2017 - July 19 - Wasted Years

1987 was a pretty special year for me. It was the year I turned 15, which also happens to be the age Norwegians get confirmed. Confirmation in Norway is more a rite of passage than a religious commitment, much due to the very secular relationship most Norwegians have to their church. The numbers are now showing this more than they did when I reached my milestones for the rites of passage in Norway. I was baptized in 1972, and while I don't have a percentage of the population being baptized that year, it should be somewhere between 96.2% (1970) and 92.2% (1975). That really mean that pretty much 19 out of every 20 children born in Norway around the time I was born were baptized. In 2016, that number had changed to 55.3% - slightly more than half.

The percentage of 15 year olds that were confirmed in the Church of Norway in 1987 was 83.6% - or five out of every six. I was not one of them. On my 14th birthday, I mailed in my slip to leave the church (14 is the age of religious consent in Norway), and when it became time to think about confirmation, I really only had two options: Not to get confirmed at all - or to do a secular version of this rite of passage organized through Human-Etisk Forbund (the Norwegian Humanist Association). I chose the latter - and while it is tempting to say that the tradition of confirmation was important to me, the more honest answer would be that I really liked the idea of the party with the ensuing presents. That being said, I was actually looking forward to the confirmation classes leading up to the big event itself. I do not remember what I was expecting in terms of learning, but I do remember the disappointment of going to a class led by an engineering student who really liked JRR Tolkien and constantly was less than enthused leading the classes. I don't remember a thing that I learned - nor do I remember the book we used, although I seem to remember that we had one.

The current percentage of 15 year olds confirmed in the Church of Norway (2016 numbers) was 60.0%. The humanist confirmation counted 17.4 % of all 15 year olds, so more than 3 out of every four Norwegians still goes through the transition from childhood to adulthood using confirmation as a rite of passage. For Americans, I would argue that this rite of passage takes place about 3 years later, as the transition from childhood to adulthood happens upon high school graduation, which is a much more formal event in the US than it is in Norway. In Norway, the high school graduates celebrate themselves through what used to be a week-long event of debauchery and deprivation also known as the Russefeiring, but parents and families don't celebrate the high school graduation the same way as the US. I have to admit that I like the American tradition of a formal pomp and circumstance commencement ceremony - and then the less formal, but very communal open house/graduation ceremony. As I have grown older, I find myself valuing education and educational achievement much more.

Anyway, my intentions were to keep that framework brief - and you can all see how well that went... What I really wanted to say about my confirmation was that I got enough money to buy my very first electric guitar that spring. I bought it from a guy who was about to finish middle school - he had been in my music/drama elective class and wanted to get rid of it. It was a Japanese knock-off brand, Jarock, and it was a black Stratocaster model. Oh yeah. I loved that thing. It didn't matter that it didn't stay tuned for the length of a full song, I still loved it. Because it was electric. It was black. It was a Strat (knock-off).

I was trying to think back to remember who I wanted to be like when I started to play guitar, and I honestly can't remember. I know I loved all the greats, like Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page, and I had a soft spot for Hendrix (at one point in my youthful exuberance I even stated that I played a lot like Hendrix because we used the same base scale - the pentatonic scale - yeah right...). I loved Ace Frehley in Kiss, but I think that Dave Murray in Iron Maiden was one of my early favorites. I even wrote an essay about him in elementary school, it must have been in 6th grade. It was fawning more than anything - and so my black Strat (knock off) was even more perfect given that it was one of Dave Murray's main guitars as well - although he could afford the original. When I got my guitar, their Somewhere In Time album was almost a year old, but one of the first "cool" riffs I taught myself was the beginning riff from the song Wasted Years from Somewhere In Time, one of the albums that really makes you miss the 12" covers of the LP era - it was filled with cryptic clues to earlier Iron Maiden songs (such as a digital clock showing 23:58 - or Two Minutes To Midnight). So - realize you're living in the golden years!