Writer not so mad for moshing

At 20 years of age, I have found my limit on what my body can withstand. Mosh pits are not one of those things.

This past weekend my boyfriend and I went to a concert in Dallas – at The Door – to see one of our favorite bands, Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (DRUGS). However, there were five other bands playing on the tour. I was super excited to see DRUGS play and we even got to the venue super early so we could be the first ones in.

The crowd was pretty gentle at first; a little bit of jumping around, mostly polite as we listened to bands that we'd never heard of.

But apparently the fourth band, Like Moths to Flames, was a band that everyone had heard of. And they were an angry band. Immediately, the singer came out and started screaming and throwing profanities and middle fingers. I could already tell this was going to be interesting.

As soon as their set began, I realized that I was in way over my head. This was the first mosh pit I'd ever been in, and to be frank, I was somewhat terrified. I just remember bracing myself with my elbows out and trying to maintain breathing space, whilst also trying to refrain from squashing the 90-pound 16-year-old girl in front of me.

Halfway through the set, I had been kicked in the face, used as an armrest for the guy behind me to get closer to the lead singer and kicked and stepped on numerous times. Luckily, being only five feet tall, I was able to avoid the majority of the violence that is crowd surfing going on above me. I wish I could've said the same for my boyfriend.

After the fourth or fifth time he got kicked in the face and punched in the kidneys, we'd had it. We pushed through the crowd and finally made it to the back and had to cool down because we were both so angry at the other concert-goers that we were both about to pop. We ended up hanging around at the back and listening to our favorite band at a distance from which we could actually hear the lead singer without busting our eardrums. It made the experience much better, in its own way.

I have never understood the hype that comes with moshing, and now that I've experienced it, I am even more confused. It really is a scary thing, and the pain that comes with the experience the next morning is something I could live without.

Maybe it's because I've never been a violent or angry person, and maybe it's because I'm a baby when it comes to pain, but moshing is just not my thing. Especially when all the people moshing and crowd-surfing around you are 12-year-old girls that are getting chunked around, losing their shirts and shoes, and getting dropped on their heads.

It just doesn't seem to be my thing, and it saddens me to say that I'm starting to sound like those old people that tell you to turn your music down.

I'm not ready to grow up yet. But my aging body is telling me otherwise.