bite my lip and close my eyes

i wish i could say i was a cool kid.
a bad ass punk rock kid, knee deep in the scene before it was cool.
i was not that kid. i was a dorky kid. i was an awkward kid.

when i turned 13 my friends started joining student government, wearing no fear t-shirts and listening to garth brooks.
...we drifted apart.

the good news is that i got mono.
if you've never had an incapacitating illness and are looking to try one out, i highly reccomend mononeucliosis.
at first you get so sick you wish to die a thousand deaths. but after that, its cake.
i got to stay home from the 7th grade for months.
i slept for hours, then id wake up for fifteen minutes, then id go back to sleep for hours. its a lazy persons dream.
the entire living room became a quarantined area and, therefore, mine.
in my fifteen minute intervals of consiousness i watched MTv.
this was back in the day when MTv played music videos.

i saw the basket case video for the first time.
i saw the when i come around video.
i saw the longview video.
i thought to myself, these spazzed out, drooling boys are the prettiest things i ever did see.
i wrote billie joe armstrongs name around the bottoms of all my converse. which, if you are 13, is about the highest level of devotion available.

now its true, i was mostly out of sorts at the time.
and easily influenced in my weakened state, to be sure.
in fact, a beavis and butthead commercial convinced me to cut off all of my hair into a terribly uneven sort of situation that was supposed to convey "punk rock pixie" and instead gave off more of a "escaped mental patient" vibe.
but i digress...

this was a good time to be home all day and night watching MTv.
green day was all over the place.
i watched them at woodstock 94.
i forced myself to stay awake to watch jaded in chicago.
i listened to dookie and kerplunk and 1039/smooth over and over while i slept.
it was pretty much the most fun a 13 year old girl could have while extremely drowsy.

in spite of myself, i eventually got better.
i went back to school with my new, odd haircut... which i had also dyed orange...
and i officially became what i had always threatened to become... an outsider. a freak.
a kid somehow different than all the other kids in shiny scottsdale arizona.

so thanks for that, green day.

i know its probably not the best idea to love one band and one lead singer more than everything else. but green day got their roots in deep, no matter how mushy my brain may have been at the time.
its been 11 years since then. and im still permanetly adhered and obsessed with one band and one snaggletoothed lead singer.

k.

give me something to do to kill some time
take me to that place that i call home.