Josie

- Blink 182

All The Small Things: Blink 182, My One True Love. 

THIS WAS TAKEN FROM MY LATEST COLLABORATION WITH TOM SMITH AND HIS BRAND NEW ZINE, NAMELESS: CLICK HERE AND SPREAD THE WORD, MY LITTLE STACHER’S. 

Today was a good day. It started out, to be perfectly honest, like shit. I guess, that’s when you realize, you’ve grown up a lot: when the little things stop affecting you. It’s a slow process, this whole “maturing” thing. Remember when ice cream or no ice cream dictated your over-all content (or discontent) in a day? Ok, well, I do: even if I was five! I liked my ice cream, back then. I appropriately, also had an unhealthy obsession with anything that resembled, what diabetics fear, SUGAR. It’s true, I was a fiend, from three to thirteen. A fiend  for anything that was sweet and chemically colored/created. I ate so much (I vaguely recall sneaking sugar out of the pantry) when I was little, that my doctor caught me teetering on the edge, falling slowly into a self-inflicted case of diabetes. Yah, I’m gross: I will say, however, I think I ate enough candy to last a lifetime, for I really don’t like it anymore.

Ok, so a little derivative from the topic at hand, but anecdotes of my childhood gluttony seem more than necessary, in a time like this.

To recap: today had the potential to suck some serious d***, but it didn’t. Why? I guess, because ice cream, jealousy-induced banter, out-of-my-control situations, and that naïveté mixed with disappointment you feel, when you discover: some people are truly terrible, inside and out, collectively warrant zero fucks to me (ok, fine, except for ice cream: I would rather die than go sans ice cream). Pardon my french, I’ve put up with a lot of bull shit: it seemed appropriate, given the context. Accordingly, I finally feel like I fell into a good group of friends. Actually, fuck it, I didn’t fall, I chose these friends. I’m proud of these friends. I’m happy with who I surround myself with. I, finally, found motivated individuals, who still want to be kids. I found a bunch more “Madi’s”, I never thought existed. I have fun, healthy fun, my idea of fun. There are few compromises in my plans and zero in my being, to associate with these friends. It’s so cool. I feel, like I always thought I should: I feel normal.

So, the need/want to meet my little brother via these select few (he’s been visiting for the last week), my best friend, Sam, a person, I can say, I’ve wronged more than once, flying across the country, because I needed help: because he cared enough to be some one when I had no one, it’s the 2 AM phone calls from New York City, laced with enthusiasm towards my latest successes and laughter surrounding some dorky stuff I did in the past, it’s the organizational help I traded for  beer and mp3’s, and it’s my co-creator of The Stache, plus fellow hair dying enthusiast and I’s identical looks exchanged over tonight’s sinfully good pizza (steak was a topping, how couldn’t it of been?), that at times is so flattering it’s overwhelming: foreign until now, yet telling of my progress. I feel like, finally, I have my priorities, in line with who I am, deep down. I feel like these are the people I will change the world with.

Thus, it’s only befitting, that today’s music selection, is dedicated to my adolescent idols,Blink 182. Blink’s ability to instill not just nostalgia, but an actual sense of my kid years, clad in fishnets and stud belts, whilst hearing the opening chord’s to Dumpweed, or any of the group’s music, for that matter, well kills me.

Call it weird, dorky, lame, or “uncool”. Fuck, call it what you want, but Blink 182 will always be one of my favorites. Maybe I’m deaf, or something. Maybe I have shitty taste in music. I can tell you this, however; I feel like the same ten-year-old loser, I was back in the day, but the difference, now, is that these “new” friends, all move to turn up the music, when Carousel comes on shuffle. This time around, I feel more like a kid, then I ever got to be, when I actually was one. I’ve crowd surfed, ripped dresses, got caught mid-pee by the owner of the car, said pee was extracted from my body, piss drunk, in front of, with his spot-light equivalent head lights. I’ve found my way, in the pouring rain, from NYC to Connecticut, from the lawn to the pit: from dry to drenched. Blink shows trump any other experiences to date. I’ve made friends, I’ve rekindled old friendships, and I’ve jumped up and down, harder, than ever before, smiling, bigger than I thought imaginable, and screaming, louder than you’d probably ever, want to be in my radius to hear.

I’ve done all this with the likes of Enema of The State, Dude Ranch, and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (and the rest of the band’s discography) playing in the background. Evidently, Blink 182, well, pop punk, as a genre, for that matter, symbolize the parts of growing up, I pray to god, I never forget.

So what? So, you find my feelings to be over zealous? So…think that. Because, I still feel the same way Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker did when they wrote about that giddy anxiousness feeling, of something new, on their track, First Date. And you know what? I love it, even now. The day I dread being with someone, and feeling like a kid again, and doing the stuff, I liked/like/and will like from my youth, is the day, I really did sell out. The day I stop wanting to make “this” last forever, is the day, I truly stop being me. Evidently, “me”, I’m beginning to find, can exist, at any age. Blink 182, similarly, can be my favorite band at 8 or 88. Thus, based on my recent apparitions:

The future seems a lot less scary.

I Guess This is Growing Up,

- Madi