Souvenir T-Shirt

I got the shirt when my family took another one of its many trips to the southwest. To be more precise, I bought it at a T-shirt shop in Scottsdale, Arizona. This was yet another lengthy discussion with my parents about what a proper souvenir should be. Both of my brothers were happy to use the opportunity to add to their collection of Kachina dolls, but I was looking for something a little more unique.
I had my heart set on getting a personalized T-shirt from one of the dozens of T-shirt shops that dot all tourist-type towns like Scottsdale. I didn't know this going in, having bypassed any number of authentic Hopi or Zuni artifacts to wait for just the right thing. When I saw the rainbow-glitter stencil that read "Punk Rock", I knew that I was getting close. It was the spring before I was to enter high school, and I had already committed myself to continue down the instrumental music path, so I decided that I should get another iron-on transfer for the back: "It's Okay, I'm With The Band". I picked a horrible beige shirt as the backdrop, and used almost all of my trip money on it. With the extra few dollars I had left over, I bought a life-size cardboard cutout of Spiderman. My parents shook their heads, but let the transaction occur.
My "Punk Rock" shirt lived on past the end of disco, well into the early eighties, after my graduation from high school. I wore that shirt underneath my band uniform for most every parade and field competition. It was my way of "sticking it to the man" while still staying in lock step with the other hundred and fifty members marching around me. I wore that shirt for years before I ever bought any records that could be considered punk. The glitter rainbow effect of the letters was almost a non-sequitur in themselves, but I was sending a message of the edge on which I chose to live. I suppose if I was serious about it, I would have ripped the sleeves off, or maybe stuck a few safety pins in it - or myself.
But for me, "Punk Rock" was the cliff I would always look out from, and never leap. When I was meeting the people who would become my friends, in some cases forever, they met me as the guy in the "Punk Rock" shirt. That shirt is long gone. I have a Ramones shirt that I bought when I went to see them years later, and an Iggy Pop shirt that did get the sleeve treatment. These are badges of a different sort. They say that I went to a show and picked up on the merchandise. My "Punk Rock" shirt was all about the choices I was making as an adolescent. I wore it proud, and I wore it out. I miss it today.