in bed the other night, i had a flashback to when i was just entering my teenager era. flashbacks are an odd set of occurrences, your own personal cinema, the recursive function of your mind as they keep streaming back further and further into your past. anyway, i was listening to nine inch nail's 'hurt' which had been played a few days on the local 'alternative' radio station. i had taped it off of the downstairs cassette recorder. it was an early spring day, gray yet still sunny outside although it seemed like it was going to rain. i always felt odd those years in high school as a teenager. it's hard to describe, really, and i can only know what it was really like so i won't bother with it. when i first heard 'hurt,' i was able to connect with it on a personal level. the song was perfect, i knew it was how i felt put into poetry and music. see? i was already a sucker for a target audience before i ever knew what one was. the acoustic guitar, piano, the lyrics. looking into myself, in the mirror while listening to that song play over and over on a bit of magnetic tape was that moment. a trivial one perhaps, yet it holds a universal weight upon my life in that i stood to remember it. i was looking forward to my parents calling today in order to tell them i wanted to drop out, that i was tired of this insecurity called by school. they normally call on thursdays; they didn't call today. i remember my dad used to make my bed for me on his days off, and i'd come home and my bed would be made differently than i would make it. he would put the bedspread over everything like a giant bad cover. i just folded it underneath other blankets. him doing those sort of things is pleasant to remember, for some reason.