So the album is out on Bandcamp and on my Web site – so not entirely out, just release-curious – and I could not be happier. But it occurs to me that you may not know why it’s called Bad Apple. So pull up a chair.
I grew up in a leafy suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, and when I say “grew up”, I mean that I mostly got larger. I was born a healthy, 9-pound 40-year-old man. My first words, I believe, were “get off my lawn”. So I really didn’t experience that rebellious phase that many of us go through as a child. I mean, certainly, while my parents were lovely people, sometimes they were correct when they told me to do things, and sometimes they were not, but it wasn’t a true spasm of rebellion so much as an intellectual dispute. In general, I was much more likely to polish my shoes than throw a tantrum, get a tattoo, run away from home, etc. In many ways, in fact, I was a model child, if your model is Ed Asner.
At the same time, while I was busy becoming larger, I was also internalizing the lessons my parents were teaching me (so Ed Asner, but really, really impressionable). I learned to respect my elders, and pick up my clothes, and play nicely with others, and do my chores, and apply myself in school, and, well, do all the good little doobie things that model children do. You might think that this was a good thing – my parents did their job, that’s for sure. But they did it too well, I think.
I mean, doesn’t every one of us wish that sometimes they cared less? That, in this world where awful things happen on what seems to be an hourly basis, you didn’t feel like you had to pay attention to Every. Damn. Thing? That you could walk past a candy wrapper on the street without picking it up? That you could do something reckless and ill-advised, just because? I know I do. But I am incapable of it, thanks to my parents. There were no threats, no predictions of eternal damnation, no scowls when I stepped out of line (because I didn’t). They just – were good people. And so, sadly, am I.
Of course, I don’t mean that I want to be evil, mind you. My wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, would never tolerate it – there’s only room for one evil person in this marriage, and it’s her (just kidding). And I don’t mind being good, most of the time. I like it when people thank me. I like the feeling of performing my civic duty when I pick up the trash, or (as I did last weekend) spend an hour standing in freezing water, digging a channel along the curb to the storm drain so that the ramp at the corner in front of our house doesn’t turn into the sixth Great Lake. But some days, when I’m tired, or fed up, or just, well, exhausted with being me, I’d really like to just chuck it all for a bit.
So, Bad Apple. Some people dream of being president; some people dream of winning the lottery; I dream of walking past a grandmother with a bag of groceries without a voice in my head telling me to stop. I never will – my parents made sure of it. But golly, wouldn’t it be nice once in a while?