jamesriot

I wanted to adopt this kid:

I'm at work, goofing off and listening to Bad Religion (as usual) and this kid and his mom come in. I thought I had travelled backwards through time to 1991 because this kid looked EXACTLY like me 13 years ago. Unkempt hair, dyed blue, big-ass grin and a HOMEMADE Bad Religion T-Shirt. His mom went on about how he needed sneakers for skating and I just completely blew the mom off to talk to the kid. He was walkinga round the store bobbing his head and playing air guitar to "Incomplete" (one of my favorite BR songs). So I ask him about the shirt. He made it because his mom wouldn't let him get one because she found the Cross-Buster symbol offensive. I just smiled. The same thing had happened to me at his age. I made my own BR shirt with a marker on an undershirt. I wound up talking to this 11 year old kid for, probably, 20 minutes while his mom looked for sneakers for him. He refered to Emo as "Whiny bitch crap" and rattled off some of his favorite songs ("No Feelings" by the Sex Pistols being one of them...also one of my favs). Then he brought up the Warped Tour. His mom wouldn't let him go because she thought it wasn't safe. I leapt to the recue, explaining to his mom that I'd seen three year olds at the Warped tour, and that they even had that "Reverse Daycare" for parents to hang out while their kids ran around the stages. His mom finally said, "Tell you what, if you can find someone to drive you...I'll let you go." At first the kid (Who's name, I learned, was Ryan) smiled, then frowned. "Man..." he muttered. His mother had won in a way that didn't make her the bad guy: passed the buck. He said no one would drive him because no one else he knows is into that kind of music.
"Where do you live?" I asked.
"Shirley" he said, defeated.
I wrote down my phone number, the store number, and my AIM screen name and handed it to his mother. "If he can't find anyone else to drive him, let me know. I live, like, ten minutes away from you and I'm taking my little cousin and his friends anyways. What's one more?"
"Are you serious?" His mother asked.
"I snuck out of my house and hitch-hiked into Manhattan to go to MY first show...this is WAY safer. If he needs a ride, let me know. No problem."

The Mom (Who, at that point I learned was named Kathy) wrote down their home phone number and handed it to me. "That's really nice of you. You should come over for dinner so we can actually MEET you."

They bought a pair of Rowly XL2s and started to leave. I slipped Ryan one of the BR pins off my nametag and told them I would let them know when I was free. They headed for the door and I went back to sitting on the counter and listening to BR when he came running back to the counter and gave me a big hug, "You fucking rock." he said, then ran off.

Then I watched his mom swat him for cursing.

Moral of the story? If you're a cool kid and like Bad Religion, older BR fans will give you rides to shows. Hell, when I was a kid an older fan pulled my battered ass out of a pit and made sure I was ok. I'm just carrying on a proud tradition of Punks watching out for Punks and fuck everyone else.