Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

The Change in Me

YOU KNOW YOU'RE YOUNG when someone asks you for money and you take it as a compliment.

"You look pretty cool, can I ask you a question?"

The beggar was a girl in her late teens, a hippie standing outside the convenience store at the North Hills shopping center. She wore a peasant blouse and long, elephant-belled jeans that made it appear as though she had no feet. Granny glasses, amulets, a beaded headband: I couldn't believe that someone so sophisticated was actually talking tome.

I was thirteen that summer and had ridden to the Kwik Pik with my mother, who handed me a ten-dollar bill and asked me to run in for a carton of cigarettes. She watched the hippie ask me a question, watched me run into the store, and watched me stop on the way out to hand the girl a dollar.

"What was that?" she asked when I got back into the car. "Who was that girl?" Had I been with my father, I would have lied, saying she was a friend, but my mother knew I had no interesting friends, and so I told the truth.

"You didn't give her a dollar," she said. "You gave hermy dollar."

"But she needed it."

"What for?" my mother said. "Shampoo? A needle and thread?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask."

"I don't know. I didn't ask." Being mocked by the untalented was easy to brush off, but my mother was really good at imitating people. Coming from her, I sounded spoiled and vacant, like a Persian cat, only human. "If you want to give her a dollar, that's your own business," she said. "But that dollar was mine, and I want it back."

I offered to pay her when we got home, but that wasn't good enough. "I don't want just any old dollar," she said, "I wantthat one."

It was ridiculous to claim an attachment to a particular dollar bill, but for my mother this had become a matter of principle. "It's my dollar and I want it back."

When I told her it was too late, she got out and opened my car door. "Well, we'll just see about that," she said.

The hippie looked over in our direction, and I lowered myself in the seat. "Mom, please. You can't do this." It was touch-and-go for a moment, but I knew she'd stop short of actually dragging me from the station wagon. "Can't we put this behind us? I'll pay you back when we get home. Really, I swear."

She watched me cower and then she got back into the driver's seat. "You think everyone who asks for money actually needs it? God, are you gullible."

The spare-change girl seemed to have started a trend. On my next trip to the Kwik Pik I was hit up by another hippie — this one a guy — who squatted on the ground in front of the ice machine. He saw me approach and held out his leather hat. "Greetings, brother," he said. "Think you could manage to help a friend?"

I handed over the fifty cents I'd planned to spend on Coke and potato chips, and then I leaned against a post, watching this hippie and studying his ways. Some people, the cool people who had no extra money, made it a point to say, "Sorry, man," or "You know how it is." The hippie would nod, as if to familiar music, and the cool person would do the same. The uncool people passed without stopping, but still you could see that the hippie held a strange power over them. "Spare change? A dime? A quarter?" It was a small amount that asked a big question: "Care ye not about your fellow man?" It helped, I thought, that he bore such a striking resemblance to Jesus, who was rumored to be returning any day now.

I watched for half an hour, and then the cashier came out, fluttering his hands as if they were whisk brooms. "We can't have you hassling the customers," he said. "Go on, now. Scoot."

Hasslewas a young person's word, and coming from a full-grown man, it sounded goofy, reminding me of the way movie cowboys used the wordamigo. I wanted the hippie to stand up for himself, to say, "Cool it, Baldie," or "Who's hassling who?" but instead he just shrugged. It was almost elegant, the way he picked himself up off the ground and crossed the parking lot to what was most likely his parents' car. It didn't matter that he probably lived at home, criticizing the system during the day and sleeping each night in a comfortable bed. He'd maybe put my quarters toward some luxury — incense maybe, or guitar strings — but that was no big deal, either. He was a grown-up's worst nightmare, and, minus the hat, I wanted to be just like him.

At that point in my life I was still receiving an allowance, three dollars a week, which I supplemented with babysitting and an occasional job at the Dorton Arena, a concert and exhibit hall located on the state fairgrounds. When we were lucky, my friend Dan and I wore white jackets and folding paper hats and worked the concessions counter. When, far more frequently, we were unlucky, we wore the same dopey outfits, hung heavy trays around our necks, and marched up and down the aisles, selling popcorn, peanuts, and the watered-down Cokes we were instructed to refer to as "ice-cold drinks."

In real life nobody said things like "ice-cold drinks," but our boss, Jerry, insisted on it. Worse than simply saying it, we had to shout it, which made me feel like a peddler or an old-time paperboy. During heavy-metal concerts we went unnoticed, but at the country-music shows — jamborees, they were called — people tended to complain when we barked through their favorite songs. "Stand by Your POPCORN, PEANUTS, ICE-COLD DRINKS," "My Woman, My Woman, My POPCORN, PEANUTS, ICE-COLD DRINKS!" "Folsom Prison POPCORN, PEANUTS, ICE-COLD DRINKS." The angrier fans stormed downstairs to take it up with Jerry, who said, "Tough tittie. I got a business to run." He dismissed the complainers as "a bunch of tightwadded rednecks," which surprised me, as he was something of a redneck himself. The expressiontightwadded was a pretty good indicator, as was his crew cut and the asthma inhaler he'd decorated with a tiny American flag.

"Maybe he means 'redneck' in an affectionate way," my mother said, but I didn't buy it. Far more likely he saw a difference between himself and the people who looked and acted just like him. I did this as well, and listening to Jerry made me realize how pathetic it sounded. Who was I to call someone uncool — me with the braces and thick black-framed glasses. "Oh, you look fine," my mother would say. She meant to reassure me, but looking fine to your mother meant that something was definitely wrong. I wanted to turn her stomach, but for the time being my hands were tied. According to the rules, I wasn't allowed to grow my hair out until I turned sixteen, the same age at which my sisters could finally pierce their ears. To my parents this made sense, but ears were pierced in a matter of minutes, while it took years to cultivate a decent ponytail. As it was, it would take me a good nine months just to catch up with Dan, whose mother was reasonable and did not hamper his style with senseless age restrictions. His hair was thick and straight and parted in the middle, the honey-colored hanks pushed behind his ears and falling to his shoulders like a set of well-hung curtains.

Ever since the fourth grade we had been mutual outcasts — the nature lovers, the spazzes — but with his new look Dan was pulling ahead, meeting cool people at his private school and going to their homes to listen to records. Now when I called somebody an L7 he looked at me the way that I had looked at Jerry — cuckoo cuckoo — and I understood that our friendship was coming to an end. Guys weren't supposed to be hurt by things like that, and so instead I settled into a quiet jealousy, which grew increasingly difficult to hide.

The state fair arrived in mid-September, and the concessions crew moved back and forth between concerts at the arena and smaller events held at the speedway. Dan and I were setting up for the first stock-car race when Jerry announced that instead of Coke, we'd be selling cans of something called Near Beer.

What separated near beer from the real thing was alcohol content. Beer had one, and Near Beer didn't. It tasted like carbonated oatmeal, but Jerry hoped the customers might be deceived by the label, which was robust and boozy-looking. "The mind can play tricks," he said.

Maybe he was right, but the minds that mistook a sugar tablet for an aspirin were not the minds that gathered to witness a North Carolina stock-car race. Our first load sold instantly, but come our second time out, people had begun to catch on. "Beer, my ass," they shouted. "Ya'lls isdeceivers."

"It'll pick up when the heat kicks in," Jerry said, but no one believed him.

There was an hourlong break between the first and second stock-car event, and as Dan and I walked along the midway I thought about a suede vest I'd seen the previous week at J. C. Penney's. It was what the saleswoman described as "a masculine cherry red," with lines of fringe swaying like bangs from the yoke. Eighteen dollars was a lot of money, but a vest like that would not go unnoticed. Couple it with a turtleneck or the right button-down shirt and it announced that you were sensitive and no stranger to peace. Wear it bare-chested and it suggested that, long hair or not, yours was a life lived in that devil-may-care region best described as "out there." I'd hoped that by working all weekend, I might earn enough to buy it, but what with the Near Beer, that was pretty much out of the question. Now I'd have to put it on my Christmas list, which definitely neutered the allure. What had seemed hip and dangerous would appear just the opposite when wrapped in a box marked "From Santa."

The bleachers were filling up for the second race, and as we headed back to the speedway I noticed a pair of squarely dressed boys staring up at the Ferris wheel. They looked like me, but a bit younger, brothers probably, wearing identical black-framed glasses secured to their heads with tight elastic bands. I saw them looking upward with their mouths open, and in that instant I saw my red suede vest.

"Spare change?"

The brothers looked at each other, and then back at me. "Okay, sure," the older one said. "Gene, give this guy some money."

"Why doI have to?" Gene asked.

"Because I said so, that's why." The older brother unstrapped his glasses and rubbed a raw spot on the bridge of his nose. "You're a hippie, right?" He spoke as if, like Canadians or Methodists, hippies walked quietly among us, indistinguishable to the naked eye.

"Well, course he's a hippie," Gene said. "Otherwise, he wouldn't be bothering people." He sorted through his change and handed me a dime.

"Right on," I said.

It was the easiest thing in the world. Dan worked one side of the Ferris wheel, and I took the other. We asked for money the way you might ask for the time, and when someone gave it we blessed them with a peace sign or the squinty nod that translated to "I'm glad you know where I'm coming from." Adults were cheap, and too judgmental, so we stuck to people our own age, concentrating on the obvious out-of-towners who had heard about hippies but had never seen one in real life. People either gave or they didn't, but no one asked what we needed the money for or why two seemingly healthy teenagers would trouble complete strangers for change.

This was freedom, and to make it taste just that much sweeter, we worked our way back to the speedway, where Jerry was setting up for the third stock-car race. "I ought to kick ya'll's asses," he said. "Walking out on me the way you done, that's no way to treat a friend." He handed us our uniforms, and we tossed them on the counter, announcing that we'd found an easier way to make money.

"Then get on out of here," he said. "And don't come crawling back, neither. I don't have no use for backstabbers."

We had a high time with that one. Reminded of just how stupid a person looked in a paper hat, Dan and I returned to our panhandling, pausing every so often to tap each other on the shoulder. "Backstabber, you might think I've got some use for you, but think again." As the afternoon moved on, we replaced the wordbackstabber with the wordhippie, allowing ourselves to believe that Jerry had fired us not because we had walked out on him but because we were free and of the moment. It didn't matter that we'd never work for him again, as those days were behind us now. Work was behind us.

By five o'clock I had begged enough money to pay for my vest, but Dan and I were greedy and not ready to stop. Plans were made for stereo systems and minibikes, anything we wanted, paid for in dimes. Dusk approached and the midway brightened with colored bulbs. The early evening was lucrative, but then a different crowd swept through and the mood became rowdy.

"Spare change?"

The guy I'd approached had a downy, immature mustache, no more than a few dozen hairs positioned above a mouth the size of a newborn baby's.

"What did you say?" he asked.

I turned away, and when he spun me back around to face him, I noticed his army jacket, which wasn't the old ironic kind but a crisp new one, the type you'd buy as practice before you enlisted.

"Did you talk to me, weirdo?" His mouth was bigger now. "Did you say something to my face?"

A second boy stepped up and put his hand on the angry guy's shoulder. "Come on, Kurt," he said. "Take it easy."

"Maybe you don't understand what's going on," the guy named Kurt said, "but this bozo talked to me." He spoke with great outrage, as if I'd peed in his mouth. "I mean, he actuallysaid somethingto me."

Two of their friends who had walked ahead came back to see what the fuss was about and stood with their arms crossed as Kurt explained the situation. "I was minding my own business and this piece of shit started running his mouth. Comes right up as if he knows me, but he doesn'tknow me. Nobody fuckingknows me."

The only thing worse than a twenty-five-year-old with a Vietnam flashback was a fourteen-year-old with a Vietnam flash-forward. I turned my head to look for Dan and saw him backing away just as Kurt's fist caught my ear, breaking the stem off my glasses and sending them to the ground. The second punchgrazed my upper lip, and the third was interrupted by the friends, who grabbed Kurt by the arms, saying, "Hey, man, take it easy. He's not worth it."

I tasted the blood leaking from my lip. "It's true," I said. "I'm not worth it. I swear I'm not. You can ask anyone."

"He shouldn't go talking to people when he doesn't know who the fuck he's talking to," Kurt said. "The next time someone gets in my face, I'll fucking kill him. I swear I will."

"We know, buddy. We know." Kurt's friends led him down the midway, and a minute later one of them returned to hand me a dollar. "You're cool, man," he said. "What Kurt did, that was wrong. He can kind of go off sometimes, but I know where you're coming from. I like peace."

"I know you do," I said, "and I appreciate it."

It was the first time anyone had given me an entire dollar, and it occurred to me that if I could get beaten up twenty times a day, I could make some real money. Then I saw my broken glasses, and the equation fell apart. I was picking them off the ground when Dan stepped up, pretending to have missed the whole thing. "What happened to you?" he asked.

"Don't give me that," I said.

"Don't give you what?" He bit his lip to keep from laughing, and I knew in that moment that our friendship was over.

"Just call your mom," I said. "I'm ready to get out of here."

There were a million ways to hurt yourself at the state fair, so when my mother asked about my lip I told her I'd hit the safety bar while riding the Tilt-A-Whirl.

"Aren't you a little too old for that?" she asked. She had the Tilt-A-Whirl confused with the twirling cups and saucers designed for grade-school kids. My mother had actually pictured me wedged into a flying teacup.

"Jesus," I said. "What do you take me for?"

She offered to have my glasses fixed but drew the line when I asked for a brand-new pair.

"But the ones I've got make me look like a bozo."

"Well, of course they do," she said. "They're glasses. That's their job."

Dan and I had planned to return to the fair on Sunday morning, but when he came to the door I sent him away, saying I wasn't feeling well. "I think I have some kind of flu."

"Could be the chicken pox," he said, and again he tried not to laugh. This was what you did to people you felt sorry for, to people too stupid to get the joke, and it was a lot worse than just coming out with it. He headed up the driveway and I thought again of the previous evening and of what I'd said after Kurt had thrown his first punch. Agreeing that I wasn't worth the energy it took to hit me was bad enough, but did I have to offer it as a matter of public record?You can ask anybody. It was no wonder he'd reared back and hit me again.

Late that night Dan knocked on my bedroom window. "Guess who made forty-four dollars?" he said. The bills were held behind his back, arranged into a droopy fan, and he brought them forth with great ceremony.

"Oh, come on. You did not make forty-four dollars." I denied it for the sake of argument, knowing that of course he had made forty-four dollars. The following weekend, his hair just that much longer, he would return to the fair and make even more. In no time he'd be wearing ponchos and sitting cross-legged before elaborate brass hookahs, our friendship as vague and insignificant to him as an old locker combination. "The two of you grew apart," my mother would say. She made it sound as if we'd veered off in different directions, though in fact we had the exact same destination. I just never made it.

It turned out that the vest was not suede but something closer to velveteen. This was a disappointment, but having suffered in its name, I had no choice but to buy it. With the money I had left over I got a pair of blue corduroy hip-huggers, which made an ironic statement when worn with the red vest and a white shirt.I love America. Yeah, right!

"Tell me you're not wearing that out of the house," my mother said. I thought she was in some way jealous. Her youth gone, style was beyond her grasp, and she hated to see me enjoying the things that she could not.

"Could you please stop hassling me," I said.

"Ooh,hassled, are we?" She sighed and poured herself a glass of wine from the gallon jug in the pantry. "Go on then, Uncle Sam," she said. "Don't let me stop you."

I debuted my new outfit at the Kwik Pik, where once again I ran into the hippie girl. She wasn't begging this time, just standing with a friend and smoking cigarettes. Hanging out. I nodded hello, and as I passed she called me a teeny-bopper, meaning, in effect, that I was a poseur. The two of them cracked up laughing, and I burned with the particular shame that comes with being fourteen years old and realizing that your mother was right.

The last thing I wanted was to pass the hippie again, and so I stayed in the Kwik Pik as long as I could, biding my time until the manager kicked me out. How was it that one moment you could look so good and the next you would give almost anything to crawl into your grocer's freezer, settling beneath the pot pies until you reached that mysterious age at which a person could truly think for himself. It would be so peaceful, more drowsing than actual sleeping. Every so often you'd come to and notice that the styles had changed. The shag had arrived. Beards were out. You would look at the world as if through the window of a bus, hopping out at that moment of time you instinctively recognized as your own. Here was the point where, without even trying, you could just be yourself and admit that you liked country music or hated the thought of hair against your neck. You could look and act however you wanted, and spend all day in the Kwik Pik if you felt like it. On leaving, you'd pass a woman dressed in a floor-length skirt, the paisley pattern resembling germs as seen through a microscope. A beaded headband, delicate wire-rimmed glasses: she'd ask you for a quarter, and you'd laugh, not cruelly, but politely, softly, as if she were telling a joke you had already heard.