The late life punk

When I was a teen, I read Vogue religiously. I wore platform shoes and glitter gel adorned my eyelids. Never mind that the platforms made me fall, or that the pineapple scented glitter gel made the skin around my eyes break out in a finely spotted rash. By all appearances I was an average white girl, doing a good job of fitting in to the status quo of 1999. Being a punk was never an option in my rural high school.

Oh, sure, I saw them on Queen street, their patchy legs outstretched across the sidewalk. Their blue mohawks attractive to the corner of my eyes only. Admitting their aesthetic appealed to me was a non option. Their world seemed too far off from mine, too foreign.

I was deluding myself.

In fact, me and those kids had more in common than I knew  From the broken home that spoiled me on the concept of mindlesy fulfilling capitalist consumption to the anarchist world view. The only difference? I was ashamed. I didn't want to be different. So I kept bashing the square peg into a round hole until it splintered and chipped, and kind of fit, but not really.

Later in life, I've come to know a lot more punks. Even, when feeling honest with myself, identified with them a little. But it feels awkward. Like I missed the punk bus, and now I'm a little too old. A little too domestic. Even my husband scoffed as I tentatively claimed my anarchy. Punks don't get married and send their kids to Buddhist preschool. Anarchists don't own homes. It's an imperfect distinction.

So I think of myself as a late life punk. I'm almost 30, a mom of two, but I really don't have time for bullshit anymore. I like cramming studs onto my clothes, and listening to (some) punk rock. I think society is untenable. Sometimes I'm too aggressive for polite conversation. Sometimes I bake gluten-free muffins for the school bake sale and stress out that they're too ugly. I get tattoos and take terrible care of them when they're healing because my kids are sick. I teach them about police brutality and inequality. I begrudgingly buy them some (not all) of the plastic crap they ask for.

Punk's not dead, it just couldn't find a babysitter.