Twenty-three years ago today I was lying in my bed in the Milwaukee suburbs. I was kind of stoned, kind of bored, kind of listening to John Lennon who was my major obsession in those days. I'd start out every day with Plastic Ono Band's Working Class Hero (popups). I was almost 18 years old and I dug its rebellious vibe. My brother walked into my room and said, in his characteristic know-it-all way, "John Lennon is shot. I think he's dead." Thing is, my brother usually did know it all.
Fuck you, I said. Our heroes, particularly at 17, are sacred. Fuck you. But Ross insisted. "I saw it on Monday Night Football." So unlikely, I thought. But I turned on the radio, FM, which had started its terminable downfall just around this time.
The truth hurts. At 17, at 25, at 40. And wracked with teenage sincerity I mourned for a man I knew only through words.
The next morning it fell to me to do the morning announcements at my high school. I asked if I could veer from the script to say something about John Lennon, but the administrators would not budge. I had not yet learned to manifest my rebellion into action and so I acquiesced. Dour-faced, I launched into the mundane daily doings of Nicolet High School. Surprisingly, I received a head nod. I was approved to say something, but had nothing prepared. I called for a moment of silence, then urged the student body to "try and have a nice day."
It was all very dramatic and very high school. But 23 years later certain things still ring true. My generation was born on the cusp of tragedy. I was six months old when John F. Kennedy was shot and the nation mourned. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were gunned down in short order. Riots rocked the streets. The world was in turmoil yet families such as mine planted roots in the suburbs, planted heads in the sand and kids like me, my brother and some of our friends looked for role models that showed us it was okay to be different, to explore new paradigms.
There's little I miss about high school, but I do miss those early heroes. I miss my brother. And I miss the fleeting moments of enlightenment that come more often in youth and less often as we get older.
