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6:36 a.m. on 2001-08-25 ---------------------------------------- 90 Days of the Shits: How heavy metal almost caused me to get my 7th grade ass kicked. ---------------------------------------- I had a best friend in the 7th grade named Michele. I took a liking to her because she wore a leather jacket and listened to heavy metal. The first time I ever spoke with Michele, I convinced her, during Mr. Sidman's social studies class, to give me her Guns and Roses button that adorned her bag. I'm almost positive that she gave me the button out of relief; relief that at least one other person in the 7th grade liked heavy metal. My mother really flipped out when she saw the button. I could see the confusion in her eyes as she tried to make the connection between "Guns" and "Roses". This, I never understood. As far as I'm told, my mother drove my grandmother nuts playing the songs of 50's rebels such as Elvis and Roy Orbison. Yet, as my grades dwindled in the 7th grade, music became easy fodder for her to launch critical attacks. In a truly desperate attempt to locate the centris of my dysfunction, she even once came up to me while I was listening to Nowhere Man and hissed, "The Beatles have made you a bad person!" Whoa! If the Beatles had made me a bad person, than too much Roy Orbison had made her one looney tunes bitch. "Is this the music used in conjunction with resurrection of the devil?", she pryed, pointing at my new G & R button. "Of course!", I responded, and later regretted. "Jesus himself has been trying for years to get their albums banned." Some comments followed, accusing me of being a smartass, and then punishment. While I definitely considered Michele my best friend, as is life, she did not consider me hers. Her best friend was an annoying girl named Joanna. Joanna and I, suffice it to say, did not get along royally. Nonetheless, we both knew Michele and hung out together on several occasions. In my own naieve way, I actually believed that Joanna and I were Michele's only two friends. Little did I know, Michele had another group of friends from her neighborhood, equal devotees to heavy metal and upon first meeting them, the biggest group of derelicts in creation. I had seen kids like this on episodes of 21 Jump Street, oh yeah!!! Speed freaks, or something, they would be called. Now mind you, by the 7th grade, I was already making a professional career out of being an asshole, but Michele's friends were above and beyond my level of amateur assholenicity. They were like the grand rectums of the ancient society of Prick. One guy, named Rob, blew his nose in his hand and wanted me to shake hands with him. I was left wondering if we had really progressed far as humans. As the perfectly bad radio DJ, Casey Kasem has said, "The two friends felt the glue holding their relationship together slowly falling apart..." And so, Michele and I were fast on our way to no longer being really great friends. I found it increasingly impossible to deal with integrating her world into my world, with both of us being friends. As fate would have it, and fate had it pretty fucking good, there is always a proverbial nail in the coffin. Mine was during a trip to Washington DC. As my class prepared to leave early in the morning for a day trip to DC, Joanna was kissing some guy at the bus stop. He was short, but rather well built and wore glasses. I commented to Joanna when we got on the bus, "So, who's your nerdy friend?" She laughed it off. One of my last fond memories involving myself and Michele was the both of us sitting on the busride back home listening to Pantera. When we got back, there was a greeting commitee of parents, etc. waiting to pick up their kids. It was a wonderful day. In contrast, the greeting commitee that greeted me the end of the next school day was far less friendly. I remember walking home, feeling quite good and then getting a pit in my stomach when I saw not only the guy who I had called a nerd, but all of Michele's derelict friends. They were congregated about ten feet from my house. One of them yelled, There he is...!!!" Joanna's nerdy boyfriend looked not so nerdy anymore as he walked quickly towards me. (Cue organ music) To be continued... TOMORROW: After my confrontation, I get a case of the shits that lasts 3 months, absolute terror. Tune in! in the slammer - up for parole CLIX |
