Those were the days

Idig a pygmy. I remember those photos in National Geographic magazine. Nude pygmies.

They were looking at the camera like, “What’s the big deal?”

I thought they looked happy and ready to get on with their business, but this photographer is standing there in a burlap jumpsuit and camera gear.

Who’s the freak? Not the pygmy.

I feel the desire to take off my clothes and run around in my backyard sometimes.

That may have something to do with hitting puberty around 1973, when streaking was all the rage. I did it a few times.

It’s a rather fond and freeing memory. Now it’s a reason to register as a sex offender.

I enjoy hearing something new in a piece of music that I never noticed before.

I borrowed the first sentence of this letter from the opening of the Beatles, “Let it Be” album, which is playing as I write this.

I’ve been listening to it for 50 years and I’m noticing for the first time, the epic horn arrangement on George Harrison’s, “I, Me, Mine.”

It’s always been there, but this is the first time I’ve really listened to it, by itself. So subtle in the mix. It’s amazing.

I remember John Lennon and Yoko Ono were the first adults I saw naked, other than the pygmies. I was seven and looking at the cover of their 1968 “Two Virgins” album.

All I remember thinking was, “That sure is a lot of hair.” The visual wasn’t nearly as disturbing as Yoko’s primal screaming featured on the album.

My neighbor was a Beatles fan and had all their albums, including the Yoko stuff. I remember his brother screaming, “Turn that crap off!”

Those were the days, my friends.

Mitchell Seyfer Palmdale