Agent Smith: Secret Lychee Nut

In 1965 my life and not taken the drastic turn it wooded a couple of years when I was nearly massacred by a 68-year-old driver on the streets of Boise Idaho. In 1965. I was 14 , in junior high and thinking I was pretty hot stuff. I was in junior high, East junior high to be specific, and was on the wrestling team and doing pretty good. I've started going to the Saturday night dance (if you search Saturday night dance in the search area for this blog you'll see numerous references to start night dance).

Anyone who's ever gone to the social phenomenon of dances for young people know quite well the grouping of males and females specific to each other. My main group was a number of young men all about my age me five or six of us. Two people I remember most in my group was Dennis, Greg, Kim, Ricky , Al. These are all guys from my ward. There were occasional interlopers from other wards in our stake but these are the main guys. This is the time of Napoleon Solo a James Bond and other fictitious spies or special agents or secret agents. All the members of this group that I hung with identified with these pre-superhero characters. We were nerds before there were nerds. You could say we may have been socially retarded to some degree not having a lot of skills on how to engage with females of our own age. Sometimes some folks in the group would go the whole dance without going out to dance once. I don't know who brought up the term first possibly Dennis Dahl, or Ricky Hale or Al G it's hard to say but someone came up with the name Lychee Nut and we became the Secret Lychee Nuts. We really did not do anything but stand around and talk and dare each other to approach young women to dance.

At this time in my life I was wearing this red jacket without a collar. I loved the color, red has always been my favorite color. I doubt that I picked this jacket out, I would never pick the jacket without a collar and yet I cannot believe my mother picked this out (she pretty much bought all my clothes) but she must have. I doubt that it did but I really thought I look cool in this jacket. In this picture you see my hair is short this picture was taken during wrestling season. I firmly believed if one wrestled one had to have short hair to assist in the escape when one had to.

With the advent of social media many old social groups are being briefly resurrected in flashes of nostalgia. I was sort of surprised this summer when there was briefly some significant conversation regarding the secret lychee nuts and my involvement with this group. I don't know who it was but someone questioned the veracity of my statement of involvement. I was so pleased when my friend Al came to my rescue and vouched for my validity as a “card-carrying” lychee nut. I guess it's no big deal if I was I was not a lychee nut for some but to me in that mine design the back of my brain I love hanging with the other lychees every Saturday night.