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Health & Fitness

A Reunion of Goons, Loons and Buffoons

The next time someone tells you act your age, tell them that this is the oldest you have ever been and that you have no current reference points.

Recently my wife and I attended a reunion of all the Brooklyn friends that we grew up with during our late teen and early adult years.

During that post high school period of personal unrest, career displacement and disco drama from 1977-1982. We mainly hung out in Canarsie, Brooklyn on East 104th street between Aves M and N until the wee hours, with our dates, pals and even for some, our future spouses.

With names and nick names like Moose, Schleppie, Skinny Vinny, Goodhartz, Porkchop, Mutnick, Stew, Hellkin, Pokey, etc; we hung out in the middle of the street near our double and triple parked muscle cars, or went out to eat and drink at the clubs together in groups three times as big as those fist pumping Goombahs and Koosheenettes from the Jersey Shore and with a lot less drama, but a good deal of belly laughs.

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Near the end of our days together back then, we even attended many of each other’s weddings and divorce parties. As a marriage license then, seemed to be more like a learner’s permit to some in our group. Back then the crossroads of wisdom were at the intersection of “Past Mistakes,”  “Future Gambles” and “Listen to your Mother" way!

So with the assistance of social networking, Twitter, Facebook and Dog the Bounty Hunter, it was planned that the “East 104th Street Lunatics” have a reunion at a Staten Island hotel, in the heartland of stacked garbage and landfill.

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This great evening was planned so that we could catch up on the recent family histories and see what receded and what expanded in the last 30 years.

Now attending this event, for me, was like realizing after years and years of watching the TV shows and cartoon shorts of that genre, that many of my friends of yesteryear were like Mel Blanc’s characters (of the popular cartoons like Porky Pig, Sylvester the cat, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Tweety bird and so on) all were over the top, silly, socially awkward and had speech impediments.

Except for the speech difficulties which did not apply to any of our old friends, most of these guys and gals were looney tunes, myself included! And believe it or not, many were still very much the same. We even brought our kids to this festival, so that they could put faces to the silly stories they have heard for years and years.

Back then we acted like our group moniker-Lunatics...in both private and especially in public. It probably had a lot to do with the era we grew up in, that we are all still characters as well. It was sort of like prank phone calls after area codes were in place but before caller ID was invented. A glorious load of merriment. And at this event we were no different. We even phone pranked my son at the event and howled with laughter afterwards.

You see, we were (and still are, I learned) the type of group that would see a sign on an IHOP Restaurant that says, “We serve breakfast anytime.”  We would go in and get seated and then when the waitress arrived we’d order “a short stack of Blueberry wheat cakes during the American Civil War!” and yuck it up intensely like somebody farted laughing gas.

Or we would go into McDonalds and ask the cashier, “If you supersize a Happy Meal, do you get a really BIG Toy?” Just to see the look on their face as they verbally stumble through an apology using the word “like” in every other sentence. (You are welcome to try it, it is supremely funny still to this day.) Or when we would go to OBI (the famous Oak Beach Inn, which was the Studio 54 of Long Island) all decked out in corduroy and linen and order drinks like Harvey Wallbangers, Heiny-kings, Urine Sample and Sex on the Beach (hey, who knew that green Midori liquor glowed brightly under black light?) because of the funny way they sounded and that most club bartenders back then only the skills to open a beer.

Our relationships with each other was why the TV show “Welcome Back Kotter" and the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High" became so popular then. We could all look back over our shoulders and relate. It seems that at that time in history, we were easily distracted by humor. You have to remember; rich or poor, smart or dumb, educated or not, back then we only had 7 TV stations, phones with cords and a video game called Pong.

Now that was a fun way to grow up!

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