Punch Buggy Pugilism and the Black Parade

Maybe it's part of getting old, but I can't seem to spot Volkswagen beetles until it's too late. By too late, I mean my son has drilled me in the bicep with a Chuck Norris knuckle punch and I'm howling with pain and barely able to drive us through insane Chicago traffic to the next Volkswagen beetle, which I will not see. Again.

In case you are just now walking out of a life in a cave, punch buggy is the emerging Olympic sport of sighting Volkswagen beetles and then, upon said visual identification of said beetle of Voklswagenistic orgin, promptly beating the crap out of whomever you're sitting next to. This game is played in the car, while driving, so if that person is the driver, then they better be able to maneuver sans left hand because the moment the person riding shotgun sees a buggy--WHAM--dead left arm.

Roon is addicted to this stupid game, a game surely invented by 10 year old brothers back in 1835 when they didn't have the internet or cars or decent health care and, on more than one occasion, I am certain, some poor Swedish immigrant buried an extra son after a buggy punch incident went horribly wrong. I can see him now, Amish beard wagging in the afternoon sun, leaning against a hand-made shovel in his white shirt and stovepipe pants, wide brimmed hat held grimly at his side, "Vell, he vas a goot bouy, and he is viff Gott now--punch buggy! (slam!) ooh!--gott to digg another hole, yah"

The game and my son's violent enthusiasm for it, are underscored by his new obsession with My Chemical Romance, a group that wears almost as much makeup as KISS and has almost the same weird marshall influence on its ravenous, zombiefied 10 year old fan base. I have to admit, I think they're a good group and I can hear the guitar player pretty obviously ripping off Queen and I doff my hat (well, do-rag) to his ingenious and talented thievery. But the group revels in some kind of grave obsession with the color black and death imagery and are trying, I think, to single-handedly create a new genre combinging emo, which is like a curse word for 10 year olds, and goth, which is a level of cool ten year olds peer hopefully toward and whisper about and pretend to disregard almost as much as they pretend not to notice girls, a genre I think might be called Gothmo, or Emoth.

I remember when I was young I wanted to be in the KISS army. We all wore Army fatigues and KISS t-shirts and threw our horns-of-Satan salutes in the air and prayed for the coming revolt to be a violent, sustained, bloodbath of biblical scope during which our heroes would descend from a lightning streaked thunderhead and join us as we decapitated disco dancing yuppies with our razor-edged flying-v electric guitars.

My Chemical Romance inspires a similar, though wussed-out, semi military response in it's fans although they're all vegetarians and pacifists so instead of the KISS army they're more like the Salvation Army, dancing, sort of. So I get the music thing but I never, ever, hit my dad. Evidence to this fact is that I can type with both hands.

Together, along with the inch and a quarter he gained since January and the ability to wear my shoes, punch buggy pugilism and the enthusiasm for the Black Parade are turning my son into that thing that's older than a kid but not quite a tween yet and I can see the hairy gawky teen poking out of him like he's wearing some kind of costume. Just the other day he was sitting on the couch and suddenly sniffed and said to the room "God, my pits reek."

And it's not the gleefully vicious thrill he gets spotting one of those stupid cars and punching me in the arm to the glumjoy cascade of electric guitar from My Chemical Romance that's driving home the fact that I'm getting older and so is the mini-me. It's not even the fact that I miss the same antibiotic-chalk-yellow buggy that's parked in the same spot every damn day and take a hit for it because I'm getting older and so is it. It's this: when he hits me, it's not like a kid is hitting me, it's like some dude is hitting me. It kind of hurts and after two or three buggies, I got to tell him to lay off and I pretend its because I think it's boring but the truth is, my arm hurts.