Welcome to High School

I was confused, musically speaking, in my early teens. A lot of the music my friends were listening to was forbidden by my parents, 2 Live Crew at the top of the list. As with most teens, what is forbidden quickly becomes the most coveted. I thought I was a rap music fan. I had a few tapes. Parent-friendly MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. Ooh, really hardcore! MTV was one of the few outlets that I could learn more about the genre. Again, that was certainly a sanitized brand specifically geared for what would turn into the TRL crowd. I thought I was a rap fan. Turns out, I had no idea and it took a school dance to open my eyes to what I didn’t know.

A lot of songs in the early 90s involved jumping as the approved method of dancing.. “Jump” by Kris Kross. “Jump Around” by House of Pain. “Slam” by Onyx. The deejay at the Back To School dance was in the middle of a set of such songs. They also happened to be the only songs that I was confident enough to get on the dance floor for. During “Jump Around”, I saw a blonde I knew from church. She was a sophomore and beautiful. She also ran with quite a different crowd, and couldn’t be seen associating with the likes of me. Mosh pit styled, she actually kicked me a few times on the dance floor while jumping.

As the deejay mixed into “Slam” to keep our hyper selves jumping on springs, the dance floor dissolved into a brawl. Not a typical one-on-one altercation like I was used to. More like many-on-one. He got jumped. While trying to get away, he got cornered and bloodied pretty badly. The cops were called, administrators ended the dance. 

And then the fun began. Being a freshman, I had to rely on my parents to pick me up from school. Waiting in the front parking lot, I awakened to what was a daily reality for some at my school. One of the brawlers ran to his car, presumably to end the fight with an exclamation point, and was immediately dropped to the asphalt and cuffed by the cops.

Soon thereafter, I reconsidered my musical tastes and went in a different, less violence-inducing direction. At least until I went to college and punk showed up on my radar…