You’ve been that way forever – you will be that way forever. And knowing you, you’ll probably stop tomorrow because that’s just the way you are.
You’re a cottage industry – you’re a way of life – you are the picture people stick pins in.
You are a Contrarian. You didn’t know it was actually a thing until your mom told you. You have a habit of doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing. Started around fourth grade – Class photo day. Girls had to wear dresses and white blouses – boys had to wear white shirts and ties.
Not you. You pretended you didn’t get the message. But you were in the same room at the same time everybody else did.
You just didn’t feel like it. You also didn’t know how to tie a tie – but that’s another story.
The other kids laugh and think you’re cool. It’s high school now and everyone you know is asking “why” all the time – maybe you’re catching on.
Sometimes being the way you are gets in the way of other things – like a love life, for example.
There are some girls in your class who actually used to like you. But they could never get an answer from you.
You were painfully shy, but you’d rather wear a cement suit than tell anyone you were terrified. You had no idea what to say to the opposite sex so you acted aloof and distant – and some of them found you fascinating – but the ones you secretly dreamed about thought you’re a waste of perfectly good skin and organs. That hurt – big-time.
Truths to tell; you’re just like everybody else. But you got it in your head, as far back as grade school, that you didn’t want to spend your life being invisible.
And the best way of not being invisible is to do the opposite of everyone else. To stick out just because you’re weird and you can do that.
And you laugh to yourself. And you sit in your room after school and stare at the walls – and you fiddle with your radio, flipping the dials back and forth because you can never find a song you actually want to listen to all the way through.
And when you’re alone you don’t laugh to yourself – you’re actually kind of miserable.
But that’s you and maybe you’ll grow out of it – you can’t imagine being thirty, doing and saying the opposite of everyone else – all the time – forever.
But knowing you . . . .
Here’s a half-hour of Johnny Hayes at KRLA in Pasadena on April 19, 1967 that you probably never listened all the way through to at the time.
