My sophomore year in high school I decided to take up skateboarding. My very first skateboard was a plastic blue "banana" board and I would do circles in my garage and driveway. Around and around clockwise and then counterclockwise until i felt ready to try the street. Having asked the guys at the pizzeria where i worked what kind if skateboard i should get they gifted me some giant no-name deck and invited me to tag along with them around town. I had seen photos of Metallica and Anthrax with boards and my newfound interest in crossover thrash was deeply steeped in skate culture so in hindsight skateboarding seemed inevitable. This #suicidaltendencies album came out that year and I had seen it's advertisements in both metal magazines I would shoplift and the Thrasher magazines the dudes would show up to work with. I was really excited about ST's aesthetic before I heard a note: the pentagram adorned skateboards and the bandanas worn low over their eyes. It was exotic and cool. I reappropriated some white dress shirts which were stashed in my dresser and drew skulls and goats on the backs of them with permanant marker emulating the photos in the ads I had seen. I took one of my baseball caps and painted "suicidal" under the brim. It totally freaked my mom out and I totally loved it. I played the crap out of this album and would sing "possessed to skate" to myself as I frantically pushed to keep up with my buddies. While I never got good at skateboarding. I was serviceable and could keep up and participate but never really excelled. My friends were awesome and didn't make fun of me, it was our culture not a competitive sport. I would make marker covered dress shirts for them as a token of my appreciation of acceptance. Though geography and time have seperated us we are all still friends today. Shared experiences and shared music are some pretty powerful bonds.
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