The Tale of the Boy Who Wants to Rock

This is the tale of the Boy Who Wants to Rock, hereinafter known as the BWWtR.

The BWWtR is 5.5 years old now. He was four when I met him. His parents brought him along for a tour I gave him and his mom and dad at Laurel Hill Cemetery. The tour was a gift from the BWWtR’s dad to the BWWtR’s mom for her birthday.

The boy’s dad had given me advance notice that the boy wants to rock, so I came prepared. I wore a pin, proclaiming “I Wanna Rock” on my shirt. This was no fake retro pin either. It was a real retro pin, probably purchased at a Spencer’s Gifts circa 1985. I also found a way to logically incorporate an actual snippet of Twisted Sister’s song, “I Wanna Rock,” into the tour. This was easy enough to do, since my tour that day ended at the gravesite of opera singer David Bispham, a man who clearly wanted to rock, in the early-20th-century-American-opera-singer sense of “rocking”.

Even if the BWWtR didn’t care about rocking, he still would have been great fun to have on my tour. But the fact remains: this boy wants to rock. And that’s why my vintage “I Wanna Rock” pin will now be residing permanently on the BWWtR’s backpack.

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