Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Margaret. I’m Totally Lying. My Name Is Jackie.

The boy turns 16 next month, and our musical tastes remain about 70% aligned. This is a good percentage for a mother/teenager combination. There’s a few hip-hop tracks he likes that I’m not impressed with, and he hurt my feelings when I played “Third Uncle” by Bauhaus earlier this evening (thinking he might be interested in the bass line, since he’s always looking for ridiculously easy guitar riffs to play), and he walked away after about ten seconds, but all in all we have a good musical connection. We don’t fight over the radio too much. He’s stolen most of my CDs. I don’t mind.

About five years ago I bought him his first band t-shirt. It was The Ramones. He picked it out at Hot Topic. He went through a brief Ramones phase, then quietly outgrew garage band punk. I now wear the t-shirt to bed. From there he progressed to Bob Marley, The Smiths, Linkin Park, and some others. He stole my Le Tigre and Rilo Kiley shirts. He’s not allowed to touch my Love and Rockets concert tee from their Motorcycle Tour (1989?). It was the first concert I ever attended, and my boyfriend bought me the t-shirt. Actually, The Boy doesn’t want to borrow it, which hurts my feelings. But I like to pretend that he covets it.

Anyhoo, school started recently, and we shopped online, because I grow more mallphobic every year. You can find everything online, and there’s just no reason to ever leave the house. I set The Boy loose on allposters.com– they were having a two-day sale with 20% off all shirts. I told him to put whatever he wanted in the cart, and I would weed it out.

Here’s why I have to weed it out: he’ll select t-shirts for bands that he’s only heard of, if the shirt is cool looking. Or if he thinks that the band is “obscure” enough to impress his friends (the bands are not obscure to anyone but 15 year olds). He ran several t-shirts past me. “Bauhaus?” he’d say. “R.E.M.?” I snorted derisively. “Why would you get those? You don’t listen to either one of them.”

See, you can’t have the shirt if you don’t know the band. Because I am a band t-shirt snob. And I am mean. Sometimes, in parenting, you have to improvise with strange new House Rules, like the rule I instituted last week, while t-shirt shopping on the ‘net: You can’t buy a band’s t-shirt unless you actually know the band’s music. Tell me the band’s or artist’s name, and I will tell you “yes” or “no.” I know which bands you know and like. If you would like to argue your case, I will require that you name no fewer than three songs played by said band. I will not require that you know the song title, because I know that you’re terrible with song titles. You will have to recite lyrics. “That one song that goes, ‘Buh, buh, duh duh duh’” will not suffice.

And that is why I took the R.E.M. t-shirt (and some other one that I’ve since forgotten) out of your shopping cart and left The Pixies, The Police, and Rilo Kiley. It’s for your own good. There will be no band t-shirt poseurs in this house, young man.