The first time I was born was 1950. That was a bigger deal for my parents than for me. Sure, I was starting my extra-uterine life then, but what did I know? Transitioning from hugged guppy to ’possum-without-a-pouch… My parents were PEOPLE, and it was their advent as parents.

It’s hard to describe what I remember of it, because I didn’t have words then. My ears were accustomed to rumbles and rhythms, my thoughts were inchoate and unselfish. The strongest image is one of compression. My eyes sometimes opened to wet darkness. There’s a reason we all like the ping of sonar and the action of a carousel. I knew nothing.

The second time I was born was when I came out of the ether in 1955. Tonsillectomies were standard operating procedure then, and my parents went along with all the pediatric recommendations. They didn’t even tell me what was going to happen. I woke out of a bright spiral nightmare to nausea and fury. I realized during the long throat-burning night that Mom and Dad could make mistakes. As could doctors and nurses. I decided I’d take care of myself. I knew something.

The third time I was born was charming. It was 1961 and I loved. I was going to say I fell in love – started to say it, in fact – and I took it back. Fell, fell: what is this “fell?” That’s not the way it was.

We were in seventh grade. This was back in the days of split sessions and football and junior high. Now kids only learn about football from fathers and television; soccer is the big field sport. Now kids go from elementary to middle school and enter high school in 9th grade; when I was young only the parochial high school started then, while the rest of us, without uniforms or catechism, went to three-year junior highs and entered the big scene as sophomores.

It was kind of a deal to go to junior high. Students from four different elementary schools merged into our 7th grade, so my middle class tract-home cadre met the rich kids from the horsey unincorporated area and the poor dark-haired bilingual kids, too. We all went from the coddling of 6th grade, where the only breaks from our teacher were the twice-weekly visits from the art instructor and the music coach, to a schoolday that consisted of six separate classes with six different teachers. Backpacks then were for hiking – no one carried them to school – so we used lockers, which we decorated and abused and infiltrated just like the big kids. And we had PE, with short white bloomers and additional lockers. Everyone hated PE. Everyone STILL hates PE, which hasn’t really changed since then, even though kids have been getting fatter and less fit during these decades, conclusively demonstrating the inefficacy of PE programs. We had PE, with regular opportunities to register each others’ menstrual cycles (if any), breast size, nipple shape, and other inadequacies. Daily we were made aware of our bodies in that comparative way and yet our parents’ culture tried to hold MUSIC responsible for our subsequent actions. Our post-war parents must be the most romantic/delusional generation this nation has produced.