[Wait, I need another beer if I'm going to write about my freshman year in high school.]

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Okay. It's 1995. The last gasps of grunge, before Courtney Love had gone completely bat shit crazy on drugs. I remember those school days as endless and always overcast. Staring out from the large cafeteria windows. Stealing cigarettes behind the library (yes, I was a 14-year old smoker). Constantly bemoaning our suburban teenage wasteland. Depressed and awash in the novelty of angst.  

We were all obsessed with new music back then. Maybe it was the after-effect of Nirvana's glorious ascent, that was only made more mythic by Kurt's shotgun blow to the head. Freshman year was an awkward time for me musically (as it was in other ways). I still listened to mainstream rock (Nirvana, Hole, Better Than Ezra, Nine Inch Nails), but was also veering off into indie and punk.

"Jingle Jangle Morning" - Mary Lou Lord

"Step Into the Light" - Archers of Loaf 

1995 was also the year my friends and I started our own [mostly] all-girl garage band. The year that I spent taping "My So-Called Life" marathons on MTV. The year we discovered alcohol, and the danger in mixing the contents of our parents' liquor cabinets.

So raise a glass of beer to those wilted teenage innards of yester-year. Thank goodness for wisdom and experience. And better tolerance to alcohol.

-- Jess