Welcome To Grade 10

High school was back in effect once again and I was now in grade 10. Gone were the days of Adidas, I was now strictly rocking converse and imitation converse as far as footwear went. I had traded in my skin tight Levi's jeans for camouflage army pants. I now had a fairly large collection of black and white five dollar band shirts from my favourite headship in Toronto. I also now owned a few cool Judge Dredd shirts from the local comic shop. I still had my trusted leather jacket and jean jacket, but they were slowly being altered with buttons, patches, and paintings to resemble the hardcore look as opposed to the metal head look.

I had quickly turned my back on the world of metal. I no longer thought it was cool to like bands such as AC/DC and Iron Maiden. All the music I grew up on that helped shape me to this point in my life was now ignorantly dismissed by me. I would eventually come back to my roots and embrace the genre once again but that didn't happen until over a decade later. I was now looking down on rockers and metal heads because they didn't understand hardcore and thrash music, or the nuances of the kids like myself who listened to such.

I even had some thrasher friends who loved bands like Metallica and Megadeth but they just couldn't understand what I saw in bands like D.R.I and The Accused. I was constantly butting heads with them trying to convince them of how kick ass this music truly was and still is. Some of them got it eventually, others just never progressed from thrash to crossover and hardcore. Further more many of them still had a very difficult time understanding what I saw in rap and hip hop and just couldn't fathom why I listened to it.

The scene was growing in our school as well. There were alot more skaters, more punkers, more thrashers and more skinheads. It was plain as day however to clearly see those who were true and those who were posing. Poseurs....where do we begin? You know the wannabes who follow a trend or fad to try and fit in even though they know nothing about it or have absolutely no interest in it. Sure my style changed gradually as time passed on, but there were other kids who seemed to be changing style everyday just to fit into a certain crowd and find some form of security, acceptance and belonging...not because they loved a type of music or lifestyle dearly and were truly interested in such, they just didn't know who they were as people yet...