Generation Gap

I was forced by my Bestest Friend in the Whole Wide World to buy new shoes recently. I absolutely fell in love with them. They spoke to the outcast in me. The girl who would refuse to speak for days at a time and thought drowning herself a suitable escape plan from the hell of school in Podunk, USA. The poet who killed and perished between lines. The punk who wore combat boots to work in the kitchen of her own restaurant where she would sleep in the booths at night rather than drive home. The elegantly melancholy ghost who dabbled in l'amour with blonde haired hippies whose fingers could play anything, pool playing Jeep driving good ol' boys, wicked wiccans, and punk rock drummers who rolled their cigarette packs up in their shirt sleeves. The woman who still takes her coffee how she leaves her men; dark & bitter.

I manage to forget my own age until something I take for granted is challenged. And so it happened. When I showed off my kick ass - ass kickers the first reaction I got was "Those are great Pirate shoes!" Pirate shoes?, I asked in astonishment. What? I have long lusted after Pirate shoes, those beautiful soft leather boots that loosely encircle your thighs like a lover. These shoes were NOT Pirate shoes! They were Punk shoes! They were kick your ass sexy irrelevant PUNK skull and crossbones shoes! Dammit all to Hell the thought NEVER crossed my mind... Pirate shoes, pfffft. As if. Though I lust after Johnny Depp with every other woman who felt those first vague stirrings while watching 21 Jump Street, I would never look at these shoes - my PUNK, Cyndie Lauperish, pointy toed, pieces of footwear perfection, that I would have gladly worn to see Henry Rollins perform back in the 90's - and think "Cool sparkly fingernail polish, LOL, Avril is soooo much cooler than Ashlee, teenage angst shoes!" When did it happen that my anti-establishmentarian hieroglyph become some banal Walt Disney trademarked rub-on tatoo!? When did the irreverant become the endorsed? I'm done. I need a couple of swigs straight from the old SoCo bottle to restore my faith in the world. Shit. Henry Rollins now does stand up. The whole thing is beyond me some days.