What's something you learned in school that you actually still use?
Alright, something I learned in school that I still use to this day. I really can only think of one thing, since my mom sent me to school already able to read and do simple mathematics, and beyond that I am not sure the school directly showed me anything I really use in real life.
Well, I learned to fight in school. Does that count?
Anyway, the one thing I learned in school that I still use to this day is my unending love for Judas Priest. On the playground at recess my "friend" Brian showed me some cassette tapes he had brought to school that day and one of them immediately grabbed my attention. I put the word "friend" in quotes when referencing Brian because some days he was a nice kid and others he was a mean-as-hell psycho who you did not want to be around. Brian was a complicated soul for the 3rd grade and to some extent the blueprint for everyone I would be friends with or work with for the rest of my life, as well as possibly how some people feel about me as well.
The tape that immediately caught my eye was Screaming For Vengeance. That fucking cover, I think it is as badass today as I did then. That bright yellow background with the red sun and the mechanical Hellion swooping down on its prey...I mean damn it's really and I mean REALLY fucking cool! Luckily, Brian was in good guy mode this particular day and gladly let me check out the tape on his Walkman. From the second "The Hellion" kicked in I was dumbfounded and needed more! Judas Priest harnessed a power in that twin guitar attack I had yet to hear a band wield so expertly. Follow that with Rob Halford's vocals on Electric Eye and I was quickly converted to an immediate fan.
Thankfully Brian was kind enough to make me a copy of this masterpiece, and I have been a super fan of Judas Priest ever since. I do not think a band had impacted me so profoundly again until I was a bit older and I first heard Metallica's "Master Of Puppets", a record so profound that it fundamentally changed everything about who I was and would be from that day forward. But that is a story for another time, today we are celebrating the masterpiece Screaming For Vengeance and what is my first full-fledged experience with heavy metal, and an album I fucking love to this day.
Brian, wherever you are, thank you. Your crazy ass taught me the only thing I learned in school that I still use to this day by introducing me to my first true love, heavy metal! You also taught me the skill of navigating difficult people, a skill I use every day as well as giving me my first insights into seeing human behaviors that indicate potential danger. Both being skills that have come in handy on my travels around this earth, rubbing elbows with its other inhabitants.
Comments
I still use Oxford commas; I’ll always be a huge slut for them.
My 2nd year in High school my class was broken up and everyone was put into different classes, I got the short stick and ended up in a remedial class, the classes were two steps back, so at the age were I should be learning higher levels of education, I gave up, I was 12 years old. Next year I was put back into a normal class, but by then the damage was done. I had given up on school as they had given up on me. I left at 15 well was told to leave, so that ended up school life.