NP Getting Sentimental Over Youth

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

The College of the Surf episode managed to pluck some strings of my heart,
as the saying goes, hen I read the novel. And still, if those Californian
guys were latecomers in a way, for me and some friends of mine it was more
troublesome belatedness, Nachtraeglichkeit, as a Viennese dude put it.

Belatedness: in time, in age, in space, what have you. In the fall 1970
"Hair" hit Haapavesi, my Northern Finnish home town of approximately 8000
dwellers. It was  performed by a traveling theater. One of my classmates 
in the fourth grade suggested that we should go & see the piece. Half a 
dozen of us managed to make it. Most of us were ten already. I was to turn 
ten in two months.

After seeing "Hair" our females put on all pieces of hippie outfit they
could steal from their big sisters and like. Each of us males started 
growing his hair at that point at the latest. And we all were twice kept 
after school by our teacher, a Puritan Lutheran believer, who tried to 
convince us that the male long hair really looks like "a magpie's nest". 
It is so gross. Not surprisingly, perhaps, we decided to keep our heads.

And we contaminated many of those around us. The following school year 
was dominated by a string of home parties. I don't recall where they got
the incence from, for each party. No drugs, though. Only self-made brew
(OH MY: now they are telling me that the server will be taken down in a
minute: I would like to go on with this NP story later on if you still 
think you can take