hello lovely child

Lilacs are blooming. School's out for the summer. The teen-natives in our house are restless. You know what that means. Arts and crafts! Slip 'n Slide! Library central! Maybe. But not really. Actually, it’s moshing season for our highschoolers who like to thrash.

Do you speak mosh? Before I translate, you should be briefed on my current state of 'approaching menopause': a hormonal hot mess. Word on the street is moshing could be the next big thing for hotflashing hotties at midlife. We’ve got rage. We are already dripping with sweat. It's a second adolescence, and we like totally have the cash to pay the cover or whatev. Damn it, we need options beyond retail therapy, Pinot Grigio, and roller derby!

Except. Moshing is insane-o-cidal. YES, we need to blow off steam, but I’m not certain dance which ultimately seeks to cripple and maim is a worthy pharmaceutical substitute. Mosh is more than freestyle, “anything goes” body-slamming. It’s a science, and arguably, a religion. For example:

1. Footwear. If a shoe falls off while kicking it at a show, realize you are DONE dancing. Do not attempt to locate the shoe, delicately slip back into it, or busy your hands with laces. That shoe is history, and it’s best to get on with your life and resume thrashing (with a modicum of caution for the vulnerable shoeless tootsie). If the band takes a break you may have two seconds to step into the shoe. But you should honestly just resign yourself to barefootin’ it home.

2. When to Mosh. Unless you're feeling masochistic, do not EVER mosh to the sound check or the in-between band’s house music. What's wrong with you? There's a time and a place for moshlove, and while a dude recites the alphabet into the mic before showtime is not one of them. That house music before the band stumbles on stage? Also not the time for love! You could get yourself dead.

3. Injuries. Stop worrying about blood. It’s the nectar of mosh and releases mosh happy endorphins in the brain. Bleeding is under-rated! In fact, you’re not living up to your true potential if your lip is not bloodied at least once during a show. Make friends with pain. Embrace the sensation of accidentally stapling your tongue to the wall.

4. Prohibitive Busting of Moves. There’s plenty of room for originality and creativity while leaping and swatting invisible gnats in a circle pit. But do not under any circumstance decide to two-step. Trust. You’re better off strangling yourself with your intestines. Also, think twice before moshing with a drink, machete, or a cigarette in your hand. Your co-moshers don’t have to put up with that insensitive crap.

5. Gender Bias. It should be apparent by now that if you have a vagina, you have no business being anywhere near a testosteroney mosh pit. Duh. Even if you’re that free-spirited skater chick with zero fear for head injuries who believes there are worse ways to check out than death-by-mosh, stay the hayull away from the pit.

6. Circle Pit Etiquette. Inspired to join the pile-up in a mosh pit? Take heed. Do not ever pile unless (A) you know the words to the song, and (B) you intend to hit someone. Nobody wants your “pretending to know the lyrics, tentative, wussy a$$ self who can’t dish out pain” in the pile up. And just because you’re brave enough for the pile-up doesn’t mean you’re ready for the “wall of death.” As you rush at top speed with your eyes closed toward the dudes running at you, yes, there will be fleshy contact. You’ll smash another guy’s neck with your fist as hard as you can, and it’s perfectly acceptable as long as “hard as you can” is not “too friggin hard.”

One more thing. Don't become overwhelmed by the rules or overanalyze. No need to be a brain surgeon to understand or enjoy mosh...you just need to make friends with a really good one.

Michele has a husband, two children, a master's in counseling and a blog at hellolovelychild.blogspot.com.

An old friend in Georgia I haven’t seen in years facebooked me a few months ago after he read an essay I wrote about the moshing antics of my sons. He wanted to know if I was just embellishing as a writer, and if not, whether my husband and I just fork over the health insurance card to the moshers on their way out the door.

I really wish the answer was yes, I make up this crap for good copy. But my kids truly are this insane and honestly do habitually place themselves in pits. Yes, there is the possibility at a concert they will lose teeth or their ability to procreate (the teens would shudder at the blasphemous use of “concert” here. IT’S A SHOW, MOM! NOT A CONCERT! My apologies.).

Our 17-year-old son L. was in Chicago Saturday to see Emarosa for their Squash the Beef tour. I don’t know what “squash the beef” and mosh conjure up for you, but if you have sons, I have an idea.

Of course, we worry a little when the boys head off to a show! They always meet a host of characters in line for tickets, and moshers do seem to be a relatively loving crowd of headbangers. But what about the thrashers who love happy cabbage (and happy dust) and in their wasted state may inadvertently squash the beef?

The afternoon following the show, L. proudly revealed to me an epic purple and gold souvenir across his midsection. It's this sort of stuff that widens the generation and gender gap in our house. Genuine pride! For internal bleeding from strangers kicking and smacking each other to the “music” of vomit sounds!

In spite of my preference for minimal slugging and groin kicking while grooving with fellow “Seal” fans at a concert, I do understand the infectious high energy these rockers tap into at moshfests. There are plenty of days as a mid-life mama I can relate to Emo and pent up rage. 

Sure, depression and despair are common to both middle age and adolescence. Also rage. Negative energy needs to be burned; I get it. I was right there thrashing old school at A Flock of Seagulls circa 1982. But I’ll still never fully comprehend a boy's joy for a flesh wound sustained while dancing.

L. (lifting shirt): Look at this one.

(Displays irregular bruise the size of a large hoagie on the soft flesh above waist.)

Me: Why?

L.: It was amazing. I was passed all the way up to the stage. I almost touched Johnny Craig. I really wanted to touch him.

Me: But the bruising—you didn’t get that from moshing?

L.: No. Somebody just smashed me in the side as hard as they could while I crowd surfed. Look at this one too!

Me: Yeah. Your school colors. Let’s take a picture.

Clearly a Kodak...errrrr...Ko-Wack moment. Something sacred in a gnarly, half-misunderstood, post-moshtrocity, mother-son moment to giggle about someday with his grandkids.

If the family beef is not squashed in a mosh pit.

Michele has a husband, two children, a master's in counseling and a blog at hellolovelychild.blogspot.com.

Disco? Emo? We're the same-o.
by Michele Ranard
600 wds
Connecting with your inner adolescent just happens when you’re raising teens. The thirteen year old who lived for dance is alive and well in this mom. She is still a craver of drama, an open wound, and a dreamer like her sons.

In 1979, ten of us eighth-graders were recruited to make a dance video for our school. Burgundy and gold polyester skirts and tunics were home sewn, and a “Studio 54” routine choreographed. My dance partner was the foxy Steve, who reminded me of Mick Jagger. My status on Earth had peaked as we lost ourselves in darkness under a glittery disco sphere.

There are days I still long to shake it on the stage, but opportunities for disco have thinned out like my pre-menopausal eyelashes. Sure, there’s the occasional wedding reception or step aerobics, but a Charleston step at the Y always turns my hair prematurely blue.

I love the night life; I like to boogie, but my children insist Donna Summer and these living room moves are irrelevant. In fact, my sons don’t dance. They mosh. They thrash. They bleed.

The 13-year-old son attended his first hardcore concert days ago and proudly parades assorted bruises sustained in the pit. The screamo band was sweet, but for him the evening’s highlight was his buddy’s knuckles connecting with the jaw of a fellow mosher. The mosher fell to the dance floor knocked out cold. My son reports it was awesome as the dude was helped to stand before again collapsing unconscious.

Wow. Perhaps thirteen is too young for slamming in the pits. As a fresh thrasher, he might inadvertently bloody the wrong brow or tug the wrong piercing. His older brother is a veteran mosher and celebrator of mild concussions. He is fearless for the “wall of death” where moshers near the stage are encouraged to part the waters then rush each other at full speed.

I’m told the energy and adrenaline in such arenas is otherworldly, but me, I like to jam with my American Bandstanders Red Bull-free.

The genre of music my eldest son’s band plays is bone chilling and sends most adults sprinting for Xanax or the Bible. Practicing downstairs several times a week, I have yet to hear syncopation tempting me to shake my groove thing. It does beckon more insulation for unfinished basement walls.

Our dance practices before the video shoot were enchanting. Twirled and dipped by Jagger, I lived my PG-13 Saturday Night Fever out loud. Pages in my Judy Blume diary were flooded with “STEVE AND I WILL HAVE THREE CHILDREN AND A PUG!”

But hormones and newfound glamour rattled my fragile angsty soul. Maybe the pressure to dance in my first film is why I crashed and burned, annihilating any chance of adopting a pug with Mick.

A trace of DNA on the gene I would someday pass to male offspring with a preference for physical damage mixed with dance—showed up in one critically mortifying moment during dress rehearsal.

My inner mosh princess drilled a bony elbow backwards into Steve’s eye socket.

Somewhere Judy Blume echoed, “No teen ever dies of embarrassment. Awkward and aimless, you’re still beautiful.”

But freekin' Judy Blume was full of crap. Even with icepacks, the swelling of his eye was fast and furious. I wanted to die.

Maybe I share more in common with my teens than I imagined. I remember living for Friday nights and losing myself in dance. Their stage diving, crowd surfing, and headbanging are what the hustle and freak were for us.

I just wear my mosh scars on the inside.

Michele Ranard sincerely hopes moshing is just a phase. She is a professional counselor/tutor and freelancer with a twisted blog at hellolovelychild.blogspot.com.