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Young Americans with Helpful Attitudes
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
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Young Americans with Helpful Attitudes Joan, a woman my sister's age, called me up one day and told me that she had heard about my organization, SPEC. She represented another organization of concerned young people, called YAHA, Young Americans with Helpful Attitudes, and wanted to know ifI'd be interested in talking about becoming a member. I didn't like the sound of the name. Young Americans with Helpful Attitudes? It sounded Republican to me and my family was Democratic. "What kind ofhelpful attitudes?" I asked. "Right now YAHA is more concerned with drug education than the environment," she said. "We think SPEC will round us out." "Drug education?" I said. How boring, I thought. ''Jerry told us about you," she said. "At Everyday People." "What ... didJerry say about me?" I asked. "He called you a dynamic and sensitive young man. He thought you could make a difference." Ifthat's what he thought and she believed him, then maybe YAHA wasn't so boring. "I'd like to take you out to dinner to discuss this, if your mother says you can go." "My mother isn't here right now," I said. "She's in New York." I don't know why I gave Joan that information. It just confused her. "Oh, when will she be back?" "Who knows?" I said. "She's gone to look for my sister." Actually, she'd found my sister. Nola was in the psychiatric unit of Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. She'd been picked up by the police and dumped there. She must have done something pretty fantastic to gain the notice of the Manhattan police. I never found out and my mother doesn't remember. Perhaps she stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue, stopping traffic, intent on the telepathic messages she constantly received from her Guru. Or maybe she was preaching to the cabbies, the business people, the shoppers: 277 Nola "Oh poor, lost twentieth-century man, when will you recognize the Truth ofyour myths, your fairy tales, your arts!?" Not now, they thought, hunched in their winter coats, used to ignoring such people. She was not their problem. She was ours, and the hospital wanted something done with her, so my mother flew back to New York to retrieve her. I was left hurriedly in the care of the first available student who'd have me, a woman named Robyn, which, in itself , seemed auspicious. Everything was a sign back then. Everything part ofa pattern. Put Robin in the care ofRobyn, the Universal Author seemed to say, and all will turn out fine. "Ifyou want dinner, I'm up for it," I toldJoan. "Let me check with my baby-sitter." Robyn sat in front of the TV with her boyfriend Phil. She had her legs in his lap and he had one hand in her hair and another in a bag of chips. The house was smoky from cigarettes and all our ashtrays were full. "I don't have any money," I toldJoan. "It's YAHA's treat," she said. "I'm going out to dinner tonight," I told Robyn. "Okay," she said without taking her eyes offthe set. * * * SPEC was a good idea and little more. I didn't have much in the way of follow-through at thirteen. We went out that one time and picked up trash in downtown Columbia and then another time cleaned up trash at Hinkson Creek. At least I cared a lot. At least I intended to care a lot. For a while we met on Saturday mornings at Everyday People, but mostly we just talked and fooled around. The room where we met was also the room where a sex education group met, and one day, we discovered a stash of birth-control pills and condoms in the closet. Jill Brinkley andJill Peters popped a handful each ofthe tiny pills and the boys in our group went to the bathroom and filled our condoms with water. Then we opened a window (we were on the second floor) and pelted people heading next door to Alfies Fish & Chips with the giant distended condoms. I'd quit Alfies by then and when they complained toJerry, he gave us a stern lecture (stern for Jerry, which was really pretty mild). I explained that we were trying to make a statement, attacking Corporate America's laissez-faire attitude toward the poor and hungry, the overpopulated , starving regions ofthe world. I used that word, laissez-faire [18.215...