What Was YOUR “Get Off My Lawn” Moment?

This article is titled “What’s Your ‘Get Off My Lawn’ Entertainment Moment?”

The article starts off with “Everyone has a different get-off-my-lawn moment, a fact that makes them suddenly feel their age.”  The author is referring mostly to teenage Hollywood stars from the 1970s and ‘80s who are now older than their parental-age co-stars were at the time.  John Travolta is now older (59) than his teachers from Welcome Back Kotter.  Ralph Macchio is the same age (51) that Pat Morita was when The Karate Kid was filmed.

Etc.

My own “Get Off My Lawn” moment was derived from one of those underground “freak” comics from the late ‘60s / early ‘70s; probably either Zap Comics or The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.  I don’t remember the title, but I think it was just one frame.  This hippie was showing how you can do your panhandling or hitchhiking at a stop sign, so you have a captive audience among all the stopped motorists.

It showed the hippie staring at a driver with this intense pleading facial expression, with the thought bubble saying “Oh please, Mister, oh pleeeease!?!?!?”  And I just cracked up, thinking “All right!  Make that rich businessman squirm, hee hee hee.”

Fast forward about twenty years.  I’m driving home from work.  I come up to a red light, and there’s some guy standing right there with a “Will Work For Food” sign.  And I’m studiously ignoring him, staring straight ahead, wishing that F$#%&!#!# light would hurry up and change.

Yup, “Get Off My Lawn!”  I had come full circle.  I’d turned into that dull nine-to-five suburbanite I’d thought was so hilarious twenty years earlier.