There was a road that ran near the edge of my town. Out where the suburbs were still farms. I used to go there nights, that autumn of nineteen-seventy-two. I was sixteen. I had a girl. I had a car. I had a job. I was full of night... and life. I just wasn't ready to go home. That year, I traveled streets I'd never known before. I pushed against the limits of my suburban life. I had no idea exactly what lay ahead. All I knew was... I was running out of time. And I was gonna bust if something didn't happen... soon. In nineteen-seventy-two, the country was at war. With its armies... with its ideals... with itself. The dreams of the '60's were battling a new decade. And things were happening everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.
DMr. Deeks
Open your books to chapter six, section thirteen. The rise of post-agricultural Europe.
They say men are children, but sometimes children are men; maybe that's where the confusion lies... All I knew was that night the world suddenly seemed very big and I felt very small, so I did what I could...1972 was a crazy time. Kids played football, drove cars, went to school, celebrated life; while soldiers, heroes, their brothers struggled to find their way home from war; and young boys watched and grew wiser in their dreams.
We'd come this far. No sense turning back, now. We fished the rest of that day. We didn't catch much. Dad said he'd like to move up here, and open a bait shop. I told him it was a great idea. I think he believed it. And in the end... I guess we finally figured out why we'd come here in the first place. We'd come... to say goodbye.
It seems to me, a wedding means something different to everyone. To some, it's an occasion for simple pleasures. And for others, a wedding's implications are more profound. For some... it's a time for contemplation. For others, a time for regrets. A chance to measure just how far we've come in life... against the promise of those just starting out.
It was a testament to romance at its finest and most pure. It was a declaration of virtue. Simple, and gracious, and real. And after a day of infidelities... some proposed and planned, some more subtle... I felt for the first time... that someone believed in something a little different. In love. In commitment. In each other. It almost made me glad to be there. I guess you could say that weddings mean a lot of things to a lot of people. We might cry at the romance unfulfilled in our own lives. And shrink at the unseen compromises our lives have held for us. But weddings also bring out hope. And promise. And possibility. After all, as we choose our partners... some of us make our choices for life. And some of us dance with just one of many. And sometimes - for the lucky ones - we remember why we picked who we did. And after years of fighting over burnt toast...and bounced checks... we might, for a brief moment... look at each other as we once did - before kids, and mortgages and routine conspired against us. And others are content to postpone their choices... knowing somehow, that the future, like that Saturday afternoon, will tempt us with dances - both slow, and fast.
Junior year was a time of... exploration. A time for expanding horizons, broadening perspectives, seeking answers to little-known questions. It was an opportunity to grapple with the great issues of our day, which as it happened, boiled down to only two. One was sex. Miss Farmer. Our social studies teacher. In one of the great cosmic ironies of our time... the board of education had hired her to mold and develop our formative young minds.
In a world where everyone was taking advantage of everybody else... sex and economics were facts of life. For all of us. I continued to see Miss Farmer every day, but, somehow, it wasn't the same after that. After all, in a way, she had done me a favor - taught me a lesson in "life". To wit, when it came to beautiful women and money, it would always end like this - some guy would get stuck on a ladder in November... and some guy would end up alone. All I know for sure is, it took me six weeks to finish painting that house. It cost me two-hundred-and-fourteen dollars of my own hard-earned money. And the next spring, Mr. Kaplan put up aluminum siding.
Every four years, our country is gripped by a case of temporary insanity. We call it... the presidential election. It's democracy defined. A chance for politicians who know better... to make promises they can't keep. And come November... it's a chance for us to believe them.
With the heavily Negro population of the District of Columbia and the rocksteady Democrat stronghold of Massachusetts, Senator McGovern has an early start by carrying those states.
I guess many hearts were broken across America that night. But only one I really cared about. But somehow, it didn't seem important, anymore - who was right, who was wrong. All that really seemed to matter was... After all, maybe in his own way, Mike was right. In politics, you live to fight another day. Sure, the 'sixties were gone, but sooner or later...there'd be other battles to fight. The thing is, that election forever changed the way my generation looked at politics. We discovered, no matter how painfully, that we could be part of the process. That we could believe. And even now, twenty years later, despite all the evidence to the contrary... I can remember that night. And still believe.
They say you can live a lifetime and never find love. So I guess I was lucky. Because true love crossed my path the first time I met the girl next door - Winnie Cooper. Winnie and I'd been together longer than any couple I knew. Still, history only goes so far. Kinda like Winnie. Unfortunately, the mathematics of the situation were open to interpretation. To me, they led forward, to that great unknown. But to Winnie, they led... back! See, the great thing about us was that we had this past together. The bad thing about us was that we had this past together. Not that I minded being part of Winnie's past. It's just, when it came to who I was... she seemed to regard me as a known quantity.
They say hindsight's twenty-twenty, and I guess it's true. Because as I stood outside Winnie's house that night, I suddenly saw it all so clearly. I'd sold both of us short, by taking something that most people never have and throwing it away for something less. I'd been in such a hurry to impress people that didn't matter, I'd torn apart the only ones who did...us.
My father worked at NORCOM over half his life. And eventually... he rose to the ranks of middle management. Where every day, was filled with crisis... challenges... and Rol-Aids. Yep... through the years my father had given a lot to NORCOM. And now... he had given them... Wayne. My brother had been employed in the mail-room for about six months. Don't ask me how. And if his work-ethic didn't exactly match Dad's... at least he was trying to find a niche for himself. Make new acquaintances. Bonnie Douglas. She was twenty-three, funny, smart, and, oh yeah - divorced. It was no wonder Wayne felt the way he did. Whatever Dad felt about all of this... he was keeping it to himself. Like all the Arnold men... he had a lot of things on his mind.
It was that simple. And it was that complex. Love can kill you. It can tear you apart. But if you're very lucky... it can bring you back together. Sometimes love is unexpected... and unpredictable. And sometimes... you just have to go with your heart. And hope for the best.
For most kids I went to high school with, Tuesday and Friday nights meant homework, hanging out, dating - the usual agonies and ecstasies of teenage life. For me, those nights meant something else. My high school job. I was "Kevin Arnold - Chinese food delivery boy". Where you found harried waiters, agile cooks, Peking ducks, and of course... Mr. Chong. After four months on the job, we'd finally learned how to communicate.
