"Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large.
All of you over here, you 7, baaad words!
That's what they told us they were, remember? "That's a bad word!" No bad words, bad thoughts, bad intentions, and words.
You know the 7, don't you, that you can't say on television?
"Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits."
Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war."
In October 1974 George Carlin played Michigan State as one of the homecoming activities. My memory pegs the date as about October 19 or so. Mid-October is really the best time to walk the campus at MSU.
October weather is warm enough that a light jacket will do at night and a long sleeve shirt is fine in the day. October day are sunny days. The critical thing about the tenth month in East Lansing is that hundreds of tree varieties leaves are turning color. Those colors include orange and yellow, deep purple and bright red and a whole color wheel of other shades.
In mid-October midterms were still a week to a couple of weeks away. Back then the drinking age was 18 so with no pressure from exams you could hit the bars. Weed was plentiful so you could smoke bowl after bowl. Back then it was an age of golden twilights and thoughts shaded in amber.
On a whim, or maybe out of my lonely desperation, I asked my coworkers from Kurly Kustard in Ocean City, Nan and Larry and Nan's cousin Barbara to come out for a visit. To my surprise they said yes. Ah the hubris of youth. On a whim they drove out across Pennsylvania and Ohio via the turnpikes.
My roomie Nate the Great was gone for the weekend. So were the two guys who lived next to me. Everybody who was leaving said, "Go ahead use the room," and gave me their kids. In 1974 we were young, we had a joy of life, but we didn't have a dime. So, the use of the rooms saved a motel bill.
Nan and I took my room and Larry and Barbara my neighbor Don Tempe's room. All I remember are little bits and pieces of what we did that weekend. There is a clear memory of a walk own by the Red Cedar looking at the ducks. Nan's just then beginning here career as a birder had her Audubon book fall apart. The book was kind of old and back in those days the glue holding pages in paperbacks didn't last very long, a few years at most. Not bound to the volume pages of the field guide went flying. Rushing with adrenaline we all we ended up chasing wet pages of that birder's field guild down the banks of the river.
Back then, all those years ago, Barbara was sharing an apartment with Nan in East Lansdowne, If memory serves me well Larry kind of had a passing interest in Barbara, but I might be wrong about that fact. If you haven't figured it out from my prior writings, I clearly had a thing for Nan. As for her, well she did not have as enraptured interest in me. I don't think she was sure of what I was or what to do with me.
As a first term freshman I did not realize what a big deal homecoming was. MSU had 40,300 students at the time and it had been churning a quarter of them out each year for at least 15 years. Yeah, that is a shit ton of alumni and they all wanted to come back to campus and relive their glory days. They would wear earlier iterations of the school colors with images of earlier version of the school mascot. Homecoming was huge and things were happening like concerts and marching band parades.
In a joint decision we all decided we would spend Saturday evening at a concert. This required preparation. As I remember it Barbara was strait laced. As a direct result of this Nan and I had to lose her and Larry for a few minutes, we had a need. The short time we were apart let us blow a joint or three to get ready for George Carlin. Carlin was performing at the MSU Auditorium. He was competing with a concert by Dave Loggins somewhere else on campus. Loggins was a one hit wonder, but "Please Come to Boston" is still something I hum when it comes on the radio.
My thought is Barbara had only seen Carlin doing his hippy dippy weather guy thing on Carson. When we all agreed, we would go see Carlin I assumed she was going to be ready for his, shall we say more mature schtick. She wasn't. She really wasn't.
The four of us were sitting in the cheap seats up in the balcony at the MSU Auditorium. Two of us were stoned and simply saying, "Hello," would send us in to fits of giggles. We would be liquid with laughter one Carlin got going.
Carlin almost at once started riffing on what would happen if couches gave up every silent fart that had passed into them. Nan and I laughed just riotously. Barbara offered a few polite guffaws and Larry squirmed. My assumption is that eh squirm came because Larry:
- a. Knew Nan and I were stoned and he wished he was because this would be so much better, and
- b. Wanted to laugh but he didn't want to offend Barbara and his chances for the evening.
Things just spiraled from there. By the time Carlin got to the part about how fucking was so nice that fuck you should be our greeting in lieu of hello I was about to pee myself. Barbara at that point had her jaw clenched closed and Larry was in total squirm. On the other hand, Nan and I were laughing riotously at both Carlin and at the Barbara/Larry situation.
When it was over, we headed back to the dorm. If my memory serves me well, and it may not because I was indeed quite high, Barbara was on a tirade about blue comics, Larry had his head hung down and Nan and I couldn't look at each other without giggling.
Sensing she didn't want to argue the merits of blue comics I grabbed Nan and we ducked into my room. Me, I think that it was because of the whole fuck you riff that Nan engaged me in forenesia (mercy fucking) that night. Forever the Grateful Dead's "Wake of the Flood," will bring a sly smile to my face. Thanks to George Carlin I lost my virginity. George where ever you are, whatever space your molecules now occupy, I think you for that.
There is a bit of a coda to this story. I will always remember the call from a hysterical Nan telling me that Larry was being taken to jail in Ohio for speeding. Yeah, that was a thing in Ohio back in those days. The Ohio State Troopers would pull you over and shake you down for whatever cash they could wring out of you. Apparently the smokies got enough dinero that the trip home for the trio was only slightly delayed.
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