If You Give a Chicken a Glass of Wine

If you give a Chicken a glass of wine she will want a cigarette to go with it.

You will point out that smoking is not healthy for man nor fowl. She will agree with you and thank you for the reminder. She'll have another glass of wine instead.

Ten minutes later she will ask you to drive to the store for munchies.  She will load up your arms with three kinds of dip, potato chips, corn chips, Doritos and cheese curls.  Just in case, she'll throw in another bottle of Chardonnay.  Then she will ask the clerk for some cigarettes.  Chickens are impulsive, devious creatures. You know that.  What were you thinking?

On the way home the song "Don't Stop Believin'" circa 1981 will come on your radio and she will yell, "This is my FAVORITE song!!".  She will roll down your windows, turn up the volume and sing along even though she only knows the first line and the chorus.  That second glass of wine is starting to kick in.  She will stick her head out of your sky roof and yell, with no particular connection but much passion, "I love you Bruce!!!".

When she comes back inside the car her hair will look like it did in 1981.

Her hair will remind her of blue eye shadow and cute boys.

And she will want some.

At the next stop light she will notice a convertible full of cute boys.  She will have her head out of the sun roof, just about to invite them back to your place, when you will pull her back down and remind her firmly that she is no longer 18.  Thank God for you.

This will, however, remind her that once she was 18, and she will want to go to look at your old high school yearbook.  There, among the corn chips, the dip and the second bottle of Chardonnay, she will be hit by a tsunami of nostalgia.  She might weep a little.  She will want to get dressed up in old prom dresses.

Once you are both dressed in old prom dresses and blue eye shadow, she will want to take a picture.  While you load her selfie onto her Facebook page, she will decide that she NEEDS to hear "Stairway to Heaven", her prom song, and will search frantically through all of your old cassettes. She'll forget about "Stairway to Heaven" when she comes across "Jesse's Girl".  She'll once again proclaim, "This is my FAVORITE song" while singing loudly and out of tune, with traces of orange cheese curl powder around her mouth.

Not pretty.  And you've been patient.  You will suggest watching your DVD of  "Flashdance".  Chicken will be all for it, but first, she will need to rip up one of your old sweatshirts.

And chances are, if you give her a sweatshirt and watch Flashdance, she is going to ask for another glass of wine.

Chicken out

This is not Chicken.  It might be Chicken's hair in 1981, though.

(revised from 2011 post:  If you give a Chicken a glass of chardonnay)

Boomer Evolution

Hi World:

Social scientists now divide the Boomer generation into two distinct groups, Boomer I and Boomer II.  I'm a Boomer II.  Raised in an era of benign neglect, we were tossed out the door every day after breakfast. "It's too nice of a day to stay indoors!" was the universal battle cry of our overwhelmed mothers. The actual weather was of no consequence.  We were five. We could take it.  Sans sunscreen.

We had hours and hours of unstructured time and little adult supervision. We made up games that involved throwing sharp objects at each other, wandered freely in the woods, built tree houses on other people's land, played with matches, stole apples and other produce, fell out of trees, and beat each other up.  It's a wonder most of us made it to the 70's.

In the 70's, we watched Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. For the first time, it dawned on us that we had missed out on something, namely the fifties and early sixties, setting off a life long cycle in which we always felt left out of the cool stuff the older Boomers got to do, and too old for the trends of Generation X.

In the 80's we embraced Yuppism.  Even if we denounced it because we didn't earn enough to be true Yuppies, we secretly aspired  to it.  We bought a lot of crap. If we didn't know what we needed, we watched the neighbors.  If they bought a lawn jockey, we bought a bigger one in a better color. Just because. Eventually, marketing companies got better organized and told us what to buy which made everything so much easier.

In the 90's we had a couple kids and took turns entertaining each other in our homes. We became really obnoxious and competitive about food. Martha Stewart reigned as supreme queen of the early foodie generation but ultimately Martha was just a stockbroker with a lot of energy and a creative streak. The search began for a new Foodie leader. We began to worship at the alter of the Celebrity Chef.  We made reservations two years in advance just to experience the food stylings of our favorite culinary gods.  We planned vacations to Napa.  We bought Anthony Bourdain's books.  We bought a different whip for different size eggs and a special grapefruit knife and individual souffle dishes. We renovated our kitchens and bought copper pots. At every opportunity, we used words like, mouthfeel, crumb, texture, artisinal, and crunch to display our superior culinary knowledge. We also began  to get fat, so we took up running and aerobics.

We limped into the new millennium with bad knees and high cholesterol. Our doctors suggested  we find a lower impact sport and start eating better.  Then 9/11 happened and we closed the doors on  the world. We took up nesting.  Some of us moved to Vermont. We discovered  cycling, kayaking and yoga, opened our chakras, and embraced the world once again. We sometimes referred fondly to our hippy days even though we never had any hippy days because we were like six when Woodstock  took place.  We decided to be  modern day hippies. We started growing shit in our backyards and shopping at farmers markets on the weekend.  We wore 100% cotton clothing and ethnic jewelry.  We dabbled in essential oils. Somewhere along the journey we might have acquired a meaningful tattoo (is there any other kind?) in an inconspicuous area.

And now, in our fifties and approaching sixty, we're in a hurry to experience as much as we can because we're going to die sooner rather than later. We write out our bucket lists.  We strive to remain as fearless as our five year old selves back in the days after Buddy Holly and before Michael Jackson.

At least we had Journey.

Don't stop believin'

Chicken out