Missed Opportunities

So, I was over InJaynesWorld a little bit ago, reading about how utterly cool she was in high school. I was having a lovely movie party in my head, imagining Jayne cruising around in her Spitfire, getting high and hanging out with the Airplane, Creedence, CSN&Y and Santana. Do you know how cool I might have been if only I'd had a friend like Jayne to hang out with?

Of course, to be that cool, it would have helped to have grown up in California. Me... I was stuck in Iowa, where nothing much was happening. Every once in awhile you heard about somebody scoring some Iowjuana... the home grown version of the coveted dope. And you heard tales of acid, but never actually knew anyone who dropped any. We just weren't that sophisticated.

To hear any awesome bands, (like the ones that Jayne was hanging out with on a regular basis,) you had to make a 100 mile road trip to the University of Iowa fieldhouse in Iowa City. My first trip there was to see Laura Nyro. We were so bold, we got up on stage and sat next to her piano. She was very kind about it and didn't order us thrown out. But that's the closest I ever got to a real, live, famous musician.

Later, I enrolled at Iowa because it was the "cool" school. (My parents told me they'd pay for any of the three state schools and the others just didn't cut it for the cool factor.) The Grateful Dead and Moody Blues became my bands of choice... along with chick favorites Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins & Joan Baez. And I laughed uproariously at showings of Reefer Madness at the dorm.


But, cool I was not. I'm afraid that even if I'd been transplanted to California, I would never have been cool enough to hang out with Jayne. For a very simple reason...

I am a wuss.

Yep, no question about it. I am not a daring person, despite having been incarcerated briefly at an early age for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was a "good girl" who believed everything I was told about how you could drop acid just once and suffer a lifetime of flashbacks. How heroin would leave you addicted after the first time you shot up. Not to mention the fact that I was so squeamish about sticking a needle in my body that heroine addiction was never going to happen. After all, I was the only person in my high school science class who couldn't get up the nerve to poke my finger to determine my blood type, resulting in a failing grade for that particular assignment.

In college I finally succumbed to the demon weed and thought I was a real badass. (But I always mooched off of other people because in my mind I would undoubtedly get arrested if I ever tried to score any on my own.) And we hung out at the bars regularly, getting drunk on cheap beer and dancing to whatever local band was booked for the night. (Again, sneaking in because I was too afraid of being caught with one to have a fake ID.) But that was the extent of my wild and crazy ways.

So, yeah... I suppose I coulda been sorta cool, even living in Iowa.

If only I wasn't such a wuss.

*sigh*

So many missed opportunities...