Hormones. Hodads. Harding: Nothing Makes Sense

The more I try to make sense of the world, it seems that the more nothing makes sense.

I am short and skinny and look like I’m a seventh-grader.

Impatiently I pray at night for more reluctant hair to show up under my arm pits—infuriated at the practical joke God was playing on me. Here I am, FOURTEEN in high school among towering mature oaks—gorillas with hair all over their bodies. 

I’m in love withAndrea, walk among the apes and have only two freaking hairs under my right arm pit. The small pond of choice at Saint Mark’s has grown into a very large sea at Saint Monica High School. 

I am frightened that Andrea now had the option of picking from the slick-surfers donning mustaches from the Palisades. I am merely minnow in the vast ocean.

It was spring – something was happening in my body that I couldn’t explain other than the fact that I was officially twitterpated.  It is time to take matters into my own hands. I wrote her a love letter (Though Paul Anka and Annette Funicello may see it as nothing more than puppy love – It is real to ME!). Never-the-less, this is a secret to keep from the Wolf-Pack. Couldn’t let my family find out about my secret crush–they would most certainly use this information against me somehow.

I tucked the note into my Pee-chee folder and was determined to give it to her at school.

Lunch.  

At lunch!  

That was my plan. 

I begged AlexDelgadillo for food.  As with our new tradition, he opened the bun on the hamburger his mother made him and handed me the pickles. 

“STOP!” James Moore charlie-horsed me in the thigh, to stop the nervous jitters of my leg that had been driving him crazy. 

“Hyper” I said, as an excuse—never knowing when it was happening.  Everyone had been calling me hyper for so long that I figured I might as well use it as my alibi. 

This. Was. It.

This was the moment of truth. 

I saw her—she looked my way. My heart stopped or my breathing or something.  Shock.  Excitement. Nervous. She still had a thing for me. YES! I still had a chance.

I stood. She walked in my direction. I fumbled pulling the folded paper out of my pee-chee folder. I crushed it in my fist. I breathed—I tried to.  Nervously, collecting my thoughts I took a step towards her and looked down for one second at the hand that held my undying declaration of love for her way back since sixth grade. I looked up as she walked right past me and right up to a guy standing in the ally way between the gym and the music room.

She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking past me. I glared. She smiled and giggled and even tilted her head. TILTED HER HEAD. Did you hear what I just said? You know the tilt girls do when they are “in-like.” She tilted her head to a stupid surfer kid from Santa Monica. 

UGHhhhhh...someone help me please! 

I was ruined. Where were you in the spring of 1971? If you were anywhere on the West-coast, the odds are, you probably heard the sound of my heart breaking?  

Minnow yes—plankton maybe –in a large ocean filled with sharks, hairy apes and giant oaks. I placed one of Alex’s pickles in the love-letter and ate it. The swim-team guys thought I was retarded.  Nothing made sense—not love—not hormones or puberty—NOT girls.

Words I thought I’d never say: “Today I need you Wolf Pack.” I was numb. “I needed to be put in a pit or hung out of a window. I needed to be electrocuted or tied up in a straight jacket and thrown over a cliff. I needed to get into a fight with someone.  I needed Richard to steal my chocolate. I needed Erick and the band of Angry-Little-Men to ambush me.” 

I am a Zombie in need. I was drifting. I needed James Moore to try to hit me in the leg one more time.

Despondent, I skipped swim practice and hitchhiked—home, half-hoping to be kidnapped, and got only as far as POP.

Surf-rats turned skater-rats were hanging out at the ruins. 

Dude it was on. 

Here I was in my catholic uniform completely out of my element right where I needed to be. Two rough looking kids screamed profanity at me and walked up as if I had invaded sacred territory—in surf talk—a “hodad.” This was my day to die. This was my chance to be pummeled, to feel pain, to feel alive.

“Dahlin?” one of them asked.  

I came straight out of the Dahlin cookie-cutter mold and looked just like my brother Karl who, along with Bruce Grant and Jeff Ho, surfed there all the time. I nodded. 

"Cool." Knowing I was a Dahlin from Venice this kid, Tony, offered me a toke of a joint they were smoking.   

                      I had a decision to make. 

To toke or not to toke that is the question?

Oh BTW two years later...  

On March 15, 1972, DJ Robert W. Morgan played the Donny Osmond version of Puppy Love for 90 minutes straight on KHJ in Los Angeles. The LAPD mistakenly raided the station studios after receiving numerous calls from listeners. Confused, the officers left without making any arrests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Love_(Paul_Anka_song)     (It was right for people to call the cops it was torture)!

Pee chee folder Picture credit https://www.flickr.com/groups/peecheefolderart/pool/

POP picture 1 credit: Facebook post the rise and fall of Pacific Ocean Park 

POP picture 2  credit: Facebook post ?