THE YOUNG, THE POSERS AND THE ENGLISH MAJORS

This summer a dozen old grey beard bikers and I were sitting on picnic tables outside the VFW drinking beer, while at an adjoining table a young vet (who had drunk one – smelled one and spilled one) and his girlfriend were doing their best to shock us with sex talk.   Dropping words like fuck, suck, butt-fuck etc.  The conversation went something like this:  When we get home I’m going to spread you on the bed and turn that vibrator to warp speed …  She replied that if she screamed too loud he could always put something in her mouth ….

This was obviously being acted out for our benefit.   I couldn't help but look around the table and smile.   We were all vets – a band of brothers and biker brothers– and this young one, who was earning his stripes, believed he had discovered something that none of us could fathom, and we were suppose to be in awe.   I had to give these kids credit for trying to shock and awe a bunch of grizzly bikers.   There was nothing the young man had done or was about to do that we hadn't done a hundred times over with girlfriends, wives and whores. 

When you are young you see an obvious answer to every question, and most of all you think you are the first to discover sex.   This is the naïveté of the young.

The young naïve I can contend with – I kind of envy them – but they will mature in time. 

Posers, on the other hand are more grating.   They come in all shapes and sizes and from all backgrounds.  They are basically ignorant and insecure.   The militia idiots are training in the back-forty with their M-15 in preparation for repelling the black helicopters.   They are playing kids games but with real weapons.   Grown men who feel they need concealed carry license for protection are cowards without their pistols.  Just about anyone who is loudmouth and in your face is a poser looking for attention.

And speaking of attention seeking: some god please protect us from English and Fine Arts majors – especially the ones still in school.   Many become insufferable egotists who go out of their way to demonstrate their superior intelligence over the mere masses.   Like the Pentecostal snake handlers in Kentucky they speak and write in unknown tongues, or at least cryptic sentences that are constructed to mystify the uninitiated.   They hang out at coffee bars and try to impress onlookers.   Like the young vet, they banter about words like fuck and suck in an attempt to demonstrate that they are libertines and beyond convention.  They condescendingly correct grammar and spelling on public signs and in blogs.   In actuality their ego is much greater than their IQ.   If they remain in academia they will become literary savants but worldly ignorant.   

I don’t claim any superiority, and like BBC I don’t actually give a fuck about what other people think about me; but, if it were the case that when you die your entire life somehow would flash in front of your face – it would take me longer than most – for mine would have to be a double feature.  

the Ol’Buzzard