Happy June to you. I was thinking the other day that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone sporting a hickey on their neck. Have “love bites”, as they are referred to in Britain, gone out of vogue with teenagers? Nothing against the Brits, but I prefer the word hickey. What do teenagers know about love? Maybe that it bites?

It bites, it gnashes, and it grinds your plaque-free teenage heart, into raw little bits and shards of has been and never will be. Love bites…indeed.

A hickey, as defined by Merriam-Webster (both of whom I doubt ever gave or received such) is “a temporary red mark or bruise on the skin, such as one produced by biting and sucking” or a “Gadget” a dingus…a doodad…a thingamabob…a thingamajig…a whatchamacallit…a doohickey.

Now the gang at Funk & Wagnall, they seem like a hickey crew. Not a neck safe around that bunch of hooligans.

As the father of a daughter, I suppose I’d rather she came home with an arm load of dingus’s than a carotid artery battered and disfigured with “a temporary red mark” from some teenage degenerate. Some young punk with a full head of hair that can pull on knee-high tube socks without farting and gasping.

“Farting & Gasping”, quite a band name. Put that on the marquee and watch the people line up in droves. I’m of the belief that if the Beatles had opted for Farting & Gasping, they wouldn’t have been such a flash in the pan.

Unpopular opinion…I never really cared much for the Beatles. I’m more of a John Prine kind of guy. To each their own. As it should be.

When I was teenage degenerate with a full head of hair, a young punk that could pull on his orange and black BCHS Panther knee-high tube socks with nary a fart nor a gasp, hickeys seemed to be quite prevalent. As did their incestuous cousin, pinch hickeys, which generated the same insinuations, but were harder to explain.

At Burke Central High School, in US History class, circa 1990, Mr. Leonard Savelkoul likened the giving of a hickey to “some Rufus urinating on a tree to mark his territory.” What does an “old man” in polyester pants, who most likely farts and gasps when he laces up his wingtips, know about the world of young people with heads full of hair?

Rufus. Rufus was young. Rufus was insecure. Rufus was jealous. Rufus had a brain that couldn’t think straight under the weight of that luxurious mullet. Rufus was in love. A love, like a temporary red mark fading away under the cover of a turtleneck, a scarf, or God forbid, an ascot. Rufus knows its there. That’s about all he knows. So it goes.

Hickeys, love, dingus’s, tube socks, urinating on a tree, farting and gasping? What’s it all mean? Viktor Frankl always said that the question, “what’s the meaning of life” was too big of a question for any of us to answer. Alternatively, he believed that finding meaning in the moments was more surmountable of a quest to fathom.

Enjoy your moments. Hickeys are temporary…like a full head of hair.