|
My Profile
Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
|
10:40 p.m. - 2005-06-20
My younger son is a hit with the ladies. So far the number of girl party guests to boy party guests is insanely canted. 5 boys and 13 girls. As a few of the RSVP-ing moms said, "My daughter LOVES Wolf! She thinks he's sooo funny." I'm trying to be okay with this. I know the girls' humor isn't mean-spirited. All the same, they find Wolf hilarious not because he's a 2nd grade Henny Youngman, but because he isn't shy about saying what's on his mind. My boy has no filter between brain and mouth and he let's fly with anything that occurs to him. His thought processes are really quirky and he's dead honest, so his pronouncements tend to be…um…unusual. At this age girls are far more verbal than boys. The girls in Wolf's class are delighted with my boy's take on things. They laugh and laugh because the stuff Wolf talks about is weird. Not necessarily bad weird, but weird nonetheless. I'd feel better if Wolf understood how far out in left field he is. If he knew he was checking in from Planet Oddball and was okay with that, then I'd be fine. Hell, I'm the last person to insist my kids run with the herd. I just worry that some day Wolf will figure out that he's seen as being 'out there' and will be hurt. Hurt because he won't understand why he's odd. He'll know he's different, but won't be able to twig on what sets him apart and I worry that this chasm between what seems totally normal to him and what his peers deem as normal will upset him. Adults do it too. They find Wolf's strange conversation amusing. I want to snarl at them and say, "Yo! The kid has some language difficulties. He's not trying to be funny, he's trying to converse." I don't know, maybe I'm just over-sensitive. Wolf doesn't seem to mind when people laugh over what he says, frankly he's oblivious to most people's reactions about everything. How could he mind what he doesn't notice? Also, maybe these laughers are truly charmed by my kid's skewed observations. Maybe they find him refreshing. Perhaps it's my pride I'm defensive about. My beautiful son is an unknowing weirdo and it bothers me. It gets my goat because I've always been involuntarily set apart too. Cut from the herd, excluded from the other reindeer's games because of things I could not help. I think I embraced punk so readily because for once I was choosing to stand apart from the mainstream. If people wanted to scorn or be upset it would be because of the safety pin through my septum. When they gawked and said rude things it was because of my candy colored hair. I wasn't being pilloried for my gigantic size or erudite vocabulary anymore. As a punk I wore my weirdness proudly. I was in control over what I'd be mocked for. Very freeing, that. I was unusual among the punks in that I wasn't looking to break loose from stultifying conformity, I'd never fit in to begin with. Being a punk provided me with the first peer group I ever had. I'd put aside my lonely non-conformity and took up with a bunch people who weird in the same way I was. Seems a little counter to the whole concept of punk, if you are to take the definition of punk as an expression of fierce individuality. Punk was an outright rejection of the rules that governed manners, fashion, music, art, and society. And unlike the Hippies, punks were honest enough to admit that they didn't have anything better planned. They just wanted out. They wanted to party and shout and play REALLY loud music. Out with line dancing, in with the random chaos of moshing. Sure! Stick a spike through it! Polka-dot hair? Okey-doke. Wanna say 'fuck' a lot? Fuck yeah! If Debbie Harry wanted to put reggae, techno, and rap on the same album, she would. David Byrne and his big suit talking his Head off. The B-52's and their goofy beehives and bouncy froth tunes. The warthog ugly Ramones in their greaser jackets wresting music from instruments they couldn't play. The Sex Pistols louder, raunchier and more musically ill-adept than anyone else. I did enjoy being part of this wildly diverse group because I was included in. But there was true rebellion too. "Never 'normal' enough for you people? I got your normal right here and you can kiss my pleather covered ass." I loved giving the finger to that which had made me so unwelcome for so long. I grew up, of course. Pretended my anti-social, combat boot and fishnet days were behind me. But I don't think I ever stopped being a punk, not inside where it counts. Scratch the PTA mom and you'll find a chick with a blue and white tufty, a mini-kilt, and a Go-to-Hell attitude. Some days you might have to scratch pretty hard is all. ~LA
|
