When my first child was born in August of 1969, her father, all of nineteen at the time, was a long-haired, motorcycle-riding hippy sporting love beads and peace signs. I did a good rendition of the female version of the style-du-jour, complete with flowing skirts, eau de patchouli, a load of questions for authority and lack of trust for anyone over thirty.

After a year or so of partaking in the free love that all self-repecting teens of the times were expected to partake of without benefit of any sort of protection other than some wishful thinking we thought had cosmic capabilities ... it didn't ... we had become parents, an astounding turn of events that took us completely by surprise even though we knew the facts of life and had plenty of friends who had made babies by the time one of my eggs decided to throw an open house for a cute and determined whip-tailed swimmer.

Unlike so many others of the age, but not at all unusual either, we spruced up, trimmed our hair and got married.

Baby girl got herself born and Hippy Teen Dad gave about an eye-blink of thought to trading in the chopper for something more family-friendly, then stopped thinking about it.

He did briefly reconsider when a redneck in a pickup truck pointed a gun at his head, an action possibly inspired by a scene from a film that seemed at the time to capture a corner of the essence of the world we then thought of as ours.

Although I recall that former life of mine clearly, there has been no little water passed under no small number of crossed bridges between then and now, and seeing that the child born that year is now thirty-eight and mother to a six-year-old you'd think I'd have grasped that August of 1969 was a way long time back, even in geezer years.

Okay, call me slow on the up-take ... you'll be neither first nor last to do so ... but I'm shocked -- shocked I say! -- to see in the weekend news that iconic objects of an era that can seem to me so yesterday, or last month at most, are going on the block as 'memorabilia'.

Peter Fonda, the producer, co-writer and one of the stars of the film my first husband was convinced he was living, "Easy Rider", is auctioning off stuff from the movie because he "just decided it was time to share some of his treasures with collectors and fans."

The flag from the back of Fonda's leather jacket is expected to go for somewhere around $50,000!

This makes it official, I suppose, that my youth is now so done and faded that it belongs on a shelf next to Charlie Chaplin's cane and Judy Garland's ruby slippers.

Bummer.