Why I Relate to Punk

...submitted by a friend (p.s. anyone can submit a blog to maureen@toofastonline.com)

I am not going to get into what the main tenets of punk are, or what it means to be “punk.” I am simply going to relate some information as to why I can relate to punk: the music, the culture, the clothes, etc.

When I was in 5th grade, I was a pretty normal kid. I played Nintendo, I loved firecrackers, wearing hats backwards, and wanted pizza for every meal. I also happened to have a crush on this blue-eyed, blond girl in my elementary school class. For anti-stalking purposes, let us call her Sue.

Sue used to walk to her house afterschool each day with my neighbor, Kelly. Kelly was a bit unruly and mean. We eventually became friends in high school- mostly due to Kelly’s taste in clothes. Back then, I really wouldn’t have minded if all of Kelly’s hair fell out and her face became frozen while she taunted me for wearing my headgear (yes, my teeth were not perfect growing up, yet my parents felt it to be perfectly normal for a ten-year-old kid to wear headgear out in public).

My parents were a bit uncool, unreasonable, and strict. Despite being at the prepubescent stage of life, they felt it necessary to send me to KinderKare afterschool. If you are not familiar with KinderKare, think of two to six year olds, nap times, and a big, stupid-looking bus with a kangaroo affixed to the top that picked me up in front of the school.

I would regularly make it a routine to find every stratagem under the sun to avoid Sue seeing me wait for the Kangabus at the conclusion of each school day. As fate would have it, the events of one afternoon went as follows….

Afterschool: me in Alice Cooper t-shirt, ripped jeans, and headgear. I spot Sue and Kelly about two-hundred paces down the road approaching my way. Sue was looking lovely in a tank top shirt, jeans, and Chuck Taylors.

Out of my peripheral, I see an all too familiar, ridiculously looking object approaching from the opposite direction, then came the Kangabus in all its glory: menacing, haunting, stupid. This would be a defining moment in my life…

With my heart frozen in horrific paralysis on the thought of Sue seeing me entering the Kangabus I hid behind a crevice in the school’s outside wall. I would wait in fear while Sue and Kelly walked by and then I would quickly access the “tartcart.”

It seemed like diamonds formed out of coal more quickly than the following seconds were spent. I attempted to actually wedge myself into one of the tiny cracks in the wall, but my headgear would not fit.

I watched as the much younger kids boarded the bus…maybe Shirley, the bus driver, would just forget about me.. No she would not – I had an assigned seat next to her because I strapped little Jimmy Hines to my skateboard once and rolled him down the aisle (not because I was mean, but because I thought it would be fun).

Sue and Kelly were only a few feet away from the vehicle of my nightmares at this point. The warm, afternoon air was met by a metallic clicking sound.

“Anthony I see you hiding on the side of the building. Stop horsing around and get on the Kangabus.” Shirley, that witch, had spotted me and beckoned me to walk the plank of my mortification.

My horrified state of mind was interrupted by the wild glare of happiness in Kelly’s eyes. I am not quite sure what she said – something about a loser, headgear, and a kangaroo - I could only concentrate on the laughter that played upon Sue’s face as I walked the two-thousand miles from the side of the building to the Kangabus.

From that point on I has a dissident feeling towards school, parents, bus drivers… basically, any figure or institution of authority. I questioned everything and everyone. Thank the powers that be for punk.

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