There’s only one thing worse than being caught watching porn and that’s being caught playing air guitar. (Actually, air guitar is worse because porn is now so ubiquitous it’s considered normal. Air guitar is considered pathetic.) For the uninitiated, air guitar is pretending to play the guitar part of some favorite rock song by whaling on an invisible Stratocaster. It’s an act of fantasy and mimicry, conducted with careful attention to musical detail so as to look utterly realistic. It’s what men once did as teenagers, in front of the mirror behind locked bedroom doors. Now it’s practiced by older men who should know better. …

For my condition I blame the Sixties, baby boomers, pop culture and, of course, my parents. In my mid-teens I was, for a time, the grown-up in the family. My pot-smoking, jazz-loving bohemian parents were like two big kids always having fun with no worries about the future. I tried to get them to act — and dress — like adults, but they rebelled against the rules of adulthood. No, it wasn’t easy bringing up two parents on my own.

And I was just on the brink of leaving adolescence behind and becoming a grown-up when, thanks to mom and dad, I got sucked into the whole counter-culture view of life. The baby boomers were the first generation to look at adulthood and say, “Hell no, we won’t go!” And now I’m left wondering if it’s too late to grow up at sixty-eight.

[My father has always maintained that it’s never too late for a second childhood. Well, “always” means “after we grew up and he was no longer responsible for us”. And I still do the air guitar riffs too, although perhaps not quite as often as in my young adult years. — Ed]