Day Forty-one - Mass hypnosis

There's an important timeline of the very early 90's that should be taken in consideration : betweeen '90 and '91, my parents separated, my maternal grandfather died, and we left that small hamlet to which wepd moved a few years before, only to return to the city, and to our grandmother's place. Thereafter, my life happened exlusively here in the city, and I for one did not complain. What with my parents splitting up, my mother had tno way of paying the loan that had been taken for the house, and it reverted back to the bank. Good riddance, I say. I don't think none of us were ever happy there, not really. And at least here we were safe, in a lot of ways. 

My first year back here saw me moving to yet another different school - you see a repeating pattern there, right? Worry not, I'll only be talking about two more different schools. I hated being in this new school, like you would not believe. It was like every single bad experience I'd had in the years prior got condensed into an ongoing year of hell, multiplied by a thousand. So many bad things happened to me that school year : I was robbed multiple times, I was beat up a few times, I was incessantly bullied, and all that misery I felt translated into me having a very mediocre year academically. Not to anyone's surprise, but I failed that year, and my penance was having to endure another year in hell. 

Though I have to say this - while it was by no means a good year, or even a decent one, it wasn't altogether unpleasant. The previous year - and this is eighth grade I'm talking about here - I made no friends nor connections, so my time there was absolutely lonely. But the following year I had a number of guys in my classroom with whom I got along well - some moreso than others. One of them was a kid called Paulo who had a budding interest in everything heavy metal, and me, who fancied himself a bit of a metal expert, shared my knowledge with him eagerly. He drank deep from that well, letting his hair grow even longer than mine, and sporting alll kinds of metal shirts, emulating me quite a bit. We soon decided we wanted to have a band together, though none of us knew how to play an instrument. But I did have a guitar my brother had left at home, and some gear of his, including a speaker. Paulo took to the guitar naturally, and in his cellar we assembled a makeshift drum set comprised of pots and pans and lids precariously balanced. He played the guitar, I played the drums, he sort of sang, I sort of shouted, and the resulting cacophony was regurgigated into a portable tape recorder. He'd make some nifty artwork for it, and we assembled a few copies of our demo to try and sell it at our school. Guess how many we sold? Yeah, none.