Coming of Age in the 70's

I once said before that two things ruined my career as a Catholic. One was the biology textbooks in high school that offered a better reason for it all, and the National Lampoon magazine.

I have managed to come across the entire 70s decade publication of them. As I re-read them, I began to remember I was ten years old when I first started seeing this very adult, sick/dark humor. I loved it because it was one: something my parents would've flipped about had they known I had this in my room and two: the magazine showed more truth about life than was being fed to me.

But, now that I'm rereading it I discover perhaps it wasn't such a great idea at all, as a ten year old, to be exposed to Qualludes, cartoon sex, comedy articles about Fascist governments in Europe complete with old photos of executions and a host of other very mature XXX whatevers.

Sitting in Miss McHale's fifth grade class, trying to explain “fisting” to another ten year old (as I read about that the day earlier in the magazine, complete with “how to's” and cartoons) wasn't easy. No way was I going to tell the other girls about that but I explained it to the boys, some of who felt complete revulsion and others wanting to know, “How the hell do YOU know about that?”

As a kid, you want to grow up quick, seem grown up to your friends. You lie/ape/act your way to convince your friends you're older than you look and seem cool. I wasn't the only one doing this, all the others too were in on the game. All kids want to be grown up and have that freedom.

Anyway, here's a few items I've uploaded to show you the education I got, on my own, as a ten year old

Now this I still find funny because it was true. We kids turned the street in our neighborhood into a war zone around July 4^th. The “Bangalore Dog Torpedo” I found funny. We never tied a 100 salute rug to a dog's tail, but we annoyed the hell out of Mrs. Lutz's dog, Mugsy, with bottle rockets once.

1975, the War in Vietnam was finally lost and the magazine had poked fun at it still anyway, rather at anyone connected to it.

Charles Rodriguez showed me what I sort of knew already as a kid, that many adults were just full of it. 

In our neighborhood, the various families tried to outdo one another at "normal" and success.  My own parents weren't immune to "Keeping Up with the Jones's" either.  This bit by BK Taylor told me what I again, knew already, or at least felt that the entire charade was just that. 

Trots and Bonnie was my favorite. Here you had a couple of 13 year olds, one entirely innocent, the other completely jaded and a talking dog who was the “moral” conscious of the two.  

     

                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
 What was great too about the magazine is that they showed kids exactly as they were. We weren't Little House on the Prairie nor the Brady Bunch as the TV suggested. Add to that the illustrators and editors would use kids as butts of their jokes. What follows here is something we all did as kids, ruin the house for Mom, except none of us were shot for it.