I turn 35 today. 

I was conceived in a trailer house somewhere outside Little Rock after a Grand Funk Railroad concert in February of 1973.  I’m pretty sure it’s the same concert where the guys from GFR met Connie Hamzy, who Wikipedia calls “the most prolific groupie of all time.” She was the inspiration for those famous first lines:  “Last night in Little Rock/ Put me in a Haze/Sweet, sweet Connie, doin' her act/ She had the whole show and that's a natural fact.”  They released the album We’re An American Band in the summer of 1973.  

The Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade in January, just a couple of weeks before the GFR concert in question.  The very next day, Richard Nixon announced a peace treaty in Vietnam.  The dollar was devalued 10% the same month as the concert.  The first POWs started coming home in February too.

Apparently, there was a lot of out-of-wedlock sex going on in Arkansas in the winter of 1973.   My parents were 17 and 19.  They got married four months later, in the Assembly of God Church in our tiny hometown. They meant to get married outside, but it rained.  

While I was gestating, the U.S. bombing of Cambodia ended.  Terrorists wrecked havoc in Greece.  There was a bombing in New York City, planted by Chilean terrorists.  The Yom Kippur War started and ended. Pablo Picasso and J.R.R. Tolkien died.  The vice president resigned.  American Graffiti hit movie theaters. The day before I was born, Richard Nixon gave his “I am not a crook” speech. 

My parents proceeded to raise me in the most unconventional way they could conjure. In fact, I’m pretty sure my early childhood would have made Grand Funk proud. That’s why I know all the circumstances surrounding my birth.  In our house, everyone talked about sex. It was no big deal. My parents told me the story of my creation the first time I heard “We’re An American Band” on the radio.  It was my mother who told me who Connie Hamzy was and where her fame came from, without the least embarrassment.

As a kid in the 1980’s, I never imagined that I would be sitting here, at 35, confessing my weird connection to Grand Funk Railroad and a Grand Dame of American Groupies to a bunch of strangers via the internet. Other than the technology, not much has changed since 1973.

I don’t know if there’s a 2008 version of Connie Hamzy, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  We’re (hopefully) nearing a peace or withdrawal of troops in Iraq.  A bad president is going out on a bad note. Terrorism is a major problem around the world.  The economy is already washed out with the tide, slipped out of everyone’s grasp. 

There are so many things I thought I would have done by now, so many things I thought might come true.  One of them did, with Obama’s election.  So many others are yet to be fulfilled.  Luckily, I have a better than average chance of living to see something really change, since all my grandmothers lived well into their 90’s.  Maybe I’ll witness a post-oil world.  Or maybe I’ll just get to watch the destruction before the shift.