Varsity
I'm staring at the cover art for MxPx's album Life in General: while an assistant principal-type adult looks on, a jock asshole (complete with mullet and varsity jacket) holds one punk in a headlock after depositing another in a trashcan. I love MxPx. I am, after a fashion, a bit of a punk. In high school, I wore a varsity jacket.

I loved that jacket. It's the best coat I've ever owned, but even more than that, I loved the letter. I was a three-year letterman on one of the top ten or top twenty swim teams in the State of Michigan. (And in those days, you had to earn a letter, they weren't just given away.) I worked my fat ass off for those letters, earning the nickname "the SKP Machine." If you don't know what SKP stands for, well, sucks to be you. You probably should have swam in high school. I wore my jacket with pride, because I earned it. Does that make me an active participant in the evil jockocracy?

Some would say yes. I wore the jacket, the same jacket as the assholes on the football team (though mine was different, since the swim team's letters invariably read "Big 9 Champs," while the football team struggled futilely to reach .500 in a given season), and that makes me as much a part of the problem as they were. I may not have pushed people around like they did, but I wore the same status symbol. I avoided getting teased for being a nerd by clothing myself in a wolf's skin. But you know what? That's whiny bullshit. Maybe the football players didn't give me as hard a time as they would have if I'd just been in the marching band, but that isn't my fault. I refuse to be responsible for how they react to the jacket. I got off my lazy butt and I did ten thousand yeards a day and that gives me the right to wear the symbol of that accomplishment and if you don't like it, be you fellow punk or football player asshole or whiny goth kid, you can go fuck yourself.

I did ten thousand yards a day, but if you're too small-minded to see anything beyond the jacket, how exactly does that make you any different than the jocks? I earned my jacket, and it means much more to me than you ever will.