Rush "caress of steel"

With most things in my life I am one of those "jack of all trades but master of none" I have tried my hand at many things (bass guitar, snowboarding, roller hockey, pool, skateboarding, writing music blogs, etc) and have achieved functional ability in most of them but rarely any sort of expertise. It's rarely a result of lack of effort.  The summer of 1984 was the first summer of junior high. My friends had discovered pot (I was still too revulsed by smoking to even try it) and on the long aimless days between riding in strange cars to strange neighborhoods to track down that elusive plant we would spend countless hours in my friend's mom's basement playing pool, emulating wwf wrestling and listening to #rush .  Rush was my friend's favorite band, the music and his enthusiasm for it won me over in short time. He copied "caress of steel" onto a cassette for me (I remember thinking "I think I'm going bald" being funny) we had all dabbled in dungeons & dragons by this point so the album cover and the long "the necromancer" song also entranced me.  We would all hang out in the cool basement and air guitar with pool cues while waiting our turns to knock those colorful balls around that felt table. All of us spent alot of time down there, me probably the most, I was close with my friend and being anywhere but around my own home situation was embraced.
We listened to alot of Rush down there. We played alot of pool down there. A metric shit ton of pool. You would think I would have gotten good at it. Over the years I would play the occasional game of pool, I had the functional ability. Years later another dear friend of mine took a real interest in the game and started spending nights between his collegiate workload at pool halls. I joined him occasionally and watched him develop his game. He would put English on the cue ball and plan where it would come to rest, he would sink shots with precision and confidence, he even had a cue stick that screwed together. I could hang for a while but eventually just became a chaotic obstacle on his table. Se la vie. I am very good at listening to this album right now though.