1996 Changed Everything: Pt. 5 - We'll Meet Again Old Friend

This is part of a series of articles about 1996, as it holds significance for me since it was the year I graduated high school. This fifth article is all about the friends we make, the friends we lose, and the friends we keep.

Thirty years ago I walked across a stage, strutting like pro wrestling icon Ric Flair, grabbed my diploma, and began the slow walk from childhood to manhood. My sister Kate recorded much of that graduation ceremony on my old Sears camcorder. I cherish every second of it.

Even today, as the young faces pass by the camera on that tape, I remember so many of them like they are frozen in time. I feel as though those people who held the greatest importance in my life back then still do today.

The classic 1986 film Stand By Me has an iconic quote at the end that sticks with me to this day. Richard Dreyfuss as Gordie types: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?"

I wasn’t twelve when I graduated high school, but that line perfectly encapsulates how I feel about the friends I had back then. I’ve never had any like them since.

We were all learning and experiencing life for the first time together. We were succeeding, failing, laughing, loving, achieving, hurting, rebelling, being overwhelmed, and clinging on to each other as we rose and fell with the waves of teenage life. Those friends I made were not just friends; they were lifelong brothers and sisters.

When looking back at the people I called my friends as I graduated high school, I don’t look at a strict timeline. Many of those I’d have taken a bullet for I had already known for years by the time of caps and gowns. It was as if I already knew I’d found my tribe.

Doing some work in photography class.

Making friends is hard at any point in life. As an adult, it can feel like you’re applying for a job. As a kid, you’re putting yourself out there hoping that a stranger finds you worth getting to know better.

Being as shy and introverted as I was during my childhood, it’s a wonder I made any friends at all. Without luck, I’d have had to wait for a kickball to roll my way and use that as the opening to befriend whoever retrieved it.

My two oldest friends, Barry and Matt, came into my life through luck. Matt grew up across the street from me, and Barry happened to live a few doors down from my aunt. I’d go and visit her and invariably end up with Barry. I met both of them around the age of seven. Barry ended up being one of the most important and influential people in my life.

It’s interesting, as I sit here mining for memories going back 40 years, how I can’t remember those first meetings with people who went on to become chosen family. Oh sure, I can give you the Cliff’s Notes version of when someone crossed paths with me. I can share some early memories. However, the first meeting is a blur in virtually all of these cases. I guess you don’t realize that someone has become an integral part of your life until a certain amount of time has passed.

Hasan lived a few streets over from me. I know we bumped into each other during the summer before 6th grade. We built a bond like steel. He came from the city to Cape Cod and taught me about late 80’s/early 90s Hip-Hop. We played basketball. Rarely was it one-on-one because he’d crush me every time. So we’d do these two-against-zero games against opponents we called the ‘invisible ghosts.’

Tim lived further away, but our origin story is similar, revolving around a shared love of basketball. I remember sleepovers at his house often being punctuated by freshly made donuts the next morning by his parents. It was the Jerky Boys, walks through the woods to get to a nearby strip mall, and countless hours of me trying to figure out how to defend his patented ‘Fishy Swim’ fallaway jumper.

John I had seen around in middle school, but only when we sat next to each other in Freshman English did we connect. It was our just slightly wacky sense of humor that made us friends. I wish I still had my English notebook where we’d one-up each other with foolish lines and drawings, rarely paying attention to what the teacher said. To be honest, I would have had an easier time hearing an ant speak than that teacher, though.

Rob, much like Matt, happened to live close by. Our families were heavily intertwined, but it was only when I entered high school and bought a camcorder that we truly connected. He and I were the typical feral Gen Xers. Out all day on our bikes, going places we’d probably have needed permission to go, junk food, caffeine, crazy ideas, and laughs that brought tears.

Liam was another stroke of luck. We happened to work at the same job at the same time. Standing side by side with him, preparing food while music blasted loudly off the walls, ended up becoming some of my fondest memories of high school. Some funny lines we said back then we still bring up to this day.

There was a massive influx of new friends when I got to high school. My high school saw two neighboring towns’ middle schools combine into one blended family. It was an interesting transition. I played for the basketball team in middle school. A few of the new faces in the halls of the high school were once rivals on the other middle school team. It took a minute to realize we were all on the same team now.

New faces like Steve, Greg, Mike, Kevin, Pete, and others quickly went from strangers to major parts of my crew. Our interactions varied depending on the person. Greg, Mike, and Kevin became frequent subjects of photos during senior year.

An attempt at an artsy photo of those three.

I was taking a photography class and had to practice using a film camera. Those three would pose, or something like that, in the middle of classes. It was my job to hit up the darkroom and develop the foolishness that we created. To this day, Mike insists he wasn’t in any of those photos. The joke is on him, though. He has aged very well, so he looks almost the same today.

During high school, I was at the mercy of my bike, walking, or occasional rides to hang out with friends. I didn’t get my driver’s license until senior year, and even then I had infrequent access to a vehicle, what with me being one of five kids and having a mother working full-time and going to nursing school full-time.

It was a different era in the 1990s. You didn’t sit inside on a phone, playing video games, or watching television. Well, sure, we did all of those things to a degree, but for the most part life consisted of calling friends, quickly getting off the phone, and getting out of the house to have some sort of an adventure.

You quickly learn who your ‘ride or die’ friends are based on the level of stupidity they were willing to join you on. Wandering through the woods? Sneaking into a construction site to explore half-built houses? Hanging out of the back of a station wagon riding a skateboard? Drinking Jolt and creating caffeine-soaked skits with a bulky camcorder? These were only a few examples of what I’m talking about.

Yes, we drove something like this while someone rode a skateboard out of the back.

A classic ride-or-die story happened freshman year. Hasan and I went to a party at another friend’s house. It was in the next town over; we must have been dropped off there. It was populated by probably 8-10 more kids, but it was over thirty years ago, so my memory is hazy. What’s not hazy is how the party ended.

I am sure we were loud. I think there was at least some alcohol there, but I don’t think Hasan and I had more than a few sips at most. It was when the red and blue lights started flashing that we knew the jig was up. The police were there.

All of us 15/16 year old kids scattered. People were going in all different directions. Hasan and I though stuck together. One wouldn’t leave the other. We ran through yards, behind houses, tearing through trees and bushes until we were safely behind a nearby strip mall. It was part terrifying and part exhilarating.

At the strip mall, I called my mother to come and pick us up. We stood in front of a darkened store and waited, letting our heart rates come down. The fact that we hadn’t drunk worked in our favor. When my mother showed up, we didn’t reek of alcohol, so when we told her the story of what had happened, it was believable.

I feel like growing up in the 90s, I had a lot of near misses when it came to danger. I don’t think I’d have gotten in much trouble if the police had snagged me, but who knows? Being a minor, I knew I could do nearly anything I wanted with little repercussions.

That doesn’t mean that I went out defacing people’s property, or starting fights, or stealing. It just meant that the voice in my head telling me something was dangerous kept quiet a lot of the time. Maybe it wanted to see how I’d react to adversity?

I find it interesting that I didn’t go out drinking, or smoking, or partying until all hours of the night, and yet I feel my high school years were filled with adventure. That comes down to who my friend group was.

What the ‘cool kids’ would have thought of as adventures I saw as dangers not worth the time or risk. Now I can’t say for sure that if I was asked to go out drinking and partying and randomly hooking up that I would have said no. I can say that, looking back at the classmates who got DUI’s before they were of legal age and those who held their own children before holding a diploma, I am happy with my choices in friends and adventures.

I chose wisely when it came to friends. I also didn’t restrict myself to any certain subset of people. Only in the last few years have I noticed just how all-encompassing my friend groups were. Yes, I said ‘groups.’

I can rattle off a handful of different groups of friends. These had very little, if any, cross-pollination with other groups. I tried to be friends with anybody who wanted to be friends. It’s the way I was raised by my mother. I tried to fit in with anyone while also staying true to who I was.

Being seen as a poser is a kiss of death in any generation. If you lose your authenticity, you lose credibility. At least that’s how it was in high school. The way I navigated those waters was by amplifying traits around certain groups. I never hid who I fully was; I just shined a brighter light on the things I had in common with the people I was with at the time. Does that make sense?

I must have done a good job in my choices of friends because, as I said earlier, I still consider many of those same people my friends to this day. There are also no friends, not acquaintances but friends, that I regret knowing or having in my life. I think it’s rare to look at your friend group and not find someone who turned out to be a bad apple. I mean, unless we all were bad apples and none of us noticed the difference?

Friendships in high school changed and evolved along with all of us. You start with needing rides to someone's house to using your bike or your own car. Adventures go from walking to the corner store on a summer afternoon to driving to Boston for a killer, loud, AC/DC concert. Relationships could come and go, but friendships tended to stay.

A replica of my concert T since I have no clue where it is.

In my life today, I have more than a handful of friends of over thirty years. Now we don’t get to see each other all of the time due to work, family commitments, and location. That being said, if a friend reaches out to get together, I try my best to move whatever I need to see them.

I still remember inside jokes. I still remember certain foods certain friends liked. I still remember who was in what class. Mainly, I still remember how these people made me feel and why they became my friends in the first place. I think that is the most important thing.

Over time, specific memories might fade. That’s just the price of doing business in life. Feelings remain, though. If I hear any of a few dozen names from high school, whether they are still fixtures in my life or not, I get a smile and a blast of warm positive feelings.

We were all teenagers. We all went through the experience of finding ourselves in the world. If we are lucky, we have a solid crew of friends to navigate the choppy waters with. Very few grow up on one straight, clear path. It’s typically filled with twists, turns, dead ends, heartbreak, confusion, anger, and possibly, if a Gen Xer, indifference.

To wrap things up, I found one song that stuck out to me as far as my high school friendships went. Not surprisingly, it is a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. They were a band that made you cool if you listened to them, along with the Beastie Boys. At least it was in my circles.

The song is My Friends off of their less-than-stellar One Hot Minute album from 1995. The entire song weighs heavily on my memories of high school. The hook, I guess, is the lyrics I gravitated toward.

I love all of you
Hurt by the cold
So hard and lonely, too
When you don't know yourself




It’s a perfectly fitting sentiment. We were growing up, trying to find ourselves, but also knew that even as alone as you might have felt at times, if you were lucky, you had some friends to stand by you through those formative years.

In my next post, I will take a look at my family dynamic during senior year and a look at the role of family in the life of any high schooler. All families are created differently, as was mine.

1996 Changed Everything: Pt. 4 - Love, High School Style

This is part of a series of articles about 1996, as it holds significance for me since it was the year I graduated high school. In this fourth article, I look at how a significant relationship influenced decisions whose ramifications I am still feeling to this day.

Love is a wonderful thing. Michael Bolton said so in his 1991 hit song. Hey, it ended up in the Top 5, so he must have been on to something. Before you truly know what love is and what love feels like, love can take many different forms.

It can take the form of innocent crushes on girls in your class, like I had several of during elementary school. It can take the form of infatuation and pining like I did for a girl who used to visit my neighborhood during the summers of my formative years. When you are chasing the type of secure love that your life has not given you much of, you start to settle. You start to think that maybe you should say yes to whoever comes knocking.

Looking back thirty years, I can say in all honesty that during the nearly three years I dated my high school girlfriend, I thought I loved her at some point. Using my wisdom and experience from those years that have passed, I can say that, no, I never truly loved her. At least not in the purest form. Not in the way that I would want to be loved.

We came together mostly out of convenience. She literally lived next door to me and was friends with my sister Kate. I hardly had to do any work in terms of courting her before we were together. In fact, it was Kate who bluntly stated that we both knew we liked each other and that we should just get together.

I remember on that cold winter evening in February 1996 thinking to myself: Wait, I like her? I think my reservations were overruled by the thought of actually having a girlfriend, which was something I’d been wanting for years. A girlfriend in 5th grade, or a brief connection over a summer or two, was not the real relationship I was looking for.

I decided, why not? Soon we were hanging out and getting to know each other. The time together grew, which meant that my time with my group of friends shrank. In my mind, I thought if they were really my friends, they’d be happy that I had a girlfriend. Maybe that kind of justification to myself should have been a warning sign.

I was a senior while my new girlfriend was a freshman. It was not ideal. It actually made me feel a little less-than. Sure, a freshman who dates a senior would be seen as stepping up. A senior dating a freshman? It was more of a ‘what you couldn’t find anyone in your grade?’

Her reaction to us being together was to sweetly say, ‘I can’t believe I’m with you.’ It appealed to my ego. Yeah, I am a catch, I knew it. But it was also a lot of pressure to live up to. Also, in the back of my mind, I should have read it as it was: I had settled for less than I should.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not a knock on her. She was sweet, funny, kind, and supportive. I’m looking at it from my perspective. If I felt the same way as she did, then I wouldn’t have opted against going to my Senior Prom. I couldn’t let my friends and classmates see I was dating a freshman. That’s on me, not on her. My insecurities and low self-esteem kept me from going to one of the milestone events of high school life. Maybe a few people would have cared. Looking back, I think that my group of friends, many of whom I am still in touch with today, would have been happy I was there.

I’m sure the next logical question is, why did you date her in the first place, then? Convenience, the desire to have a girlfriend, and an inability to say no. I should have said I didn’t have those same feelings. I didn’t want to be seen as the bad guy. Plus, the fact that she was so damn into me was intoxicating to a teenage boy who had not felt much love or appreciation at home for much of my childhood. I needed that validation.

Celebrating moments after my high school graduation in 1996.

The way that I viewed love and relationships as a teenager is far different from the way I view them today, as it should be. In my immature mind, it was about the fooling around every bit as much as it was the emotional connection. It was about availability over compatibility.

I know it was a me thing. Growing up, I was not taught how to give affection or express emotions. Vulnerability was weakness, at least in the presence of my first stepfather. I lost my ability to trust new people, always figuring they had an ulterior motive or were waiting for the right time to hurt me. I had done two bouts of therapy as a younger kid and probably could have used more.

For my girlfriend, I was the prize she couldn’t believe she’d won. She only wanted to be with me. I can’t speak for her, but I know that to any fully functioning adult, this would have spelled a perfect relationship. Unfortunately, I was the awful combination of an immature teenage boy and an abused child with emotional issues. I was broken, and she couldn’t fix me. She shouldn’t have had to.

An unexpected revelation about myself from this relationship was finding out just how broken I was. When senior year was still ongoing, I had structure. I couldn't spend unending amounts of time with my girlfriend, so I think things were masked. Once school was over, we spent more time together, but it was all pretty smooth. It wasn’t until my friends went off to college while I took a semester off that things started to go off the rails.

It wasn’t long until I felt I had made a mistake. Not so much in dating her, but making choices in my life based on our relationship. I had decided to take a semester off before going to college. Not only take a semester off, but also not go to, or even apply to, colleges that would have been off of Cape Cod. I still believe this to be one of the worst decisions of my life.

Despite it being more about convenience than actual feelings, my girlfriend made me feel important. We had some fun times. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy being with her, but our interest levels were far apart. I wanted to give it a chance, though. If I had left for college, then that would have been it. We’d have been a quick fling to end my high school days. Perhaps it should have been.

Dating in high school is a trip. Maybe you have a car. Maybe your parents have to be your driver. Maybe you have money for dinner or some sort of activity. Maybe you can only afford to go for a walk. Maybe you hold hands and talk on the phone. Maybe you go all the way. As a teenager, the possibilities were seemingly the entire spectrum of what life could throw at you.


That semester off to end 1996 was sobering. I went from a high school senior with possibly limitless potential to a lowly dishwasher/prep cook living at home. I can remember my life becoming a routine. Work, hanging with my girlfriend, rinse repeat.

I would drive us around in my mom’s station wagon, or later, my first car, a Pontiac Grand Prix. We’d find secluded places to, well, you know. We’d hit up Taco Bell and Burger King. It was being a teenager, but doing so while my future was slowly fading off into the horizon. It’s like I was blissfully ignorant.

A 1982 Pontiac Grand Pirx, my first car.

When my girlfriend was all that was left in my social circle, I started to cling tight. Familiarity was something I desperately needed as the rest of my life was descending into chaos. My mother wasn’t happy that I was spending all my time hanging out with my girlfriend and eating fast food, going so far as to point out the weight I had gained since summer ended.

Now I needed my girlfriend to become my anchor. What started as convenience morphed into toxic desperation. I felt less-than in life. I felt weak and powerless from years of abuse and neglect at the hands of my father and first stepfather. Having a girlfriend who idolized me made me feel strong and important. I began to lean more into that.

When you start to believe your own hype, it can prove to be your downfall. I have been a mix of different issues for so long. I have an avoidant attachment style. It’s a fear of intimacy and vulnerability stemming from my childhood. I also crave the closeness and safety of a real, loving relationship. It is two opposing forces colliding.

Now, in my late 40’s, I can see this and express it. When I was 18, 19, it was all there but also wrapped up in immaturity and teenage angst. I wanted my girlfriend to be there. I’d sing songs to her, and we’d go on late-night walks through our neighborhood. Then, if I felt I was lowering the mask too much, I’d flip on a dime and become cold and callous. It had to have been incredibly frustrating and confusing for her.

I look back 30 years, and on one hand, I am embarrassed at how I ended up becoming a bad boyfriend. Instead of saying no to the initial meetup, I became drunk on the attention this girl gave me. If my life were out of control, I wouldn’t just talk to her or someone else about it. I would lash out or be cold and distant as a way to express my inner turmoil. I probably trashed her mental health and self-esteem as she wondered what she was doing wrong. In reality, I needed therapy badly. I do wonder if it would have been the same result even if I were dating my biggest crush I had back then. Maybe nobody would have been able to make it work.

Then again, I look back to 1996 and step back to see a broader view of me, my life, and my mental state. I was 18. I knew nothing of real intimate relationships. It was all new to me. I didn’t go into that relationship seeking to hurt anyone. That’s not me making excuses; it’s me going a little easier on myself because of where I was in life at the time. When you don’t have a reference point for how to cultivate a relationship, or even how to properly express yourself, you are destined for trouble.


A lot of this particular post about 1996 is me admitting my faults and trying to atone for my actions. Today I am my own harshest critic. I was not the greatest high school boyfriend. Yes, she and I lasted a little over 2 ½ years, but honestly, the relationship should have ended a year before it did. We even had a brief split, but I went back to rekindle it. I guess I was desperate for any sense of normalcy. It ended up being a big mistake. In fact, that final year of our relationship might be why I look back on its entirety with such a bitter taste.

We were never meant to be a long-term thing. Statistics show that less than 2% of high school sweethearts end up getting married. So it was a near-certainty that I’d be writing about our relationship in the past tense as of now. I don’t know what the best-case scenario was, but I do know that in a different timeline, we’d have been joined together forever. There was a brief moment, a week at most, when I was 19, where we had to wait with bated breath for her to get her period. I have no idea how my life would have looked if that scenario had happened.

When she had finally taken as much of my bipolar attitude as she could, she ended things. Ironically, I was caught off guard and desperately clung to her to not leave me. Imagine that? I had spent nearly all of our relationship wondering if I’d made a mistake, and when she finally confirms my belief, I couldn’t accept it.

Today, I am single and have been for years. I would love to have the relationship of my dreams, but something holds me back. I feel today much like I did in those final months of 1996. I want the relationship, but also want my independence. That type of thought process is fine when you’re a teen. It’s not as good when you’re nearing 50. So I look at dating sites but stay in the background. Perhaps I am worried that version of me I’ve spent this blog talking about is still in there?


To tie a bow on this subject, let me flash back to 2012. This girlfriend and I had broken up in the summer of 1998. We had not spoken or even seen each other since. I was in the middle of training for my first marathon. I was out on a long run. Once I had put in enough miles running, I stopped, shut off my running app, and prepared to walk the remaining mile or so home. Then I spotted her.

She was standing outside her car in a parking lot. We both looked at each other. She seemed hesitant. I was exhausted, basking a bit in the runner’s high. I approached her, and we began creating some small talk. As we spoke, something was weighing on me. Knowing I might not get the chance to have her in front of me again, I finally gave her the vulnerability that she was owed from me.

I told her I needed to apologize to her. She said it wasn’t necessary and seemed like she didn’t want to go there. I needed it badly, though. I told her that my life was a mess then, and I took out my anger at that on her, and she didn’t deserve that. She deserved better, and I was sorry that I treated her that way. I was literally shaking from the nervousness of truly exposing myself.

She could have told me off, but she didn’t. She accepted my apology, which made me feel better. We left things off cordially and parted ways. I remember being in tears for the rest of my walk. It was a huge weight that was lifted off my heart. Yes, I had been a bad boyfriend, but I had grown from it, recognized my mistakes, and apologized from the heart. In life, that’s all you really can do.

1996 began with me at 18, single, in my senior year of high school, counting down the days until school was out. The year ended with me at 19, in a relationship that I wanted but also didn’t want. It was at the same time fun, exciting, a bit sexy, and a lot of confusing. It was all a part of the experience of growing up.

In the next post, I will go into detail about the other important type of relationship I had in 1996: my friendships. These were the people who shaped who I was, what I liked, and some of the fun memories that still hold a special place in my heart.

Home in 1996

1996 Changed Everything: Pt. 3 - The Message of the Music

This is going to be a series of articles about 1996, as it holds significance for me since it was the year I graduated high school. In this second article, I look at the music of the day and how it impacted my life then and still does today.

1996 in many ways, was a tale of two halves. The first half was all about me trying to finish strong as my senior year of high school drew to a close. The second half was a recalibration. The seemingly endless grind of school had ended. Sure, there was college on the horizon, but for all intents and purposes, that was voluntary.

What I didn’t know then but know all too well now is that when you go hard for a long time, you get calloused. Your body and brain get used to the grind. Once you take your foot off the gas, it’s hard to get the motor running again, or the motivation to do so.

Looking back, it makes the second half of 1996, mostly the fall into winter, a bit of a blind spot in my life. Senior year and all of the events surrounding graduation are seared into my brain thirty years later. That final summer on Cape Cod with my closest friends before they left for college is one of my most cherished memories of my life. Until the actual days they left to start new chapters in their lives, the reality of the situation didn’t set in.

In my world, 1996 still revolved around Grunge music, although now it was a post-Grunge Alternative music world. Long gone was Nirvana as Kurt Cobain had symbolically ended Grunge with his death in April 1994. That didn’t mean that Nirvana’s music wasn’t still a huge part of me and my identity.

The teenage angst that Kurt wrote about in his lyrics only grew stronger in me as the prospect of entering a new phase of life grew closer. My interest in lyric writing, more along the lines of poetry, began early in 1996. However, it was not a Nirvana song that inspired me to jot down my innermost thoughts and feelings. No, it was a real-life event that happened at my school.

As you read in my last article, my English teacher, one of the favorites I ever had, was fired from his job for allegedly soliciting a student to appear in an adult film he was producing. When inspiration strikes, sometimes it comes from the weirdest places.

To process the events surrounding our teacher, affectionately nicknamed Bubba, I bought a steno pad and got to writing. I can clearly remember sitting in my bedroom adorned with posters of musicians and sports heroes alongside my closest friend, Barry, and working on lyrics to a song about what was still a fluid situation at the time.

Music had always made me feel. I can remember listening to Queen’s song These Are the Days of Our Lives in 1991 and getting overwhelmed by its message of looking back on life as you age. I was 14 then and had music making me think and feel beyond my years.

Writing lyrics, or poetry, to certain music made me feel more like an artist. In the first half of 1996, the inspiration came from my Grunge and Alternative roots. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, and others filled my brain.

It was an interesting contrast to try to write about teenage problems that were happening in the present while trying to sound like a weathered adult looking back. My initial year of writing poetry was a lot of simple, sometimes cringe-worthy, attempts at rhyming and explanations of life. College and the music I was exposed to would drastically improve my writing. Well, that and a surplus of new problems.

The music I tried to write to also served another purpose. It was a conduit for creative expression. A dream I had been trying to cultivate in the 1990s was that of being a filmmaker. I wanted to create worlds and share them. I spent around $800 of my savings in 1994 to purchase a bulky camcorder from Sears. That’s equal to just over $1,700 when adjusted for inflation to 2026.

That camcorder got used pretty much daily. By the time it kicked the bucket sometime in late 1997, I had recorded somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 hours of VHS tapes. There were skits, there were family holidays, and random, pointless moments that I captured that I cherish to this day.

The same model camcorder I owned in the 1990s

A major part of those VHS tapes is the music video. Simple, really, my friends and I set up my camcorder, played a song on a stereo, and performed it on camera. In today’s world, we’d call this low-hanging fruit for content. The videos all had a similar vibe. Teenage boys in the mid-1990s jamming out to songs they loved.

We did have our favorites. Nirvana ended up having nearly their entire catalog turned into music videos on my camcorder. It was a who’s who of Grunge, Alternative, and straight-up Rock music. Every now and then, we might switch it up and do something foolish to make ourselves laugh like Milli Vanilli, Color Me Badd, or the Brady Bunch theme. Of course, most of the videos are embarrassing to watch today, but we were kids, what do you want?

It’s a fascinating time capsule to look back at the week I graduated high school in early June 1996 and see what the music charts had to offer. Tha Crossroads by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony was #1. It was eerie as the song talks about losing a friend. Now, we were losing friends as we went our separate ways for college, not death, but still, it was fitting.

The rest of the Top 10 that week was populated by stalwarts like Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, Toni Braxton, SWV, Metallica, and George Michael.

In general, music was trending away from the Grunge-Alt movement and into more polished pop, dance, boy bands, and that song they beat into the ground, ‘Macarena.’ That song debuted right around the time I graduated and dominated the airwaves for the next year or more. I even had to do that foolish dance when at my orientation on my first day of college.

After school ended, my main connection to music came on two fronts: my job and my girlfriend.

I worked as a prep cook at a local restaurant during high school. I was lucky to have a coworker who was a friend and more like a brother at times. We were the same age within a few days, and we had similar tastes in music. What I liked a lot about Liam was that we were just different enough that he might turn me on to a different band, and if he didn’t like something, he had good explanations and not just ‘it sucks.’

I made mixtapes (yes, tapes) called Prep Boys Rock that we would play while working. It was a lot of what I’ve already mentioned, except with maybe a little more REM. We played music loudly, sometimes to the detriment of our job, but again, we were teenagers, what would you expect? Here is a Spotify playlist of some of those classics from the mixtapes.


 

There was a time our music was so loud that we couldn’t hear someone calling to us to bring something to the kitchen. That didn’t go over well with the guy who was a crusty old 60-something who didn’t have time for us crazy GenX kids. He stormed into our prep room, literally tore the radio out of the wall, and took it. We acted worried, but as soon as he left, we made fun of him for the rest of the day, and honestly, still to this day.

It wasn’t all mixtapes. Sometimes we’d get tired of the same old, and we’d listen to the radio. Now we’ll get very specific to where I grew up on Cape Cod. We had some classic stations on the air in the mid-90s, like Rock 104.7 and Pixy 103 (both rock), 96.3 the Rose, and 106 WCOD (both Top 40). But Liam and I tended to choose the stations that felt like they were speaking to us, like Underground 93.5. It was the alternative we enjoyed with up-and-coming bands we might not have heard of yet.

The other connection to music in the back half of 1996 was my girlfriend at the time. I was trying to share my world with her, and the best way I could do that was by sharing the music that made me feel alive. I turned her on to some of the alternative that shaped me. I made her introduction to alternative music mixtapes. For a teenager who didn’t know how to express vulnerable emotions well, sharing music became a love language.

She was one of the select few in my life that I sang for. I always loved to sing, and think I inherited a pretty good voice from my Grampa, who was a jazz singer. So I would put on these concerts where I’d sing a song or two like I was some sort of celebrity. Again, it was a love language to share something so few saw, or in this case, heard.

I turned her on to Stone Temple Pilots, especially. She loved Scott Weiland. In fact, we ended up going to see them in concert later on November 30, 1996. This was only a handful of shows before Weiland got busted for drugs and was eventually thrown in jail, with the tour being canceled.

Concerts were the big new shiny thing for me in 1996. Getting to travel and see bands I loved perform live was something that blew my mind. The first concert I ever attended was AC/DC on March 19, 1996, at Boston’s FleetCenter. It changed my life.

I went with my friends Dan, Pete, and James (aka Butch). It was so liberating to be on our own despite still being in high school. There might have been a little smoke in the car, but for the most part, we were responsible.

My introduction to live music began with Beavis and Butthead on the big screen, segueing into Back In Black, shattering my eardrums. AC/DC was one of the loudest live bands, and I had the proof. For the next three days, it felt like I was wearing heavy earmuffs due to how that music had slapped my ears silly. To this day, I am surprised at how good my hearing still is. I hope I didn’t jinx myself.

I mentioned at the top of this blog that the second half of 1996 has become a bit of a blind spot in my life. I had been going nonstop with school, and as Senior Year wound down, I made a choice to not go away to college. I chose to stay behind and, after taking a semester off, begin my college journey at the local Cape Cod Community College. Why? Possibly burnout, stress, confusion, and the biggest reason, my girlfriend. I will get deeper into that part in the next blog, though.

It’s interesting for me to go back to that time. I know I lived those days, and yet nothing stands out. I believe part of the reason was that as soon as I stopped grinding at school, my mind collapsed in a heap. Not having to be in a constant state of readiness swung me in the opposite direction, and I became soft and lazy. Yes, I was working, but what else?

By the time September rolled around, the vast majority of my friends were gone to their next chapters of life, some never to return. I felt like I hit pause, and once I started up again, I had to try to run to catch up.

I graduated from high school and, within a year, was slam dunked into confusion and desperation about my place in the world. I wasn’t even 20 and was in the quarter-life crisis mode. To this day, I find one of my biggest regrets in life was not going away to college immediately. That stepping off the gas pedal made it easier for me to coast. I don’t think I quite realized that I had shot myself in the foot with my choice to pause my education to bask in the glow of couple’s life.

I look back at the songs that captured my state of mind as 1996 drew to a close. The confusing new releases from Pearl Jam (No Code), Weezer (Pinkerton), and REM (New Adventures In Hi-Fi) seemed to perfectly reflect my own state of mind. The party was ending, but I had only noticed the crowds leaving once my voice was the one left echoing across an empty room.

Music would ease my mind, and it would also influence my writing as I tried to put into words changes I didn’t fully understand. Life was changing faster than I was ready for. January 1996 saw me as a high school student getting ready for the real world. In December 1996, I was in the real world, standing at the starting line and watching it disappear onto the horizon, all while familiar bands played the soundtrack.

The seemingly infinite horizon can be liberating and terrifying all at once.

1996 Changed Everything: Pt. 2 - The Real World Makes An Early Appearance

This is a series of articles about the year 1996. It holds significance because it was the year I graduated high school, and it is now thirty years ago. In this second article, I look back in great detail at an unexpected turn of events that changed my worldview much earlier than expected.

In high school, even at 17 or 18 in Senior Year, you are somewhat insulated from the ‘real world.’ You still have schoolwork to finish, and childhood isn't completely dead. Even as the days to graduation ticked away, I reveled in the relative normalcy of daily school life. I knew at some point I’d have to start making big life choices, but that day was still in the distance. Then the event happened. As I tell this story, many of you might find it too hard to believe that it was real, but it definitely was. I’ll just get started.

You ever have a favorite teacher get outed for doing something terrible? Having your view of someone you looked up to get shattered can have rippling effects throughout your life. My English teacher was one of my favorites I’d ever had. I took his class in both Sophomore and Senior years at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School.

He was one of the few teachers who actually had nicknames affectionately given to them by students. The English teacher was nicknamed Bubba. He was heavyset with curly hair and a thick curly beard. He had a jolly demeanor and felt like a classic 1970s Hippie now dealing with middle age in the 1990s.

Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School

Looks and presence aside, what made him special was the way he taught English. The main difference was how he incorporated Pink Floyd’s music into our curriculum. I learned more about that band in class than anyone in my family who had grown up on their music could have taught me. It was quite fitting then that a Pink Floyd song was being played when the illusion of that teacher’s life came crashing down.

We were having, I guess, what could be considered a talent show in class. One student had brought his acoustic guitar and, in an appropriate nod to our teacher, had decided to play Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. The song was interrupted by the head of the English Department popping her head into the class and beckoning the teacher outside.

Mere moments later, the teacher was walking to his car and waving to us as he drove out of the parking lot. What had happened? The story was wilder than anything we could have imagined.

Our beloved English teacher had been found to not only have been directing and sometimes starring in adult films, but he had also been accused of soliciting one of his students to be in one of the films.

A parent of a student at D-Y had found an adult film that Bubba had produced and brought it to the attention of the school district superintendent. Why the parent was going through the adult films is their business, but still not a squeaky clean person to be pointing fingers.

The fallout was swift and harsh. The story made national news. Our little school in the middle of Cape Cod became a hotbed of news vans and reporters. It was a scene out of a movie.

I will never forget arriving at school the next day and seeing the swath of people out in front. Reporters were stopping and asking any student who passed by if they had any knowledge of what Bubba was accused of. For most of us, we had no idea. We would learn in real time about his adult film secret life.

A problem for many of the news outlets was that the kids they spoke to about Bubba didn’t have anything but glowing interactions and stories of him. There were very few, if any, scandalous anecdotes to be found.

Me, I was interviewed by local news stations like WHDH Channel 7 in Boston and WJAR Channel 10 in Providence. There was also a crew from MTV who briefly chatted me up. Like I said, once they couldn’t find any dirt, they moved on. None of my interviews was even aired.

I was 18 years old and had spent my whole life in the relative cocoon that was Cape Cod. I had never been exposed to a national scandal. Part of me wanted to talk to everyone and try to get my face on the news. Part of me wanted to run home and hide until the worst was over.

In English class, the department head did her best to explain to us what had happened while also keeping many of the details hidden. It was stunning and confusing, but we thought maybe Bubba would return. I can’t fully remember how we spent those class periods. Part of me thinks we had some sort of study hall. Maybe others from my class can remind me.

He was officially fired on January 17th after being a teacher for 25 years. Bubba always denied soliciting a student, but admitted to appearing in eight adult films in the previous six months. He spent his off-time in that world.

The news crews grew smaller, but some remained. They updated the story and even interviewed a few of my classmates who had gone to see Bubba in a show of solidarity. The rest of the Senior Class would show their solidarity in a big way.

Many of us, myself included, staged a walkout the week of his firing. Those who had vehicles decorated them with signs, paint, and balloons. Others crafted large signs on poster board with words of support for Bubba. As for me, being that I was a student in photography class, I took up my first important assignment. I documented what we ended up calling a ‘parade’ in vivid black and white film.

The famed D-Y 'parade.'

We felt like we were making a difference. Or at least we were showing our disapproval in the only way we knew how. Maybe we were naive, highly likely. But in our minds, we had only seen the caring, fun, and engaging English teacher. We never saw someone who would betray the trust of a student by asking them to be in an adult film.

Let me say that being in the adult film world does not make you a bad person. That’s not what I mean. It’s the idea that as a teacher, you build a reputation on being someone your students can trust to have your best interests in mind. We were kids, 15-18 years old, living on Cape Cod, not in the big city. Even the most experienced of us had very limited knowledge outside of our bubble.

I was torn. Bubba was one of my favorite teachers I had ever had. He made me enjoy going to school. Still, I felt betrayed even though it had nothing to do with me personally. There were grainy and blurred images from those adult films being shown on the news, and it didn’t seem real. How could the man who taught me about Pink Floyd be the same one in those movies?

Obviously, despite my only referring to this teacher as Bubba, if you Google it, you will find all of the information in detail. You will find articles from local outlets and from big ones like the Chicago Tribune. You can seek those out if you wish. I also have heard the name of the student who accused him of solicitation. I would never share that information out of respect.

Bubba fought his firing for several years but ultimately never taught again, as far as I know. He remained visible around Cape Cod. I can remember seeing him in a supermarket years later and not knowing if I should approach him or not. Unfortunately, it became impossible to separate the teacher from the adult film creator.

As far as I know, Bubba is still alive today and still on Cape Cod. He is closing in on 80 years old and has now spent more time ostracized from the teaching world than he was a part of it. Crazy how the world works.

1996 began with the real world being dumped on my doorstep. It was the first event to force a perspective change in my life. Bubba’s fall from grace actually did some good for me. I needed a way to process what was going on. It came in the form of writing. I guess you’d call them song lyrics, but it amounted more to a stream of consciousness in the form of prose.

I sat and scribbled words in pencil on a steno pad, sitting in my bedroom with my good friend Barry. I called my first-ever poem ‘Bubba.’ I learned how to process life events in poetry form thanks to what happened with Bubba.

It is kind of fitting, isn’t it? Today, I’ve written hundreds of blogs, had ten books published, and spoken at countless events surrounding my writing. It all got its start thirty years ago with a single poem. I say ‘fitting’ because Bubba was a huge influence on my love of writing, creativity, and expression. His downfall led to my beginnings as a writer. I guess that was his lasting gift to me.

In 1996 the future stretched off into the horizon.

1996 Changed Everything: Pt. 1 - The Rise of the Internet

1996 Changed Everything: The Rise of the Internet

This is going to be a series of articles about 1996, as it holds significance for me since it was the year I graduated high school. In this first one, we look at how the rise of the internet changed society as a whole.

This year marks thirty years since I graduated from high school. It is a line of demarcation in most people’s lives. It’s a symbolic finish line crossed. The only difference is that once you cross this finish line, you are face-to-face with a wide-open horizon. The possibilities are endless, and also terrifying.

I find it poetic that the year I graduated from high school, 1996, feels like a line of demarcation in the world as well. It was during this same time that the world was changing. Much like when your life goes from high school to being in your 40s, sometimes in a flash, the world went from analog to digital in a snap.

The World Wide Web first became available for the general public on April 30, 1993. We didn’t know it at the time, but the countdown was on to the change in how we see and interact with each other and the world as a whole.

My family got our first computer, a Gateway model, early in 1996. It was just in time to have a bit of a leg up on my final months of high school work. Those first few weeks and months saw little change. I wasn’t on the internet all the time. Living in a house with four siblings did limit my screen time. The ball was already rolling, though.

I have heard so many people around my age say that the 1990s were the last decade to have a feel and a look. I agree, but can’t put my finger on why. It may be because it’s the final decade before technology went fully digital. Your opinion may vary.

Think about it. What is retro chic today? 80s and 90s fashions and trends. Thirty years from now, do you think kids will be clamoring for whatever the style is today? What is the style today anyway?

The day I first went online, I still listened to CDs, watched VHS movies, watched cable television on a boxy CRT TV, and talked on a phone attached to the wall. Granted, the phone was cordless, but still. The ability to find any bit of information or converse with people from anywhere was something my 1980s-kid brain never could have comprehended.

The reason I see 1996 as the jumping-off point might be because it’s where I come in as far as internet access goes. It also perfectly lines up with a major life change, as far as high school graduation. However, there are stats to back it up.

In 1995, only 14% of Americans had internet access. I was not one of them. In 1996, that number jumped to between 20-23%. By the time 1999 ended, it was estimated that as many as 50% of Americans had access to the Web at home, school, or work. In less than the time it would have taken me to go to a four-year college, internet access more than doubled. From there, it was off to the races.

Instant messages became preferable to telephone calls. Digital MP3 songs became easier to manage than huge analog music collections. Websites topped libraries for school research. Why go outside to play when you have dozens of friends inside in a chat room?

All of these changes are necessarily bad. They are, however, huge shifts in societal norms. Then again, shifts in society happen all the time. I think they seem more dangerous and egregious when they’re happening to the generations after you.

I am sure my great-great-grandparents couldn’t understand why my grandparents wanted to waste their time with automobiles, radio, and motion pictures. I am sure my grandparents couldn’t wrap their heads around Beatlemania, the Hippie movement, and television. I know that my parents thought my friends and I wasted time with loud music, video games, and extreme sports. Now my generation is the parents, and the music, fashion, and viral trends all seem odd. The point is, we all enjoyed something that our parents thought was dumb.

At one point the automobile was seen as a weird passing fad.

A big part of me never wants to become as close-minded and ignorant as my father, so I do my best to try to understand the who, what, and why of today’s generation. My nieces and nephews are good barometers for that. I don’t need to stay ‘hip’ or relevant. I don’t need to know the words to some random K-pop group's songs, or understand GenZ slang (although I understand ‘slay’ because of my niece Emma). I don’t need to recreate TikTok viral trends because I’d come off as a near-fifty year old man trying desperately to cling to straws of youth.

A reason why I think that 90s kids have adapted so well to the changing landscape of the 21st century is the fact that we got the best of both worlds. We got childhoods free of social media, cyber-bullying, online gaming, and homogenized music (sorry). We were also still young enough to learn and adapt to the rise of the internet, online lives, smartphones, and more.

I might have grown up without the internet, but I have lived more than half of my life with it now. I was there for the rise of America Online, Napster, RealPlayer, Hotmail, AIM, Ask Jeeves, guestbooks, Trojan viruses, and pixelated videos that took ages to download. I am comfortable fully immersed in a digital world, or sitting looking at printed photos, reading a book, and listening to a CD. Yes, I still have my entire analog music collection, just nothing to play it on.

1996 truly was a life-changing year, not only for me but for millions of others. I graduated from high school while many others graduated from analog to digital. The world can be cyclical, though. I have noticed in the last several years a growing number of people looking to pull back from their digital lives and retrieve some of their old analog selves. Maybe that’s why I never got rid of my CD’s? I always have the option to take a step back and remember who I was back before the internet rose to prominence.

This was a subject I wanted to talk about for a while. The strange timeline where my graduation and the rise of the internet intersect. I am also a sucker for nostalgia; it’s kind of my thing, so I didn’t need much prodding to do a deep dive into life back then. All it took was a blizzard and no power for a few days to remind me of living in 1995. No laptop. No smartphone. Just me and my mind to help me escape from boredom. I think we all need that sometimes.