Crazy What Can Trigger a Memory

I turned on Spotify while working. In all its robotic “wisdom”via the shuffle feature, it decided to play what felt like every single depressing 90s alternative ballad in existence. Eventually, it played Mr.Brownstone (from 1987 – Guns N Roses, Appetite for Destruction).

In 1987, I was nine. It was right before my 10^th birthday because I didn’t yet have an Undertaker poster on my wall. My cousin gave that to me for my birthday. My brother was 14. And he brought the Appetite for Destruction album home. To this day, it’s still the only Guns N Roses album I like.

I can tell you the location of the trailer park we lived in with our parents and where in the park the trailer was located. Shortly after marrying Bull five years ago, I drove through that area…and the sad thing is that the place looked the exact same. Still drug infested. Trailers falling to pieces.

I had one friend, Erica. She was the younger sister of one of my brother’s friends. I was also bullied by a girl named Misty and her little brother who went by Bubba. I’ve always been extremely introverted and even then I pretty much just wanted to be left alone. This girl? She wasn’t having it. She was a few years older than me…she was about 12 years old. Her brother was my age. And they loved to try to physically hurt me.

That summer, the pool was open (the pool is no longer there;it’s now a courtyard) and my brother went with me to the pool. I wasn’t much of a swimmer. (I’m still not – I know how to swim. I swim well. Just not something I really enjoy.) Andddd the bully girl tried to drown me. I don’t remember exactly what happened. I remember her holding me underwater. And I remember my brother pulling me out. I can’t tell you how much time had gone by. Enough that I thought I would die.

Not long after that, I learned how to fight. And one day,she pushed my buttons and I beat the brakes off of her and her brother at the same time. From that point, I never really went looking for a fight (unless I saw someone being bullied)…but I also wouldn’t back down if someone hit me first.

I’m 40…and that’s the memory that’s associated with Appetite for Destruction.

Fat Axl

Also, I kinda feel like the fat Axl Rose pictures could easily be Rosie O’Donnell dressed up as fat Axl. I laugh so hard every time I see them.