It's a question I get asked from time to time, usually either when catching up with someone I knew "back in the day" or when someone that knows me as a professional and family man finds out how I spent my early 20s.
"Oh wow, are you going to tell your kid about your band days?"
When I was 19 I joined a folk-punk band. Five or so years later, when the band finally parted ways, we'd played gigs in three countries, travelled thousands upons thousands of kilometres in various vans, met hundreds if not thousands of amazing people and consumed gallons upon gallons of beer. We weren't famous in any real sense but we had enough people that liked our stuff that we were able to travel to some amazing cities to play our music.
And when we weren't actually on stage? Well, there's plenty of fun to be had in places like Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Toronto and St. John's.
Don't get me wrong, this wasn't the stuff of heavy metal legend — no televisions out the hotel room window or cars driven into swimming pools — but we had the sort of fun that a respectable, white collar, suburban father like myself just isn't expected to have. And thus the question comes up.
So will I tell my kid about my more youthful indiscretions? Absolutely.
Sure, we did some reckless stuff. I made mistakes I hope my daughter never has to make (nearly picking a fight with a gangster in Montreal and accidentally befriending a white supremacist, to pick two). But I wouldn't trade the experience for the world. We saw parts of the world and met people that we'd never otherwise have had the chance to. I made friends to last a lifetime and I have memories that could fill volumes.
Don't get me wrong. I love my life in the suburbs. The wife, the kid, the dog, the car in the driveway and the two-storey house — I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. But I also wouldn't give up the "wasted" years either. The years that I spent scraping together a living while my university classmates moved on to start their careers are just as important to me as the years I've spent since building my career and my family.
Besides, my kid's already showing an interest. Ask her what to do if someone goes down in a mosh pit? "You help them up, Daddy!"
She knows because we practice.
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