Music Monday: Sum 41

“I'm sick of always hearing act your age…”

Many many years ago I worked in a rock club, Alcatraz.  We used to be aghast on a Friday night when ‘the old people’ arrived; as 19- and 20-year olds, my friends and I could not understand why anyone over the age of 29 could possibly show their face in public.  Didn’t they know that clubs were for young people?  The over-30s should be at home, holding dinner parties, or listening to opera , or setting up savings accounts, or whatever old people do.

Now, on the rare ocassions my friends and I go out, I am generally the oldest person in the club by almost a decade. Luckily I don’t look my age, but I’m nevertheless aware that some sneering, know-it-all 19 year old is probably judging me the way I judged people back then. When I got asked for ID (I was so happy!) on the way into Mosh on Friday, I was genuinely worried I’d be turned away for being so ancient. But I wasn’t, and it meant I was able to bounce around the dancefloor to my favourite pop-punk tune, Fat Lip by Sum 41.

There’s so much I love about this song, but most of all I adore the lyrics of the chorus. Sometimes I look around me and blink, wondering how the idealistic dreamer who spent years immersed in counter-culture politics, who had multiple piercings and tattoos and strangely coloured hair, could become “another casualty of society”; wondering how I ended up a teacher, fer chrissakes, with a mortgage and all the other trappings of conformity. My best mate, Cara, loves this song as much as I do. We quite often sing along at the top of our voices and then catch each other’s eyes and laugh.  She's a lawyer, I'm a teacher.  We can't deny that we have ended up "fall[ing] in line".  Just... I never feel like I'm old, or conforming, or backing down.  I feel exactly the same as I did at 19, just with more supportive bras and less drama.

Although I wouldn’t argue for Logan's Run-style door rules any more, I am inarguably too old to be spending my weekends in clubs.  But that feeling I got when I walked into Alcatraz all those years ago: that thrill of thinking, “here is where I belong”?  I still get that feeling now; I still love dancing like a fool to crazy music; I still enjoy getting dressed up in my finest indie girl threads and putting on too much eyeliner.  I intend to keep on doing it until I stop enjoying it or they stop letting me in, whichever comes first.

"I don't want to waste my time
become another casualty of society.
I'll never fall in line
Become another victim of your conformity
And back down."