The Frustration Of Growing Up As A Transient Kid

Photo by Matthew Hamilton on Unsplash

Although I have often heard Green Day’s “Wake Me up When September Ends” ridiculed as an emo anthem, the song has been a constant in my life, and one of the few songs I know all the lyrics to. The song’s theme of loss, particularly dedicated to the death of singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s father of esophageal cancer when he was 10, has universal applications to all disasters. The Internet has used the song to depict the carnage of 9/11 and then the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The music video itself depicted a young couple separated by the Iraq War.

At the core of the song is a loss of innocence story. Sarah Boxer of The New York Times comments that “parts of the song make no sense at all.” The lines “like my father’s come to pass,/ 20 years has gone so fast” talks about loss and the passing of time, but can be applied to a lot of situations. “Perhaps that touch of incoherence is the song’s key to universality,” Boxer continues.

And I agree. The song’s emotional tone and universality make it so it touches each of us uniquely and personally.

I should have outgrown the song, but every time I hear it now, I’m reminded of the frustration that came with being a transient kid living in a home where we moved almost every year. Growing up in an immigrant family with upwardly-mobile minded parents, I went to six…