QotD: The Year of the Fall

I tell younger people sometimes that "I was there at the fall" — that I can remember a time before the Western world finished going crazy. They don't believe me. They think everyone remembers the end of his childhood that way. But no: they are wrong and I am right. The nadir was achieved around 1969, when all the gulls of the 'sixties came home to roost. On the exposed hull of the ship, as it were.

The proof came to hand, recently, when a friend since early childhood sent me the link to a website where my high school yearbooks were stored: including the entire contents for my Grade IX year of 1967-68, and ditto for my drop-out year of 1969-70. (You will have to take this on faith, I won't supply the link. I don't need some blogger in Saskatchewan re-posting pictures of me as a young dweeb.)

The difference is dramatic. The teachers in the earlier yearbook are, when male, invariably in boring suits with narrow ties; and when female, regardless of age, dressed as school marms. The kids themselves, though not uniformed, are almost uniformly wholesome-looking. The photographer has obviously told them how to pose, they haven't been left to smirk and look ridiculous. The boys look as if they had slide-rules in their pockets. None of the girls look like sluts. (Even the ones who, as I recall, were sluts.)

Just two years later, and the teachers are a mess. The ties are disappearing, and some of the men are growing beards. One is actually wearing sunglasses. The younger female teachers are dressing to kill. Longhairs have started to roam the corridors; several of the kids look drugged. Group photos are chaotic, and the photographers should have been sued for half the mug shots. Hippie-dippie graphics have invaded the yearbook itself. The comments with the graduates' pictures have become dangerously risqué and smartass.

David Warren, "Date of inversion", Ottawa Citizen, 2007-04-01