated to mother that it is likely that infections to both mother and child are more easily transmitted and acquired through this contained aquatic environment. One also believed that perhaps through momentary inattentiveness, the infant could drown.
At about this time, I began attending “discos” with peers. As the admittance age was eighteen years old or older, false identification was needed to participate. Driver’s licenses at that time did not contain a photograph identification, so all that was necessary was to find an eighteen year old or older who matched one’s description in gender, approximate age, height, and eye color and borrow their license.
The vast majority of students in school were not involved with drugs. There was a small group of students in a class of over five hundred who were easily identified by their attire, grooming, and unkempt appearance that most knew to be involved with marijuana and other drugs. This percentage of students involved with drugs, drastically increased by the time my children were to attend the same school twenty five years later. During the middle 1970’s alcohol, especially beer and wine were the desired contraband of consumption.
For summer vacation, it was decided by a girl friend and I that we would approach our parents about spending a week at the New Jersey shore. After considerable nagging, our parents granted permission for this trip provided we take the bus. An aunt of mine suggested a place to stay where she knew the owners of a small motel. This trip was somewhat dampened however, by a red tide that prevented us from bathing in the ocean. An abundance of jellyfish of many varieties, including Portuguese Man O’ War also prevailed in this disgusting mixture.
Retrospective: The idea behind popular movies for young people like the Exorcist or Carrie was perhaps to influence people into believing that they were possessed. Carrie went a step further by suggesting that a person could will things to happen. Most young people were deprived of a Biblically based moral education and some instead believed in ESP (extra sensory perception) and a sixth sense. Those individuals may have been subjected to a strong, evil occult influence. Fortunately, most people at that time viewed these films as “hogwash” and a Hollywood, make believe tale. Later in the decade, movies such as the Amityville Horror and television shows on haunted houses suggested that houses became haunted, based on some evil that previously transpired in a house. These suggestions possibly lead some people into cursing a house, for all kinds of reasons. In an evil society, where God is deposed and Satan rules, evil and immoral others assume control of most aspects of society including private homes. A return to the following of The Ten Commandments, avoiding Capital Sins, and Abominations is necessary to restore society to good. Perhaps a reason for not finishing the American history textbook was to avoid uncomfortable questions by students. The results of the instruction and promotion of the