All I wanted was a Pepsi!! Just one Pepsi!!!

Backstory:

In the springtime of my youth in Southern California, I spent many an hour listening to the only radio station worth listening to, LA's very own 106.7 KROQ. KROQ was alternative before it was a term. They had the first interview with the Sex Pistols on the West Coast. It was the only radio station on the dial where you could hear the Ramones back to back with the Thompson Twins (and it wasn't just the top 40 TT songs, either - KROQ celebrated their earlier, funkier stuff "Lies," "We Are Detective," stuff like that).



Anyway, for anyone like me who grew up listening to KROQ in the mid-eighties, there is a refrain in one song that should stick in your mind. It's from the song "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies. For those of you who don't know the band/song, they were one of a number of second-generation LA-based punk rock bands, who often accented their material by being funny in an offbeat sort of way. (The masters of this were Los Alamitos' own The Vandals, but that's a different story and a different post). Anyway, in "Institutionalized," long-suffering "Mike" explains to the listeners all the troubles he goes through with his family and various authority figures who believe he's going over the edge and needs professional help. The verse in question goes something like this:

I was sitting in my room thinking about everything and then again thinking about nothing. And my mom comes in my room and calls my name, and I don't hear her and she starts screaming , "Mike!! Mike!!" And I'm like, "What?" And she says "What's wrong with you? Are you on drugs?" "No, Mom, I'm not on drugs, I'm just thinking. Can you get me a Pepsi?" "No, you're on drugs!! Normal people don't act this way!" All I wanted was a Pepsi! Just one Pepsi! And she wouldn't give it to me!!!!!"



The closer she gets to the dreaded thirteen, the more E's rants sound like our friend Mike's up there. So, I've taken to turning to Kat anytime E's on a bender and intoning (usually under my breath) "All I wanted was a Pepsi! Just one Pepsi!!!" So, ha-ha, fun parent joke and all.





Granted, things never work out quite the way I envision them.



A few days ago, Em was letting fly over, I don't know, homework? Chores? Her opinion vs her mom's opinion on the color of the sky? Whatever. Anyway, while she's going on, I lean over to Kat and say, "All I wanted was a Pepsi! Just one Pepsi! And she wouldn't give it to me!"



To which my darling seven-year-old, who has no knowledge of Suicidal Tendencies, let along Punk Rock, told me sweetly:

I'll get you a Pepsi, Daddy!!







Whatta kid! If Mike had her for a mom, he'd be an accountant with a ranch house in Rossmoor right now.