I thought I was best friends with the two older kids next door. I was 8 years old and they were brothers, 11 and 12. I would go to their house and play Pokemon Snap so frequently that my picture of Mew, the rarest Pokemon, held the highest score of any picture taken in the game. They didn’t like me very much after that.
So one day when they were going to another older kid’s house on the block, they invited me. I walked the four or so houses over and must have knocked for 10 minutes, desperate to hang out with my cool older friends. Eventually, they pulled back the curtain from a window near the door and they all were mouthing “Go!”, darting their pointing finger in the direction of my house.
I never talked about it because I didn’t know how to express my confusion, unsure if I did anything to deserve that. Maybe I thought I did.
What I do know is that I could still take a better picture of Mew than you any day of the week, Will.

I grew up in the desert in a small town in Washington State. The neighborhood kids formed a couple bands, Loudermilk and Gosling and put out some of my favorite albums, and the keyboardist/guitarist (Mark Watrous) even toured with The Raconteurs. Another one of my idols from my small town(s) is Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, Choke, Haunted, and other great books.

I grew up in a very rural area, so i didn’t have much of a neighbourhood to speak of, but I do remember, on the first days of middle school, that the bus was PACKED. Everyone had troubles finding seats. I didn’t know many people, and the few I knew had scattered and found seats already, so here I was, baby eleven-years-old me, with a too-big backpack, walking along the bus and not finding any seats. The only free ones where at the back, where the cool, old, 14-years-old (practically adult) were sitting. Without any other options, i decided to be brave and ask them if i could sit there. They said yes, of course, and then let me get out of the bus without any trouble at my stop.
Very quickly, as there were too many kids on the bus, the bus route was divided in two, and i could find another spot, without having to bother those older kids. But I still sometimes think about their kindness to baby me, and their total absence of judgement (in retrospect, they simply didn’t care about me), in years where few school kids of my own age were kind and unjudgemental of me.

I grew up in St. Charles, MI. It’s near Saginaw. I lived next to the elementary school in some apartments. All the neighborhood kids would hang out at the playground after school hours. One when I was in fifth grade, a 7th grader, who’s name I will not mention, showed up with two friends. He was twice my size and ended up pushing me around. My first grade brother ran home on his bike to get my dad. Luckily I only got the wind knocked out of me by the time my dad got there. He was pissed and tore into the 7th grader. I’ve never seen that dude so scared. He never messed with me again after that. He’s still in that town, I saw his wife at a wedding last October. I’ve been in living in Florida the last 14 years, but it feels like time hasn’t changed back home.

In a neighborhood brimming with kids, we had our fair share of troublemakers. The first time I saw a pair of boobs was when one of them — let’s call him Paul K. — showed me and a few of my friends the cover of “Mother’s Milk” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Lots of feelings flooded my 7-year-old body. I was titillated, nervous, curious. But most of all I was scared shitless. Scared because I knew I wasn’t supposed to see those milky white boobs. Yet there was Paul, the harbinger of temptation, snickering away, knowing full well the damage he was causing. Youths corrupted. I thought this dude was bad news. I knew it for sure when, a few months later, while riding the school bus, I saw him sit on a kid’s head and fart as hard as he could. The kid stumbled through the aisle, face purple, crying out, “I can’t breathe.” We all pushed him away like he was a leper. And Paul just laughed. Troublemaker indeed.

p.s. Glad to see the bandages off.

Alan was my first music guru. Not because he was an older kid who showed me the ways of the world but because he had an older brother, John, who lived at the top of a spiral staircase in the hallway of their parents. At the age of 9 or 10 I had discovered the intricate incantations of Rush, the allure of Iron Maiden and the album covers of Rainbow but at 12 and 13, Alan led my up the twisted stairway to John’s room (he was never in) where I was introduce to PiL, The Stranglers, The Skids and The Damned. I bought The Flowers of Romance in Virgin Records on Princes Street and my life was sharply refocused for ever. It gave me permission to fall in love with everything else. The Monks 2 weeks ago, The Beta Band 10 years ago and The Fall Icantremember ago would have remained undiscovered and unloved. My taste in music would have been broken if it hadn’t been for my mate’s older brother……and the wonderful Mr Rotten. I probably wouldn’t have signed up for the Vault.

When I was a little kid I think most of my interactions with older kids in the neighborhood was playing road hockey or ice hockey. Learning how to be tough when taking a stick to the shins and that it’s okay to cry when taking a puck to the face. Then years later learning one of them was a very high ranking drug dealer. Man, I had the best hash around in high school. Fifteen plus years playing road hockey on the same street, the memories are bringing a smile to my face.

I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood really, but in a rural area. So the cool, older kids were the ones throwing field parties that were able to get their hands on cheap beer. None of them had a band, but there were some definite troublemakers. Like the one time we decided to shut down a bridge. The state was building a bypass around the town and there were orange barrels a plenty for the taking in the middle of the night. Seemed like a wonderful idea to cram a bunch of those into a pickup truck and haul ass out of town, down a country road, and create a fake “bridge out” type situation. Then we’d just sit back and think we were hilarious as we watched the cars slowly back up to turn around. Man, that was dumb. Still kind of funny. Idiots.

“I live for lighting that spark”, I love this. I’ve financed the recording of my son’s band second album. Christmas 2018 he gave me a painting and written on the back was a thank you for the record he made. Even if nothing happened with the record that he got to make his dream record. Something he could show his kids in the future and show them proudly. It brought tears to my eyes and Ben, I am sure somewhere down the road the ladies on Queens of Noise will be just as thankful for the belief and the spark.