Old Punk Memories 1 & 2

These are my first two punk memories. I forget which came first:

1) The first Ramones album came out in May, 1976. I was 15. My best friend brought out this album from his sister's room. I didn't like it at all, especially the lyrics of "Beat on the Brat" because it was about beating a child with a baseball bat. The whole album seemed sing-songy. I'm a Ramones nut now but I still don't like "Beat On The Brat", and when I see the album I vividly remember being an unworldly, gawky kid thinking "what the hell is this?!"

2) My school's gym bleachers were the accordian kind with no safety features, so if you took a wrong step you fell through and probably broke something groin related. I was sitting on it pondering the danger of the situation when this long haired guy sat down next to me and started talking to a friend of mine. He wore a button that read "Blondie Is A Group". This made no sense because Blondie is a comic strip character. He talked about CBGBs in Manhattan, and I thought he was the coolest because he took the train into the city to hang out in a bar. He might as well have been traveling to Dimension X to fight Venusians.