{"id":1838,"date":"2010-02-17T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greatsouthernbrainfart.wordpress.com\/?p=1838"},"modified":"2015-03-20T13:21:33","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T17:21:33","slug":"twisted-sister-saved-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=1838","title":{"rendered":"Twisted Sister Saved My Life!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"twistedsister\"<\/a>How many times have you heard someone say, “Music saved my life?”\u00a0 Probably more times than you can count and in many ways, it sounds like the cheesiest thing someone could say.\u00a0 For me, this is a true statement.\u00a0 Let me take you back in time to 1984.\u00a0 As many of my loyal readers already know by now, this is around the time that I was first turned on to Hard Rock and Metal music as a kid.\u00a0 Anyways, 1984\u00a0 There I am, a fat, awkward kid with the worst bowl cut ever going to Catholic school.\u00a0 That right there is enough to make one want end life but I’ll digress.\u00a0 Anyway, there I was.\u00a0 Fat, awkward and wanting nothing but to be included and accepted.\u00a0 Just like any kid, I wanted to belong so I tried my best.\u00a0 I listened to the radio just so I could talk about Prince and Duran Duran only to be made fun of when I didn’t know some other trendy group.\u00a0 No matter what, I just couldn’t win.\u00a0 I was made fun of, I was called names and I was even beaten up after school on a pretty regular basis.\u00a0 I was flat out fucking miserable and I was just ready for any way out.\u00a0 I skipped school, hid from my folks and did just about anything to avoid having to go back to school.\u00a0 Then I started to literally think about offing myself just to get out of it.\u00a0 I couldn’t take anymore and I felt that nobody understood or had my back.\u00a0 I was sent to a therapist who did little to nothing but say that I would eventually grow out of it.\u00a0 I was fucking 11!\u00a0 There’s no way I wanted to go through another year of this shit much less multiple years.\u00a0 I would eventually meet one guy who would accept me for who I was.\u00a0 His name was Jimmy.\u00a0 Along with his older brother, he turned me onto Heavy Metal Music and it showed me a world full of others like me where I could be understood and belong.\u00a0 Of all those bands, one particular band spoke to me in volume and became my saviors.\u00a0 That band was Twisted Sister.<\/p>\n

Twisted Sister’s “Stay Hungry” album became MY therapy.\u00a0 I remember listening to this cassette while sitting on my bed alone in my bedroom and finally feeling like there was someone out there that understood me.\u00a0 “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, “I Wanna Rock”, and even “The Price” became songs that spoke not just to me but for me.\u00a0 Wow, these guys totally get me.\u00a0 How could a band that doesn’t even know I exist know me so well?\u00a0 That’s because I wasn’t alone and that there were probably millions of “me” out there and this band got it.\u00a0 They were “my” band.\u00a0 They were “our” band and they were the band that showed me that no matter what, I just had to roll with the punches and never compromise who I was and what I was.\u00a0 So just like the kid in the video, I started wearing a Twisted Sister button on my uniform.\u00a0 I shit you not.\u00a0 I would go to the record store and I would buy ever Twisted Sister button I could buy because everytime Sister Stickupherass would take my button away and send me to the office, I would just show up the next day with a new one.\u00a0 It was my statement and it was ME and they weren’t going to take that away from me.\u00a0 Eventually they won by sending me home and my dad basically telling me that I had to stop doing it because eventually they throw me out of school.\u00a0 Ok, so I abide but I didn’t give in.\u00a0 I drew the “TS” logo on every fucking notebook I had and there wasn’t a goddamn thing they could do about it.\u00a0 Don-1, Catholic School Assholes-0.<\/p>\n