I can't spell misspent youth without 1988. After all, I spent 10 months of that year and three months of the previous one staggering around going, "ACK, MY EYES!" because there was metal in it and every doctor I saw was quick to tell me there was something wrong with my eyes but they had no idea what and I should maybe take focusing lessons or maybe get an MRI but please get the hell out before the other customers see and think I'm giving them pink eye.
For the record, if you're not laughing already, MRIs do not mix with metal lodged in any body part and it's one of the ways being poor of pocket change has saved my life. A head full of metal stuck in a magnet, yeah, that would have worked well for me.
But two months before Dr. Katz the merciful angel of eyesockets everywhere was to pick my eyes clean there was the summer of 1988, and in particular there was the lowest point imaginable which took place this very week. The Shreeek of The Week on WDRE was What's The Matter Here? by 10,000 Maniacs, and naturally I just loved 10,000 Maniacs based on their name but once I heard this song, this whole calling out of every child abusing moron within earshot, I was like, YES, NATALIE MERCHANT, WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH THAT ANYWAY?
Child abuse is right up there on my list with animal abuse as things I take no excuses for, and as many of you know when I get fired up over injustice, I go big. I was even more insufferable at 14, I can assure you. So I was sitting in the backyard in the lovely darkness unwittingly grinding more metal down into my eyes in between trips indoors to rinse them with the glorious relieving collyrium eyewash the pharmacist up the street suggested and I was getting some relief from the congestion that was building up little by little because the heatwave had ended and here comes this song that I really dug and it won bestest song of the week and it was so awesome I did not die that weekend. Or ever. I kid you not.
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