I Don't Want to Grow Up

Hey all! I haven't rapped at you in a while, so let's have at it.

Today is April Fool's Day. The world over pranks are played on everyone. In my world it's something different.

It was 23 years ago today that a doctor cut an incision in my mother's abdomen and pulled an eight pound, nine ounce little terror out of there that was me. That's right, ya turds. If you didn't know it already, I have the good fortune of my birthday falling on April Fool's Day. It beats the hell out of having a birthday on Christmas, I can tell you that much.

But today is also another big day. It was ten years ago today that I got two things that made me into the asswipe that I am now: Blink-182's Enema of the State and my first guitar. I know it's a story that I've told countless times before, but now it's been a full decade.

My sister gave me that cd for my 13th birthday. It was all that I listened to for weeks on end. When I started to get bored with it, I grabbed the booklet out of the case and started reading the thank yous for more bands to check out. The Descendents, NOFX, Bad Religion, Lagwagon, The Queers, and on and on and on and on. I listened to NOFX and the Descendents first. NOFX's "The Longest Line" and the Descendents' "I Don't Want to Grow Up". From that point on, I was hooked. Because I was 13, I was broke. Because we had a dial-up internet connection, it took me about an hour to download a song (which is really weird, considering the Descendents' dont really clock in over two and a half minutes.) It didn't matter. I loved what I found, or what found me. I'm not quite sure which one it is.

If you've known me over the years, then you know that I've spent my time trying to find every punk rock band that I could. When I was 15, it was my goal to hear every punk rock band on the planet. Really, I actually said that to someone. Lofty goal, but I tried. I've been into lots of different bands over the years, called lots of bands my "favorite" band, but the Descendents will always be that band. The one band that has always made sense to me. The one band that I could listen to once and understand what the song was about, be it a girl, drinking too much coffee, taking a shit, or farting. It was four guys that loved what they did and their singer was a nerd just like me.

The guitar didn't start out as a love story. It never does. It hurt. I was a scrawny kid and the neck was huge. The strings hurt my fingers. After a couple of months though, I stopped being a pussy. I learned songs. I couldn't do leads for shit and still can't, so I stuck to the rhythms. When I learned to sing and play at the same time, it was like a whole new door had opened up. Now I could start writing songs. Now I could play in a band. The first few songs I wrote were terrible. One night, I wrote about seven songs in the span of two and a half hours. Three of them ended up Suburban Skies songs. The rest were thrown out (the rest of Suburban Skies didn't want songs about shitting and farting and caffeine.)

I planned on this being longer, but I have a test in about an hour, so I need to study a bit more. Thanks for reading. If you aren't doing anything tonight, come out and buy me a drink. I'm too cheap to do it myself. I'll be at Egan's and the Mellow Mushroom.

Until next time, later.