Wesley+Brown's+A+Year+in+History

Dear Journal,

This year has flown by and I couldn't be happier. Who would have thought that my first year as a teenager would be as eventful as it has! If I would have been writing this last year I probably wouldn’t have cared as much but now that I’m a teenager I feel it’s my job to know what’s going on in the world. I can recall where I was on the exact date that Ohio State (Go Buckeyes!) won the Rose Bowl… that would be in my buddy Johnny’s dad’s living room on January 1. Or when the Jets won the super bowl on January 12. I can remember almost every single sporting event of 1969 and exactly where I was to witness the action. I sometimes brag about it to pops and he gets all “you don’t know nothing ‘bout nothing.!” What is he talking about? I sometimes have to remember that he’s just trying to be more like Mr. Brady from //The Brady Bunch//, which my parents watched nearly every week when it started in September. Just last night the ol’ man was asking me if I was nervous for my brother being drafted to ‘Nam. I told him “I’m not worried they haven’t even started a draft lottery” and he proceeded to tell me that they began at the first of the month. I’m still fairly certain he’s wrong just like when he told me that someone apparently walked on the moon in July… I highly doubt that happened! All I know is on October 16 Johnny’s team, The New York Mets, won over my favorite, The Baltimore Orioles, in the World Series. I can still remember sitting in his living room almost to tears as he ran around bragging, running up and down the streets about the stupid Mets; no one even likes New Yorkers, let alone their sports teams! Thank god for the volume control on television sets so I can drown out Johnny’s cheering. Shoot, I can even remember getting a color television set and watching reruns of some stupid show on BBC as ma and pops yelled at me from across the room to change the station to ABC for some special broadcast about some massacre happening over in Vietnam. Miata or My Lai… I’m not really sure what it was called all I told him was to head over to one of those new Wal-Marts that opened in October down on Main Street and he could buy himself a television to watch. After that night my television privileges were taken away and I wasn’t able to see Pele score his 1000th goal in soccer; I was livid. All I’ve got to say on December 31, 1969 is that I’m officially an enlightened teenage in junior high. I know everything there is to know about everything… or at least the important stuff that is. All I need to know is that the old man thinks I don’t know what’s going on in the world around me but I do, Journal, I do!

Well goodnight 1969 and hello 1970… we won’t always have //The Beatles// but we will have the Gap.