Mad Atoms

I know what you’re thinking when you see me wearing a Red Sox t-shirt.  

I know you think I’m some cocky asshole from Boston, constantly dropping f-bombs in one of those thick accents that borders on being a speech impediment. I know you think I have seven friends named Sully and we all get black out drunk at every Patriots game and start fights at Dunkin Donuts on the way home. I know you think I’m the most annoying person of the face of the Earth. To that, I say: Fuck you.  

Just because I’m from Boston does not make me a douchebag. From John F. Kennedy to Conan O’Brien, Paul Revere to Steven Wright, Boston has produced hundreds of thousands of beloved non-douchebags who have contributed great things to society. This is a city that leads America in medical research, educates half a million college students every year and started a little revolution that actually created this country in the first place. Do you like Cheers? Boston cream donuts? Samuel Adams beer? Then you like Boston, at least a little bit. 

That being said, I completely understand why Boston gets a bad rap.

Problem is, even though the city contains the same amount of douchebags per capita as any other major metropolitan area, our particular douchebags happen to be much more loud and obnoxious than, say, douchebags from Phoenix or douchebags from Toronto. And about half of them end up on reality TV shows, drunkenly yelling at everyone else in the house, getting into fights that result in broken furniture, and boasting “I’m from Boston!” as if that is somehow a satisfactory explanation for why they just took a dump in somebody’s sock drawer.

Aside from our D-list d-bags on TV, another problem is that Boston’s regular non-douchebag citizenry are often mistaken for douchebags by people outside the Northeast. For example, Bostonians tend to be a little on the aggressive side in conversation, actually having opinions that might contradict yours. I can see why that doesn’t go over well in places like San Diego where people consider having opposing viewpoints to be an annoyance that is keeping them from going to the beach.  

Plus, anything at all said in that hideous accent that turns a innocuous word like “potato” into a grating nonsense sound like “b'dayda” is going to be off-putting to anybody who speaks the Queen’s English. 

I guess it’s not really your fault that you think I’m a douchebag afterall. There’s just too much circumstantial evidence to overcome. So, I’ll apologize for stuck up Harvard grads. I’ll apologize for calling things I don’t like “wickid re-tah-ded”. I’ll apologize for unleashing Ben Affleck on an unsuspecting generation. But I will not apologize about the fuckin’ Red Sawx and there two fuckin’ World Series trophies in the past five years, doooood!