Autistics and hippies

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I am often mistaken for a hippie, even though I don't really concider myself to be one...at least not by the stereotype I think of when I think of hippies.

When referred to as being a hippie, it is usually done derogatorilly by some manner of elitist hip-ster...because I don't conform to a specific gendre...(and maybe because I don't shave )...

anywhoo.....I might have owned a pair of Birkenstocks or two.....I might occasionally wear a long flowy dress...
BUT i do not like the Greatful Dead...I do not smoke pot....the idea of free love makes me queasy....i only will wear a tie dye if it is in muted earth tones....blah blah blah....

my mom came of age during that era...and she looked the part..but always felt like an outsider

I agree with that totally. Hippies were just soooo laid back, I think I am reliving my younger days just a bit late!! !!

The Sixties were a difficult time for me, because the hippie movement (do your own thing) came at the same time that I was being intensely behavior modified (think B. F. Skinner) to conform to "reality" and "society", at least my parents' version of it (which was the only legitimate version as far as they and the Behavior Modifiers were concerned), and here were these people going around proclaiming a different version which I found very very attractive. I was too young to be a hippie and by the time I was more or less old enough to be one they had pretty much been replaced by yuppies. I wasn't into the drugs and the random sex (still am not) but their eccentric creativity and sense of fun really appealed to me. Needless to say they were terribly subversive and a bad influence on this unstable mind.

The definition of hippie, hipster, emo, etc. keeps changing, and it means different things to different people.

I live in a place where a hippie is pretty much anybody who's not Southern Baptist. I live about halfway between Dallas and Lubbock, and we're second only to Idaho as far as being conservative goes.

Oh, I forgot to mention an AS-related thing about interacting with hippies:

Often, they do not like my "energy". It turns out that although "energy" is supposed to be some fancy spiritual thing, a lot of people who are "tuned in to people's energy" actually use the term to refer to non-verbal communication, whether they are aware of this or not.

I went through a hippie phase, when I was in High School. Get it? High School!

I really wanted to be a beat and when I went to the Village for the first time there were long hairs every where and I was so disappointed. I had no idea who or what they were, they hadn't made the newspapers, yet.

Yeah we did refer to ourselves as "freaks", also long hairs, more often among those that called each other close, brother or sister and we even knew how to use first names. There was a general sense of dress, which some are trying to pass off as our own conformity and it was, we weren't stupid either. It was a way to identify ourselves at a distance and when we did, it was a smile and a flash of the peace sign. And yeah there were jerks among us too. They didn't last long. I felt I fit and comfortably fit for the first time in my life.

It wasn't all fun and games, there was very real war going on, several. We were very often hated by the local cops and if you'd like stories about your basic civil rights being ignored, I'll oblige you. You hear about those that ducked the draft and that was cool. But did you know some went to prison for their beliefs as well? Yeah and my friend died shortly after getting out. Me I chickened out and just let them draft me. I gave away everything I owned, I did not expect to live through it.

I still hear fellow vets bitching about the hippies. If it hadn't been for the counter culture, their kids might very well be facing a draft and getting their asses sent to the Nam. But wake up people there is still a draft and you get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

I don't have a clue what is being passed as a hippie these days. Nor do I care. I expect they're very nice people on the whole.

Remind me sometime and I'll spin some Woodstock story's for ya.

Every time I hear the word "hippie", I cannot see anything but Cartman dressed as a "pest control" exterminator.