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Woodstock Envy
By Mollie Fermaglich, March-April 2003
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As time passed, it became easier to deal with my Woodstock envy. I'd joined the work force and had new friends. We were grownups, and grownups didn't talk about rock concerts. They had lunch dates, went to cocktail parties, handed out business cards. And even if the subject was brought up, it didn't matter. None of my colleagues knew me in 1969—I could lie! After all, I'd seen news coverage of Woodstock. I could name, alphabetically, every performer from Joan Baez to The Who. So, for a few years, I actually faked it, and that made me feel better. It earned me new respect on the job as the "cool girl in publicity who went to Woodstock."
But deep down inside, I knew the ugly truth—I was lacking in "cool-itude." So I tried even harder to regain it. Into my early 30s, I continued to frequent rock concerts and became one of a handful in my age group able to correctly identify the music of Toto, Bananarama, and Supertramp. I got into health food, yoga, and unbleached cotton sack dresses, all in a futile attempt to out-cool my peers. Until many years later, without warning, things came full circle, and I awoke from my coolness coma. Perhaps it was seeing David Crosby on VH1. It could have been the resurgence of ridiculous platform shoes and hideous crocheted ponchos. And, certainly, not wanting anyone to think I was old enough to attend Woodstock was a key factor. "Jefferson Airplane? Oh yeah, my older brother has all their albums." "Woodstock? I would have gone. But I was in third grade."
Now, three decades later, it is time to hold up my tie-dyed flag and surrender. Having gone through four stages of loss—denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, I now settle, a tad uncomfortably, into the final stage—acceptance. So, here goes. I didn't go to Woodstock. I missed what might have even been the concert of the millennium. There are half a million people out there who think they are cooler than I am. Cathartic? Hardly. But, there is the other side of the coin.
Perhaps it was fortuitous to miss Woodstock because something happened to far too many people who blanketed the fields of Yasgur's Farm. There must have been something in the water that turned them into golf-playing, John Tesh- and Yanni-CD-buying, Oprah Winfrey-worshipping aliens who join country clubs, use the word "summer" as a verb, and name their children Hailey and Brittany and Ashley. I, on the other hand, remained unscathed by the aforementioned atrocities. Mere coincidence or the direct result of not participating in three days of love, peace, and music?
Maybe not going to Woodstock was a good thing, after all. Maybe I don't have those foggy, fond memories, but I also don't own a minivan. Maybe, in the end, it is, in fact, all about not being there.
Mollie Fermaglich's humorous writing has appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan. She teaches at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
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