It wasn't until my early twenties when I realized that the majority of the songs on Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction are about heroin.
The first time I listened to Appetite for Destruction was when I was eight years old and my Mom bought my brother the cassette tape.
Mom was not a fan of the album art.
But she wasn't big on sheltering us from depictions of... sexual assault by monsters(?). When confronted with such moral degradations, Mom would express her disgust and then let us form our own opinions. This is probably why I grew up to be a non-conformist pain in the ass.
When I was fifteen I re-discovered Appetite for Destruction. Rocket Queen was my favorite song. And My Michelle, of course.
In my last year of high school I drew a Kozik style poster of a woman on a snake with a gun in her hand. Wearing a g-string. In faux blood I lettered the words "ROCKET QUEEN". My art teacher thought it was anti-feminist.
But she was the teacher who told a classroom full of seventeen year olds that she slept naked with her nine year old son, so I had already shoved her in the category of soul sucking public school teachers who slipped through the cracks of their mother's self induced abortions. The type to dismiss, ya know?
That's probably one of the meanest things I've written since realizing that there are people who actually read the stuff I publish on the internet. But due to her also docking me marks off my final grade for my choice of content when I painted a cartoon-style picture of my cats, I am not retracting the comment or editing it out. Did I mention that she chewed me out for painting a picture of my cats infront of the whole class? THE WHOLE CLASS. But be assured that she was impressed with the perfect lines I had painted.
If I could go back in time, I would tell her to go relive her past and snort a line, and then I would refer to her as a "pseudo feminist hippie". IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE CLASS. I think Axl Rose would approve.
If you could return to public school with the wisdom and confidence you have now, who would you lip off?