“Strange Tales From the Doc” #20 “Growing Up Strange” in the early 80’s…. Here are some personal pics of me and my buddies when we were young. Hey, aren’t you glad I took a lot of pictures? I suggest YOU do the same. Most of my friends and myself had a few things in common at the time; Our parents were divorced, we loved [punk rock] music, drinking and going to gigs. Typical stuff for the early teenager then and now. We also loved shaving each other eyebrows [and more as time went on….] when we got to drunk. I was one of the best at it. Why? Because I never passed out and I was able to convince my other friends to do the “dirty work” for me. Thus leaving me “not guilty” when the victim yelled, “Who the fuck did this to me?!” While pointing at a bald spot, missing eyebrow(s) or colored hair when they woke up.
My personal favorite shaving? There are so many but one, the first one, was a great one because it started a the trend. During the summer of ’83 the “gang” always went to my Dad’s house for beer and lasagna. Our group was about 8 to 10 people or so on average and we ranged in age from 15 to 18 so free food and beer was a no brainer. (Hey, we would show up to a Pat Boone concert for that!) Plus it was always a lot of fun. That night a friend, Jay, got hammered like he always did. Little did he know what fate had in store for him.
We left my dad’s condo in Diamond Bar and drove to one of our usual hang-outs [Gary & Rob’s] in Upland. As soon as we got there Jay stumbled through the door and immediately passed out on the couch like always. My friend Ting and I were screwing with him a little while he slept. Nothing big, just sticking our fingers in his ears etc….Then I got the GREAT idea, “Wouldn’t it be funning to shave his eyebrow?” Ting was instantly into it 100%! And of course I was the one who got HIM to do it. When we finished we realized we couldn’t stop at just one eyebrow so Ting used his new razor skills to shave a “patch” of hair above his nose right along the hairline. Just a weird “square” of missing hair about an inch by inch big.
You may be thinking, “Yeah, that’s great, that’s funny” and you’d be right but the REALLY great thing about it is that on that following Monday [just two days later] Jay had to take high school graduation pictures! His mom flipped out! There was no postponing it, Jay had this one and only chance to take his photos. His mom penciled in the missing eyebrow and combed his hair “down” in some crazy fucked up looking way for his high school pictures! AWESOME! After that night we were hooked and the gang and I always carried a Bic disposable razor with us (which I still have in my old leather jacket 30+ years later by the way). Oh, and although these pictures with Jay show him with his twin-Fin Mohwak, he did NOT have that on this night trust me! Jay was actually a “good” kid at the time. I feel a little bad for setting him on the patch for personal destruction! I mean, Ting did that……