Middle school didn’t have the well-demarcated social divisions of high school, but the groups were beginning to splinter. One of the better defined social experiments was what we called the ‘heads’. Like most groups, they were easily distinguished by their fashion sense. They wore jeans, jean jackets, high top Chuck Taylor tennis shoes (black or white), and faded concert T-shirts, usually Rush, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin or some other hard rocker group. Their most distinguishing fashion characteristic was the wallet; an oversize leather wallet (usually decorated with the Harley Davidson emblem) protruding out of a back pocket, a chain running from a ring in one corner to an equally ornate tooled leather belt. In my day, these were the kids that acted out, got bad grades, and smoked in the bathroom. They were the Bad Element.
There were two fine examples of this counter-culture group that rode my bus in eighth grade: David and Sean. At one time, we had played together, riding bikes around the neighborhood, exploring the woods, playing at the elementary school playground. David and I had even been on the same little league baseball team. From about middle school on though, I didn’t have much to do with them. They were in their group, and I in mine.
By eighth grade, they were firmly entrenched in the ‘head’ culture. My knowledge of the drug scene was peripheral at best, but I have solid recollections of these two huddled together at the side of the bus, sniffing something out a what looked to be a baby food jar. I have no idea what it was, but they called it ‘rush’.
Some two years after high school, I got the news from my mother: David was dead. He had committed suicide by hanging himself with an extension from a tree in his front yard. It was a few years after that I learned that Sean was dead as well, killed in Washington D.C. during a drug deal gone bad.
Although this song isn’t directly tied to any specific moment, whenever I hear a Rush song, and this song in particular, I think of David and Sean. There’s a memory I distinctly recall: David had just finished sniffing whatever was in the baby food jar. He leaned back against the bus and I saw he wore a Rush concert T-shirt. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes closed, saying “Man, I’m spinning now!”
Tom Sawyer, by Rush
What memories does this song make you think of?
