Punk Rock Academy Fight Song – A Hangover and a Black eye

It wasn’t in mid July but it was a pretty muggy night in may of my second junior year of college. Yes you read that correctly my second junior year-I was on a bit of an extended plan in college. Anyway that's when it happened. The hangover and the black eye. now there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the hangover, I’d had plenty before and I’ve had a few more since and really who wants to remember a hangover anyway? What makes the incident memorable was the combination and the circumstances. I wish I could say I got in a fight over a girl that was out of my league and some dumb jock and his buddies kicked my ass for being a Punk at the wrong party but that would obviously be a blatant rip off of Valley Girl( which is one of the greatest film of all time) though that would be pretty cool if things happened that way. Alas my story is a bit different in that there was no romance involved but there were meatheads who had it out for me. Apparently a few months earlier I had broken up a fight in which one of the meatheads friends was involved but due to my penchant for wearing Hawaiian shirts and leopard spotted hair I was easily recognizable and it was assumed that I was part of the fight instead of being the guy who saved said meathead from a certain beat down. Oh well the devils in the details and no good deed goes unpunished. So my reward for trying to keep my friends from beating up a stranger wound up being a trip to the ER-complete with a smart ass doctor who told me I needed to learn to fight better, thirteen stitches over my right eye with a pretty huge shiner, and the worst part of all my favorite Hawaiian shirt was a total loss. I didn’t necessarily  get beat up strictly for being a punk rocker with crazy looking hair I got beat up because being a Punk with crazy looking hair made me stand out among a group of  friends that looked nothing like me. But hey I’ve never liked fitting in so sometimes that’s the price to be paid for being a little different. It’s not like I was a martyr for a cause I was just some kid getting in a fight on  a hot almost summer night just like kids tend to do in the summer all over the world since the dawn of time. Too much beer, not enough beer. Too much girls not enough girls. Punks  metalheads, jocks, greasers and socs( yup it’s an Outsiders reference-check it out kids) , pretty boys and on and on. It doesn’t really matter who it just seems like its a natural part of summer when your growing up. I'm not condoning violence but sometimes fist fights are as much a part of life as a first kiss maybe its a yin/ yang thing.

This all brings me to something my old friend Dario once said right after we graduated high school. “You really haven't lived unless you’ve gotten drunk, been in a fight or spent a night in jail” or something to that effect. its like a rite of passage part of the journey into manhood. So I guess two out of three ain't bad for a single night. Now I’ve gotta go and take me wife and kids to the beach-cause that’s what you do in the summer and thats also part of growing up.  Oh and naturally black and mostly gray hair is still kinda like leopard spots, right?

-Daniel N-
Big Wheel Staff Columnist

 

Read more from Punk Rock Academy Fight Song HERE

 

 

 

Send your comments to the editor HERE