Back in 7th grade, a new kid joined my class. He was rejected by almost the entire class for quirky habits like reading fantasy books with girly-sounding titles like The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, frequently being unaware of what was going on in class when the teacher called on him, and making the plastic book compartment under his desktop look like swiss cheese with the number of holes he put into it with his compass point.
I did think his book choices were a little strange, but while the rest of the class just made fun of him, I actually talked with him, and soon he became my best friend. He not only convinced me to read some of his favorite books, thus changing my opinion of fantasy as a genre, but also talked me into being his sparring partner for playing with his wooden swords, which more or less looked like Japanese katanas, one long and one short. Being larger than him, I usually took the long sword, while he used the short one, and while at first he always won, eventually I was able to hold my own with him.
We soon settled into a pattern of visiting each other’s houses for weekend overnights, and his father introduced me to pancakes filled with chocolate chips and coconut, the fact that asparagus doesn’t have to taste terribly awful even if I only ate it at first because my mother had taught me never to refuse a host’s food offerings, and the beauty of piano music. I used to hear him practice things like Mozart and Beethoven, and it was this that made me want to learn an instrument, as I explained in another post.
Unfortunately, after the school year was over, he moved to Texas. We kept in touch via snail mail and eventually he came to visit for a while during my sophomore year of high school, and I visited him in Texas shortly after college.
Along the way, I thought it would be funny to write a lighthearted punk rock song based on the caricature of my friend that dominated my 7th grade classmates’ imagination to the point where they wouldn’t even give him a chance, with the only exceptions being two other kids who were also friends of mine and also considered “nerds” or “geeks” by the class as a whole.
The song was originally very simple, with no lead guitar, just some rhythms functioning as a sort of “solo” section, but years later I decided it would be fun to add a guitar solo, spice up the rhythm bits, and throw in a lead bit after the first chorus. Here is the result.