* * *
This Friday I will be 21 years old. And everyone knows what that means! Legal consumption of alcohol! Of course! Because for some reason, there is an insane amount of importance placed on imbibing alcohol in our culture. And that is the only thing turning 21 is good for, right?
"You turn 21 this is how you have fun.
A whole new life is waiting for you.
So just drink 'em down 'til your brain runs wild.
And your pride is gone so you act like a child."
So just drink 'em down 'til your brain runs wild.
And your pride is gone so you act like a child."
I don't think I will ever understand the appeal of alcohol. I don't want to understand. Something so easy to abuse, something so obviously unhealthy, unsafe, and unnecessary is literally our national past time. Birthday? Drink! Wedding? Drink! Baseball game? Drink! Bored? Drink! Weekend? Drink! Does it not seem so silly that swallowing a liquid is an activity? If alcohol were never discovered/created, do you think people would consume just as much Dr. Pepper? Or milk? Or water?
What is it that makes beer, and wine, and whiskey so attractive? The feeling it gives you. The "buzz." It "loosens" you up. Makes you feel good. And for some reason, again, unbeknownst to me, this feeling overrides all common sense, logic, concern for health, safety, and self preservation. We drink anyway. The fascination, the infatuation, the addiction that our culture has with alcohol is absolutely pathetic.
Drinking has become so ingrained into the fabric of society that NOT drinking is rarely even considered. Not drinking is weird. The general population doesn't understand anymore, why you wouldn't drink. But there was a time that drinking made you an outlaw. In January 1919, 36 states approved and ratified the 18th Amendment. The National Prohibition Act. The manufacture, sale, transportation, and consumption of alcohol were made illegal. But of course we couldn't live without it. Organized crime sky rocketed, underground speakeasy's flourished, and the country's law enforcement agencies could only be spread so thin. So on December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment [there's that number again] was passed and we could once again go about our blissfully drunken lives. We could go back to a time where NOT drinking, made you some kind of rebel.
I am a rebel. Plain and simple. I do not drink. I will not drink. Ever. I am Straight Edge. Forever. This Friday will mark my 8th year wearing these X's.
I don't quite remember how it happened or how I learned about straight edge, but whenever I search my brain it always comes back to Matt Czarnecki and I in the lunch room. I had X's on my hands and he indignantly asked me "Do you even know what that means?" Of course I did, but I can't remember how. Matt was my original source for all things punk. He learned from his brother, I learned from him. He was always concerned about me being a poser or something. But here I am. Still.
So, I went through middle school, high school, and now college, being interrogated incessantly about "Why don't you drink? Why don't you smoke? What do you do for fun?" and the only answers I ever really had were more questions: "Why would I? Why do you?" Needless to say, being the "weird" kid, the punk, literally the ONLY straight edge kid in high school at the time, left me with very few close friends outside the halls and classrooms of GM. So I made them elsewhere. Almost zero of my close friends went to high school with me. The local punk and hardcore scene was and still is home.
What is it that makes beer, and wine, and whiskey so attractive? The feeling it gives you. The "buzz." It "loosens" you up. Makes you feel good. And for some reason, again, unbeknownst to me, this feeling overrides all common sense, logic, concern for health, safety, and self preservation. We drink anyway. The fascination, the infatuation, the addiction that our culture has with alcohol is absolutely pathetic.
Drinking has become so ingrained into the fabric of society that NOT drinking is rarely even considered. Not drinking is weird. The general population doesn't understand anymore, why you wouldn't drink. But there was a time that drinking made you an outlaw. In January 1919, 36 states approved and ratified the 18th Amendment. The National Prohibition Act. The manufacture, sale, transportation, and consumption of alcohol were made illegal. But of course we couldn't live without it. Organized crime sky rocketed, underground speakeasy's flourished, and the country's law enforcement agencies could only be spread so thin. So on December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment [there's that number again] was passed and we could once again go about our blissfully drunken lives. We could go back to a time where NOT drinking, made you some kind of rebel.
I am a rebel. Plain and simple. I do not drink. I will not drink. Ever. I am Straight Edge. Forever. This Friday will mark my 8th year wearing these X's.
I don't quite remember how it happened or how I learned about straight edge, but whenever I search my brain it always comes back to Matt Czarnecki and I in the lunch room. I had X's on my hands and he indignantly asked me "Do you even know what that means?" Of course I did, but I can't remember how. Matt was my original source for all things punk. He learned from his brother, I learned from him. He was always concerned about me being a poser or something. But here I am. Still.
So, I went through middle school, high school, and now college, being interrogated incessantly about "Why don't you drink? Why don't you smoke? What do you do for fun?" and the only answers I ever really had were more questions: "Why would I? Why do you?" Needless to say, being the "weird" kid, the punk, literally the ONLY straight edge kid in high school at the time, left me with very few close friends outside the halls and classrooms of GM. So I made them elsewhere. Almost zero of my close friends went to high school with me. The local punk and hardcore scene was and still is home.
* * *
I'm going to Tarantino this blog and end at the beginning. I'll be 21 this Friday and though I may make small changes year to year, some things in me will always stay the same. I'll be 21 and I'll be "weird" for not drinking. And I will keep saying that it is okay not to drink. And I will always be straight edge. Count on it.
I wont drink, drink, drink and act like a fool.
So I can fit in with you
so that you'll think that I'm cool.
I wont take up a habit
people are dying to quit.
Or smoke some weed that'll make me an idiot.
And I'll cut my throat before I buy what they sell.
Straight edge for life until the day I die.
One look at this world makes being edge so easy.
I don't even have to,
don't even have to try.
So I can fit in with you
so that you'll think that I'm cool.
I wont take up a habit
people are dying to quit.
Or smoke some weed that'll make me an idiot.
And I'll cut my throat before I buy what they sell.
Straight edge for life until the day I die.
One look at this world makes being edge so easy.
I don't even have to,
don't even have to try.
