Maturity Comes Alive

It’s no secret that I love live music.  Seriously, any kind.  It could be the thundering rock concert or small jazz trio at a local club.  Full Broadway orchestra or a simple street performer.  It’s the music, in-and-of-itself, as well as the freedom, unpredictability, and ever-changing improvisation of the live show.  I still find it amazing that you can be spectator in a stadium with 40,000 other concert-goers, and yet still make that personal connection to the performers and their music. 
 

One of the first memories in my appreciation of the live performance came early on, upon the release of the now-classic Peter Frampton album called “Frampton Comes Alive”.  Yes, it pains me to admit that I’m old to remember that release.  My friend and I used to sneak into his older brother’s room on a daily basis and listen to that magical revolving vinyl disk until the needle broke.  I was blown away by the roar of the crowd and the very public, yet very intimate, relationship between musician and audience.  He played a different guitar riff and the audience exploded.  I was hooked.
 

With the love of the live show firmly entrenched in my DNA, I found myself going to concerts and clubs on a regular basis from the time I was in high school.  If you were looking for me and my buddies on a Friday and Saturday night, you could easily find us in one of two places in the Washington DC area.  Either at the renowned Bayou or the original 9:30 Club.  Our homes away from home.  It didn’t matter the band or genre of music.  If it was loud and it was live, I was there.

However, as with life, work and the priorities of the adult existence eventually take precedence.  That was especially true with the responsibilities of being a father.  Potential concert and festival funds were subsequently diverted into boxes of diapers, battery-draining toys, “Wiggles” videos, and food.  Lots and lots of food.  Seriously, who would’ve thought it was so expensive to feed and care for these things?  Every 10 minutes, they’re hungry for another snack.

Hey Pavlov.  Get a paper route.  You’re literally eating my bottom-line.

However, with two of my healthy, well-fed children now entering their pre-teens, their music and favorite bands have started to become an important piece of their social identity.  I can wholly identify with that, as many shades of my own social identity are still stuck in their pre-teens.  That said, I also now see opportunities ripe for the harvest.  Much like mine, those same music identities ultimately turn into a desire to see their favorite bands in concert.  Live music?  I’ll happily be the cackling, old chauffeur of that lumbering gravy train. 

 

 

 

For me personally, the concert bug started back up again last Fall.  I went to see Motley Crue with some of my closest friends from my youth.  It turned into a bizarre time warp before I even realized what had happened.  I sang, screamed, and threw my fists in the air just like I had back in the era of my first driver’s license and the beginning shadows of facial hair.  The mild-mannered business professional had  suddenly transformed back into a raging, teenaged metal head.

 

“Anarchy!  Anarchy!  But only until 10 pm because it’s a week night and I have to lead a meeting at work early tomorrow morning.”

 

Shockingly during the show, and around the magnificent locks of my imaginary mullet, I saw kids at the concert as well.  Kids around the same age as my son, attending with their screaming, equally embarrassing, middle-aged fathers.  My memories of the Crue concerts of yesteryear had easily prevented me from even thinking about bringing my son to this show.  The fights, the drugs, the language, the lack of clothing on women.  Although perfectly acceptable to my teenaged-self at the time, these were apocalyptical ingredients that make up father nightmares.

 

“Hey dad.  Why is she wearing a napkin instead of dress?”

 

“Whoal!  You can see right through her shirt!”

 

Oy...

 

However, the patrons that night were fairly tame.  No fights, little language, and thankfully, an adequate amount of fabric.  Nothing like the accumulation of a couple decades of physical and mental wear-and-tear to help shave off those hormonal, teenaged arrogances and insecurities.  With that same swirling caldron of the alpha-male testosterone and pubescent conceit now left safely 30 years in the past, dare I say that a Motley Crue concert could now be considered a “kid-friendly” event?

 

So it began.  I started taking my son to some of this summer’s staple of outdoor concerts.  Well, the ones that I assumed were somewhat tame nowadays due to the similar “mature statuses” of the expected attendees.  Myself included.  We started with his favorite band, Rush.

 

That show was outstanding and, overall, was pretty tame as well.  There was one instance where a few guys, revisiting their 20s, stood up to dance for a good part of the show.  There were also some of those same old, testosterone-fueled expletives hurled from a couple of people sitting behind said “Dancing With the Stars” contestants.  However, no fists, walkers, or dentures were thrown amidst their cranky, “get off my lawn” hullabaloo.  I consider that an overwhelming success for the boy’s first rock concert.

 

Next up in our summer concert series was Van Halen.  A slightly different crowd, but I was expecting a similar result.  Partly cranky with a chance of mellow.  We went with a buddy of mine and his son, so I would now also be able to introduce the tailgating experience to the boy.  Oh how I missed the rock concert tailgating atmosphere…  Again, we’re not talking about the whole uninhibited bedlam and running from cops kind of tailgating of year’s past, but a calmer, gentler, less cardio version…with kids.

 

Cheese???

As we stood in the parking lot reminiscing about the insanity of those old metal shows, I happened to glance over at the crowd that had gathered next to us.  They had a table with a table cloth.  Neatly organized and decorated.  With brie, baguettes, champagne, and chardonnay.  Oh the humanity!  I’m rarely shocked, but one is never fully prepared to witness the universal, unrepentant Four Horsemen of the Yuppie-Zombie Apocalypse to appear at an event like this.

 

What were wine and stinky cheeses doing at MY rock concert?  What happened to the afterthought bag of Frito’s and the cheapest swill you could buy from the local 7-11 on the way to the show?  For crying out loud, they even had wine charms on their glasses!  This wasn’t Preakness!  This was Van Halen!  When I said that I expected tame, I didn’t expect this kind of anti-rebellious blasphemy.  It really was more than I could stomach…and it wasn’t the result of the craft IPA in my hypocritical mitts.

 

Hypocrite and Boy

I looked up and down the line of parked cars jammed into the lot.  I then looked at my own mode of economical, family-friendly transportation.  Minivan, Lexus, minivan, Volvo, minivan, BMW.  As it dawned on me, I felt my shoulders slump in one final encore of defeat and defilement.

 

What happened to my generation?  We were Generation X.  The supposed cynical and disenfranchised societal caste.  The slackers.  Somewhere between the job promotions and the specter of professional accountability.  Between the avalanche of bills and mortgage payments.  Between the kids’ soccer games, swim meets, and band concerts.  Mother of all creatures!  When did we get mature?  And yuppie?  None of which, by the way, is the result of the shine from my hair-resistant scalp or the salt in my post-modern goatee.  Apparently, I slept through the “Responsibility Revolution” of my 30s.

 

Once inside the venue though, there was at least one semblance of those familiarities of yesteryear.  Slumped forward in a lawn chair directly in front of us was a woman about ten years my senior.  At first, I thought she was merely privately checking her cell phone.  But alas, I then saw what was likely her dinner on the ground in front of her.  Wine and cheese aside…or on her shoes…I guess some things don’t change after all.  Although I fully expect that the pain inflicted by that hangover the next day probably hurt her a whole lot worse than it did some 30 years ago.

 

Never to miss a productive teaching moment with the boy though, I pointed out the Public Service Announcement conveniently unfolding in front of us.  “See boy?  She was stupid and missed the entire concert because of it.  Don’t be that person…ever.”

 

This Spring, I am taking my oldest daughter to see her first concert, Fall Out Boy.  Or as I refer to them, “Fall Down Boy”.  Sometimes it’s fun pretending to be the absent-minded, old crow.  Other times, I’m not pretending so much.  Honestly, I can really only name one of the band’s songs.  That’s only because the song name was an actress from the movie Pulp Fiction.  Yes, that Gen-X thing again.  Regardless, as long as she enjoys the show…and the music is loud…I’m positive that I will enjoy it as well.  It is live after all.

Besides, I can’t wait to see the horror on her face when she sees me transform from mild-mannered dad back into that screaming, metal head without warning.  Unfortunately for her though, she’s at a distinct disadvantage.  She’ll only be able to mentally visualize this magnificent mullet of mine.

 

 

 

Shark Attack, Baby!

 “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear…and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft

Our yearly summer vacation was nearly at hand.  A full week of surf, sun, and sand at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  It’s an event that our family looks forward to every year.  An opportunity for long, lazy days on the beach and quiet evenings filled with fun and local food over the Fourth of July week.  No worries of work, school, or schedules.  Previous trips have resulted in tropical storms and a magnificently brutal sunburn that wreaked havoc on said relaxation plans.  Not this year though.  This year will just be a complete application of decompression and stress reduction.  I earned it.

In addition to that stress relief, it was also the time for me to ditch my pallid vampire complexion and actually fit in with my family.  They may spend all summer perfecting their Caribbean-like features at the neighborhood pool, but my office’s fluorescent lighting doesn’t do much to help transform my pasty-white Nosferatu features into that healthy golden glow of summer skin. 

Unfortunately though, I would not be the only Great White hitting the Carolina beaches that week.  Just prior to our departure, several of those same Carolina beaches decided to reinvent themselves into a leading national news headline…eight separate times.  Really, the timing was impeccable and more than a little unnerving.

Multiple shark attacks were reported in the general vicinity of where we were going to vacation.  Not just shark attacks, but horrific shark attacks.  Sharks in knee deep water taking limbs, chunks, and everyone’s complacent sanity with them.  You usually hear of one, maybe two, over the course of a summer.  But eight in two weeks?  Something was off-kilter.  That natural balance within the confines of Davey Jones’ locker had tragically gone askew.  Mama Nature was clearly incensed by something and was now raining down fear, terror, and Sharknados on our vacation plans.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘shark attack’.  We live on the land.  Sharks live in the water.  You get caught down there, you trespassing.  That’s they living room.  You know what a real shark attack is?  If you somewhere you supposed to be and a shark shows up.  Say you in the crib taking a shower and feel a tap on your shoulder.  ‘What up, playa?  It’s shark attack, baby’.” – Comedian Ian Edwards

As always, my own fears and paranoia wrestled control and took charge of all of my faculties from there.  All of those Jaws nightmares from my childhood that I had neatly tucked away in the dark recesses of my dented melon had now suddenly swam back to the surface.  How could I protect my children from something that I can’t even see or even know that’s there?  Always the obvious epitome of rational thought and level-headedness, I declared that our children would not go swimming when we got there.  There would be no swimming, no boogie boards, no inflatables, no nothing.  “I hope you enjoy a full week of sand castles, kids!”  I mean seriously, who doesn’t like eight hours of paddleball and being buried in the sand every day?

Children always find ways of pushing those limits though.  Over time, and with little reluctance, they eventually made it to the water.  First, up to their shins…then to their waists.  Eventually, they found themselves up to their mid-torsos busily, and thoughtlessly, enjoying the waves.

As for myself, I found myself on high alert standing knee deep in the surf like David Hasselhoff’s stoic Mitch Buchannon.  Stone-faced and undeterred by mere petty tourist distractions.  There was no time for relaxation and stress reduction on this vacation.  I had to monitor the shark’s living room for impending danger.  When they were in the water, I was in the water busily scanning the ocean for fins and fast-moving dark shapes.  I scrutinized all playful shouts and screams and checked all tides and sandbar depths.  And yes, I probably even fought some bad side-stories of beach crime as well.  Make no mistake about it…I was doing The Baywatch.

The local television stations only made it harder for me to shake off my inner Hasselhoff in the evenings.  It just so happened to be Shark Week on the Animal Planet network and the local news was busy feverishly covering and re-covering every attack in painstaking detail.  You couldn’t get away from it.  No matter where you were or what channel you were on, someone was getting chased or bitten by a shark. 

Finally though, I reached that crescendo of paranoia.  One evening, the local news reported that Portuguese man o’ war were now washing up on the beaches of North Carolina and that some irresponsible alligator was spotted cruising the ocean waves just north of our location.  Mannies, gators, and bull sharks?  Oh my!  The three horsemen of the vacation apocalypse!  May as well change my name to “Pharaoh” before they sprinkle a few more biblical plagues on me for the remainder of the week.  I’m sure someone could muster a couple hundred-thousand locusts up on short notice.

“Well, if we're looking for a shark, we're not gonna find him on the land.” – Hooper (Jaws)

As the week progressed, however, and without any more “shark-maims-tourist” episodes in the area, I found myself starting to relax.  Although I was still full-time Hasselhoffing it as a daily routine on the beach, and although it may have been tough to see on my anxiety-chiseled face, I had actually started enjoying myself a little bit. 

That was until the boy decided that he wanted to try parasailing.  Nothing says relaxation quite like signing a Release of Liability waiver on behalf of my adolescent son, cruising high above the shark’s living room a mile out from shore, and then airmailing ourselves to the vicious predators below like cheap Chinese take-out.  Egg drop soup, order up!

From the air though, we saw nothing but jellyfish. No mannies, no gators, no lurking dorsal fins, and no locusts.  Nothing but fair winds and following seas…albeit from 200 feet in the air and attached to a speeding boat by nothing other than a single strand of rope.  By all accounts from the local news reports though, parasailing appeared to be the safest thing we did that week.  Like I said, relaxation and stress reduction.

Eventually, the week came to end and it was time to head back to the real-life trepidations of work, new school year preparations, and jam-packed schedules.  Thankfully, there were no shark sightings and we were returning with all of our digits and appendages intact.  Even the quintessential Mitch Buchannon would sign off on that one as a successful Baywatch episode.  Even better, I may even eventually have the feeling in my neck tendons return at some point over time.

Plans are already in the works for another Myrtle Beach vacation at those same Carolina beaches next year.  Preparations have already begun to ensure that complete application of decompression and stress reduction.

Don't Make Me Angry

It was another fun-filled morning percolating with the daily trade-offs of verbal barbs and sparrings between father and son before heading out the door for the school day.  My son, the epitome of stubbornness and self-proclaimed, all-worldly adolescent enlightenment, and me, the obvious irrational voice of clueless parental reasoning.  Even at eleven, the boy clearly knows everything and I’m just an overly-cautious fossil.  My diatribe evidently mere background noise for an otherwise quiet morning.

Barking from our front porch, I hear a rebellious voice answering my growls from his bus stop within the darkened, frozen stillness of the arctic tundra.  “I don’t understand what the big deal is.  It’s not even that cold out!”

My typical over-the-top, glass-half-empty response soon followed.  “What…are you kidding me?  It’s five degrees out here!  People die in this kind of weather!  You better pray the bus doesn’t break down!”

Our neighbors are obviously well-entertained on school mornings…

Try as I may, the seasoned words of wisdom tumbling out of my cryogenically frozen face were falling on deaf, likely frost-bitten, ears.  For once, however, I wasn’t exaggerating.  It really was five degrees outside.  Beyond stupid cold.  Even the dog, who usually follows me onto the porch as an early morning farewell ritual to the kids, had bailed because of the biting temperature outside.  Through the frosted front door, she stared at me blankly like a box of freezer-burned microwave lasagna in the frozen food section.  “Better you than me, pal.”

In addition to our parental capacities being judged by his bus driver, his teachers, and nearly every commuter driving down our street that morning, I was also anticipating an obligatory visit from Social Services as to why we would send our son to school in five degree weather without a jacket.  Word of lax parenting and social deviances typically travels quickly within our neighborhood’s gossipy sewing circles, so we would likely be the quilting club’s lead story for the foreseeable future.

Really, the answer was quite simple though.  It had gotten beyond the comical debate as to whether or not it was cool for a middle-schooler to wear a jacket.  I remember those debates rather vividly, much to my parents’ dismay.  This discussion wasn’t whether or not he wanted to wear one though.  It was more whether or not he could actually find one.

The boy had lost…now count them with me…three jackets this season alone and it was just January.  My days of donating to the warmth and toastiness of the school’s or the swim team’s practice facility “Lost and Found” box had reached their max...much like the balance on our Kohl’s card.

In true fascist junta format, it had been publicly decreed rather loudly in the kitchen just one week prior.  “You will either find them, buy one for yourself on your dime, or you will freeze.  Your choice, buddy.”

Siberian tough love, Inuit gangsta-style. 

Hey, the boy had some leftover money from Christmas.  He could easily buy that coat or something resembling one.  At this point, just teaching the boy some responsibility was paramount.  It’s not like I’m asking him to head into the barren Arctic wasteland and harpoon a seal in order to make one.  He will finally put two-and-two together in that snowstorm and realize that it’s the jacket that keeps him warm…not the new XBox 360 game.  That responsibility gene should kick in any day now, right?  Any.  Day.  Now… 

After the bus had departed, I stomped back into the house for much-needed warmth.  “That boy can be so ignorant sometimes!  It’s five degrees out there and he’s arguing whether or not it’s cold outside!”

That’s when I heard a giggle from my wife.  I knew instantly where this topic was headed. Diverted, hijacked, commandeered, rail-roaded.

“OK Hulk.”

I winced.  I must be slipping in my old age.  How did I not see that one coming from a mile away?  My own adolescent “responsibility” neatly decorated and mashed back into my clueless, frozen pie hole.

“No.  That was different.  It was like forty-five degrees out that night.  Not five!  It’s not even remotely the same thing!”

Although I wouldn’t admit defeat out loud and accept a public turning-of-the-tables during one of my soapbox rants, she was dead-on.  The boy out there that morning was me thirty-something years earlier. 

It was October.  I was probably seven or eight at the time.  “The Incredible Hulk” was one of my favorite TV shows of the late 1970s.  The one with Bill Bixby as “Dr. David Banner” and Lou Ferrigno as the huge, imposing green “Hulk” creature.  I never missed an episode.  When the idea had hit me several weeks earlier, I made sure to study the hair, the make-up, the mannerisms, and most importantly, the grimace and muscle-flexing.  After a serious session of admiring myself flexing in front of the full body mirror, I was convinced.  I could pull this off.  I was going to be the Hulk for Halloween and I knew exactly how I was going to do it.

Let’s just conveniently forget, for a moment, that I was 60 pound skinny kid with the muscle tone of a dryer sheet.  Ribs fully visible, spindly arms and legs, the whole pathetic illustration of everything un-Hulkly.  I would go so far as to say more Invisible Man than Incredible Hulk.  Yes.  Sometimes, what we see in our head, is not necessarily what materializes in front of others.  Hell, I still have that problem…

The Incredible Hulk

What I pictured in my mind, however, was a complete representation of the Marvel Comics anti-hero.  The black wig, ripped shorts, no shirt, and green body paint from head-to-toe.  Anybody with a pulse would know exactly who I was when I came to their door on Halloween.  My friends would surely be green with envy and talk about my costume for decades to come.  Legend status.

As I assembled my costume (or lack thereof) though, I was dealt a harsh blow of reality to my envisioned get-up.  Because it was late October in northern Virginia, my mom had bought me a green sweatshirt to wear out for my trick-or-treating activities.

Wait…I don’t get it.  A sweatshirt?  Why on Earth would I want to wear a sweatshirt over my “costume”?  No one would know who I was supposed to be and I would look like some random, green-faced moron in a sweatshirt wearing an awful, black wig.

“Hulk no wear sweatshirt!  No one know who Hulk is.  Hulk mad!”



The slightly less than Mediocre Hulk

The topic was not open for debate though.  I was told that there was no way I was going out in ripped shorts, no shirt, and no shoes in October.  Either I wore her idea of a Hulk costume…or “Hulk no go trick-or-treat”.  Curses!  Diverted, hijacked, commandeered, rail-roaded.

“I don’t understand what the big deal is.  It’s not even that cold out!”

Oof.  There it was.  Who says genetics has no sense of humor?  It was nearly the exact same punchline served up several decades and one generation later.  All the result of stupid parental responsibility.  This time, I was supposedly the responsible one and my son was irrational one.  How and when did that happen??? 

All the same, I was crushed.  However, as expected, I chose the lesser of two evils.  I wore that ridiculous sweatshirt in order to get a pillow case full of candy.  Unable to accept defeat publicly though, I still maintain to this day that it wasn’t the sweatshirt that kept me warm that night.  It was anger and humiliation.  I’m sensing a theme here.  Hold a grudge much?

Adding insult-to-injury was the fact that nobody, and I mean zero people, knew who I was supposed to be that night.  “Are you an elf?”  “Oh, a scary zombie!”  “Look, I think he’s an angry alien!”  Oh, I was angry alright.  In fact, Hulk wanted to pound these puny humans and their oblivious observations.  Finally though, there was the ultimate insult.  A slur unmatched by all of the other brain-dead simpletons that apparently resided on my street.  “Are you that cute little ‘Sprout’ character from those ‘Green Giant’ commercials?”

Blasphemy

Sprout???  Sprout???  Seriously!?  Is Sprout an angry superhero that lays waste to his enemies every Friday night on TV?  What’s the matter with you people?  Don’t you own a television?  Do you live in a box in a closet? 

“Look lady, I’m the Incredible Hulk.  Don’t make me angry.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.  Now pony up the goods before I smash you.”

In the end though, we wound up buying the boy a new jacket.  Some tough love gangsta, huh?  Even as an adult, I wind up having to cave to that sense of parental responsibility.  On a positive note, he’s been able to retain this one for a solid month now.  Excuse me while I consult Guinness on the matter…  However, if he loses this one, I believe that I have found a way to both motivate the boy to find it quickly and heal old Halloween scarrings of years past at the same time.  Just don’t call the police when you see a green, half-naked grown man sprinting around his bus stop on a cold winter’s morning.