Growing Up In The Narcissistic Age Of The 70s

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I tell these stories a lot to my younger friends, they have no clue what it was like to be a kid growing up in the narcissistic age of the 70s. I have not met one person who grew up in this time that did not have narcissistic parents, it was just how it was.

I contribute this to the fact that our parents were starving in The Depression and had very poor ego strengths since they really got no attention as their own parents were freaking out about where the hell is the food coming from? My father ate fucking squirrel, I am not lying!!! He did, and his dessert was buttermilk with cornbread and he ate it with a spoon. That man can eat anything, I swear. He eats those little octopi babies and crunches down on them and thinks they are chocolate cake. He is an amazing man but he also was prone to the drink.

He grew up poor but pulled himself up from his bootstraps and became an attorney and was quite successful. We had money and we also had the crazy shit of living in a time when you polluted the world, threw out your trash when your car got dirty and you pretty damn well did what you wanted.

There was no PC. At a very young age, I learned how to make drinks while he drove. He kept a bottle of Canadian Club in his car at all times. I went into liquor stores a lot with him. He drank it with 7-up and a twist of lemon. He kept those in the car too. He had a large Mercedes and it was pretty much a bar inside. My friend’s parents all knew he drank and they let their kids ride with him. No one gave a shit. My mother had long been gone by then and it was just him and my two older siblings. Single parenting wasn’t easy, I sort of don’t blame him for drinking and I certainly don’t blame him because he ate squirrel as a kid.

My dad taught me how to drive at age 10. I sat on his lap and drove way too fast in that fucking Mercedes. How we didn’t crash is beyond me. He was drunk and I was 10!! I drove that car in the mountains of Southwest VA. I was driving illegally in a Jeep Cherokee when I was 15. He just gave me the car and I drove it. No license, no nothing. My friends rode in it too. Everyone knew, no one said shit.

It was awesome.

Maybe narcissism isn’t that bad.