 STILL carry rolls and rolls of memory film
in my mind about my childhood with my
brother. Although I remember childhood sweethearts from ages 3 to 5, and the name
of the neighborhood girl whose family moved to Delaware when I was six, the names
of the neighbors, the kids we played with, the two girls our age in the hillside
neighborhood once we were all teenagers - niether of whom became girl-friends of
any of the boys in the neighborhood - generally, I lost touch with my childhood
chums and sweethearts. Once I attended Morris Hills Regional HS, such friends as I
had happened at school. Track and cross-country opened me up to the world beyond
in a way surpassed only by what radio, music, and getting into the guitar did when
I went to college. WOULD discover numerous reasons why people adopted such a strong "Don't Look
Back!" philosophy in the sixties. Like myself, I met many who were looking to make
a clean break with our past. With relatively little past to make a break with, it
seemed entirely possible. Funny thing how your past comes roaring back as soon as
you stop avoiding it...I've had a lot to make peace with and still do. Some of the
people I met simply didn't want "gold-diggers" to know who they were...Or to be
defined by society's impression of their family name and/or notoriety...I met so
many Gandalphs for a while...and other mythic characters. I myself became
simply
Peter, my confirmation name. Rabbitt got added to that by an art school drop-out
in the fall of 1968, in northern New Mexico. Little did I realize at the age of
23
what accepting that would lead to... WORD now, about appearance. I've seen a candid photo of myself in full "rabbit"
mode...Those ears! I was singing and was only thinking of the song...Is it true that some of us flash as wolves, racoons, hawks,
what have you? The whole subject of people being assigned animal names/clans is
fascinating to me. Being born in July, 1945, makes me a singing
rooster, according to Chinese astrology. The opposite of Hare, by the
way...go figure!OR   Y FATHER, for whom English was an acquired
language, never swore much in the
presence of his children. I think it is for this reason, and not primarily because
of his and my religious up-bringing, that I'm not comfortable around incessant
"profanity". I tend to avoid people who always have to be intensifying with sh-
this and f-ing that. (Juck'm if they can't fake a toke...sho nucking
fit...Hooray fer spoonerisms - or, should I say roonerspisms?). Being an
actor, I can do a mock
version of whatever I hear, or overhear...but it doesn't come from the
inside...who I am is the gentleman my father would often command me to be. He did
tell me this in a commanding tone of voice, but not as an
order. Somehow, something gentle and compassionate was
transmitted from father to sons, because both of my siblings, John and my younger
brother Dennis, possess a strong sense of the gentle way. Now that I am 53, the
age Marijan Senior was when I was 19 (and definitely a youngblood!), I'm
very grateful for my father's kindness, even though I hardly gave him much credit then. |
