EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a response to a post at the late, lamented SFGate Message Boards, where an older Caucasian alleged that some experiences were so special, second hand knowledge of them was inferior (specifically referring to "Purple People Eater," Frank Sinatra's ability to make girls swoon, rock 'n roll and Vietnam). The operative had heard somewhat ageist attacks from others here, and responded in kind.

Plus le change, plus le meme chose, mon ami. The names and details may be different, but your life, the life or your parents' generation, and the lives of mine all bear shocking similarities. As they have for millenia of what we laughingly call "western civilization."

"I Eat Cannibals" by Total Coelo was a pop hit when I was growing up, so I believe I'd know something about a silly song being a hit (for my grandmother it was this blues song I now love called "You Can't Tell The Difference After Dark").

Frank Sinatra? Try watching a world of girls on four continents screaming and passing out at the presence of Michael Jackson. Before either of us, Valentino could rock the house.

The "moral majority" of the country tried to stop Public Enemy and Luther Campbell in my lifetime. Before both of us, I'm certain there was another public embarassment we've all come to recognize now as harmless.

Serious rock and roll is Mos Def. It's X-Clan, Bootsy Collins, Stevie Wonder in the 70s. Things I saw first hand that now are taken for granted by seventeen-year-olds who think they know the first thing about cool. I think both of us don't appreciate enough Ellington or Calloway, since I don't think either of us were there to see it first.

As for war, I didn't have to get sent away for it. I pulled the trigger on an .45 caliber M1911A1 Colt pistol at 14, I had bullets zinging past my ears at 13. Warfare the likes of Beirut came right to my door, knocked, and asked politely if I could come out and play. "You will never know what it's like for the Government to attempt to make you human cannon fodder — for no reason?" You should see some of the juvenile detention facilities in our own backyards.

None of this is intended to diminish or detract from the wonder and power of the life you've experienced. It is intended to put both yours and mine in the proper perspective — that they are no more spectacular nor pointless than the lives of those who lived under the Inquisition, or at the time of Toussaint L'Ouverture, or at any other point in spacetime. Anything you or I know is merely minutiae, and can be known if not appreciated in the same way by anyone else.

It all ends up in tears.