Anarchy in the U.K. Imagine I said that going down an escalator, giving the finger.

I actually wrote this by hand while sitting in an English classroom at a central Virginia high school. I edited it a little since then, but only a couple words. It has been sitting in my notebook for about a month now and I figure it is about time to post this so I can put the notebook into the drawer in which it belongs. So, here we go:

I am sitting in a central Virginia high school classroom during the last period of the day. I noticed a punk kid sitting next to a preppy kid. In my pseudo-punker days of youth, I would have befriended the punk kid and mocked the preppy kid. Just in time for my senior year of high school, I had become kind of popular. As a high school comrade of mine once put it, I was not a cool kid, but I had achieved cult celebrity status. So I started becoming cool and less punkish (If I ever was to begin with) and finally my freshman year of college I joined a fraternity. Much like Stevo, the protagonist of my favorite movie, SLC Punk, the guy I was then would have kicked the ass of the guy I am now.

Maybe it was the mood of the scene, maybe it was the perfect use of "Dreaming" by Blondie in the background, maybe it was the dialogue, or maybe a psychologist would tell me that deep down in the emotionless husk that is my existence, I am terrified of being alone. Whichever "maybe" it is, the scene where Stevo meets Brandy is one of my favorite of the film. Something she said during her conversation on that couch during the party to Stevo has always stuck with me. Something like, "You're not rebelling, you look like you're wearing a uniform."

As I wrote that, I remembered a conversation I had in my 12th grade English class. The girl I sat next to was asking me why I was no longer involved in theater. My reason for being in theater had been an appreciation for the works of great playwrites from ancient Greece to today. I left theater because I did not like what it was becoming at my school. I thought Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine was the shit, but theater at my school had become a haven for angsty, ugly chicks and flamboyant gay men who wanted life to be the sequal to Avenue Q.

I could have told this girl that I left for artistic reasons. That would not have been a lie, because the following year my electives were creative writing and guitar, but no, I had to say something that, looking back on it, was ironic. I told her, "I don't like how all the people in it are so into conforming to non-conformity." I actually said that while wearing a Dead Kennedys shirt, leather jacket, spikes, and my beloved Sid Vicious-inspired padlock necklace. I showed her. I was rebelling there in my uniform.

When I started writing this, I had intended to write about how I never see such rebellious punk kids (or Avenue Q fans, now that I think about it) at the poorer schools in the county. Only wealthy students have the time to rebel. Only wealthy parents buy their kids a BMW, the keys to which I saw hanging on a carabiner attached to the belt loops of tight jeans (with a hole in them), obscured by a spiky leather jacket. I may have been wearing the same uniform when I was in high school, but at least I drove a 1989 Chevy Cavalier.