J. Beaman - The Magazine

L. was also wearing tie-dye. She is so not like me.

I think I might start telling people that my parents were killed by hippies. That being the source of my hatred of them. Maybe I was in the room when it happened and they were wearing patchouli and every time I smell patchouli now, I get flashbacks. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When I smell patchouli. That’s good.

Maybe it would have been a ritual killing. The hippies tied my parents and my sister and myself to our dining room chairs (the ones given to us by my great-grandma) and put some Grateful Dead on the turntable. The record was scratchy because hippies don’t take good care of things; look at their dogs. Jesus.

P.T.S.D. from patchouli and from the Dead. And they did a whirling dervish dance around us, the leader saying, “Man, you just don’t know about how you people are putting us down, man. Cause we’re on our trip, man, and you just keep fillin’ our lives with your death, man.” See, my mom worked for Dow Chemicals and this was some sort of retribution. “We’ll let your kids live, man, but, you know, you have to go. Poisoning the air with your oppression.”

I hate hippies.