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Community Corner

Looking Back to 1976: Moving Back Home After College

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

It was the fall of 1976. My twin sister Teresa and I had just rounded the country hitch hiking for five weeks, and now we were both at loose ends.  She headed back to the bay area, and now I had this wide abyss ahead with no plans.

Since UCSB was behind me, I thought I might head back to Studio City, to park my butt for a while and see what bright future was ahead for me.

 “If you don’t have any plans for awhile, you can stay at the house,” I remember my mother offering.  What kid at 23 has plans? Certainly not me, having been more interested in composing my next line of poetry than making a long-term career path.

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With this suggestion, I promptly moved back in to the family house, feeling somewhat secure in knowing that I could enjoy my bedroom once again, imbibe in free meals, hang with my friends and make a vain attempt to find a job.

This strategy worked for about a week, until my mom suggested that I learn some hard lessons with my job pursuits.  She thought it would be a good idea for me to take the bus from Studio City to Santa Monica everyday, where I was a receptionist at a Jaguar dealership. 

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Mind you, it only took about two hours each way to get there, but I guess she thought it would character building for me to deal with the real world. And I thought college was hard? Try riding the bus with weirdos for four hours everyday.

In between temp gigs, I’d go shoot hoops at Beeman Park, triumphant that I could shoot 30 swishes in a row.  I saw my stepfather’s eyes roll when I’d tell him of my victory. I thought he’d be proud since he’d been a professional baseball player and the MVP in 1945 for the Detroit Tigers. Instead, I saw “loser” in his eyes.

Eddie Mayo, as he was known, was not amused.  As a self-made man, he’d worked his way into the major leagues, and had great business success after his baseball career ended.  Plus, he was newly married to my mom, and I’m sure the last thing he wanted was a tag-along at the house during the honeymoon phase of their relationship. 

I sensed tension in the air when I was at home.  The loving understanding from my mom seemed to be evaporating like the helium from a tired balloon. I was feeling more and more uncomfortable living there.

One morning, my mom and I had a little chat. Well actually, she had the chat, and I just sat there listening.

“You know, it’s probably time for you to live on your own Mary…” came the dismal sentence.  I knew she was probably parroting Eddie’s concerns. After all, she had allowed my three brothers to live at the house when they were in-between gigs, so wasn’t I entitled to the same privileges?   I guess not.

My mind began scrambling. Live on my own? Get an apartment?  How am I gonna do that? 

And thus began my slow churn toward becoming an independent child.  I started saving the money from my temp jobs. My brother Hal gave me some of his tired furniture.  I went with my pal Wendy Wayman to look for cheap apartments in the transvestite part of Hollywood, and soon, I found one for $150 a month with four police locks on it, and a flock of helicopters that hovered nightly in the neighborhood skies.

It was a painful lesson at the time, but cutting me loose was probably the best thing my mom could have done for me.  I learned how to function on my own, riding my bike everywhere and taking the bus. I eventually got into a career that paid me well in the advertising field.

But most of all, I learned the art of self-reliance, and for me, that was probably the best gift my mom could have ever given me.

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