I remember it like it was yesterday.

We were standing in Monument Square, night after night, holding candles shielded by clear plastic cups and stamping our boots on the ground to stave off the cold and howling winds of a Maine winter.

There were maybe 15 of us who would show up every night.

If memory serves, we were protesting the nuclear arms race. It didn’t matter; we could have been protesting the high cost of broccoli for all I cared.

It was a social event, and we were bonding in our noble sense of self-righteous sacrifice. We were the enlightened ones, those willing to take a stand for peace, much unlike all those ignorant lemmings driving past us on Congress Street in their Volvos, BMWs and Ford pickup trucks.

Forgive me for being a cynic but that’s what a quarter century of living in “the system” will do to you.  I no longer have the luxury of spending several weeks in a public park. I’ve got responsibilities: a wife, two kids, a job and lots of bills to pay. If I lose my job or my house, I still have responsibilities: my country, my neighbors, my family…the list is endless.

In a strange way, I almost envy those OWS folks and their rage. They seem content in the chaos, as if now they have found their calling by blaming the system.

They are making a statement. “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

But lately my near envy has been slowing morphing into a deep sense of resentment.

Who are these people? I wonder as I drive by the tent city erected in the courthouse park. “Don’t they have homes, families, jobs, commitments?”

The answer is simple. No, many of them do not.

Too many of them have been screwed by “the system.” They were laid off, evicted or otherwise maligned by a terrible economy. It could happen to any of us. But before we go any further can we at least acknowledge that some of these people are also just simple malcontents?

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it ironic, watching some clown with an I-Pad, the latest LL Bean camping gear and a Patagonia fleece vest rail against the system?

Do these folks think the world will change because they sit around playing guitar, smoking weed and living in a tent? If change were that easy, we’d be changing the system every four days.

Real change requires real work and sacrifice. There is a lot to do in this country, and every voice matters.  Maybe it’s time for the OWS folks to get off their asses and work to change the system they loathe.

Maybe it’s time to stop complaining and join the 98 percent of us who understand that there will always be evil in the world, and it must be confronted head on; not by defecating on a police car or smashing a storefront window. Real change happens when just one person is willing to lead by example. And so far, the examples from the OWS folks have been less than impressive, to say the least.

In closing, and for the record, I am still against thermo-nuclear war, despite my mortgage and American Express card.

Thoreau said, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Thank, Christ….otherwise who could afford to buy his books?

I am the 98 percent, and now it’s time to go do laundry.