Ok, I didn’t know then what I know now, but come on it was the sixties – which is really  a common lexicon for the late sixties and early seventies – but hey what are you gonna’ call it – the sixenties or what; and I want to explain the trying too hard part of my being a pre-dental student and taking all those science classes that I hated as a means to an end – well, really two means to two ends which I’ll clarify; firstly I was not going to war in Vietnam, period,  and being a dental student was an exemption from the war… but also, I could be my own boss as a dentist and make a good living, set my own hours – you know, all the rationalizations that keep you doing the wrong thing and even though my parents weren’t pushing, my dad was a dentist and there was a certain amount of psychological pressure….so I stifled my creative side and took a bunch of science classes with a group of mostly psychotic pre-med students who were either in it for the money or driven by their neurotic parents who wanted their kids to be on the pedestal of the white suburban Jewish east coast passion play of WWII being over and Jews needing to make successes of themselves because the world sure ain’t gonna’ do it for them.

There came a day when the voices in my head that were actually the good voices, not the ones that you generally think about with that phrase, were screaming at me. But if those voices were really the crazy voices, the rest of my life has been…no, can’t go there.

The good voices screamed at me in a way that was impossible to ignore because they gained control of my musculoskeletal system, including my legs, which would not take me to dental class but instead would only take a right turn into the dean’s office and I quit.

Yikes.  That’s when I walked into the gloomy North Philadelphia morning and straight to a smashed up, graffiti covered phone booth and called Mike.  He said that I could join his commune. It was time to go with the flow.  

A few days later I had to plead my case to become a member.  With just a moment to collect my thoughts and consider who I was talking to and what they wanted to hear and why they should accept me and what the heck was I going to do if they said no, I was stressed. Was I trying too hard?