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# Rites of Passage
- URL: https://helpful-koala.pikapod.net/rites-of-passage/
- Published: 2025-09-16T00:03:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-10-01T00:04:45.000Z
- Author: Robert Rackley
- Tags: Personal, #robert-2, #Import 2026-07-11 23:34, #Import 2026-08-02 01:19, #Import 2026-09-14 17:25

My youngest is on his way towards finishing middle school. He’s weathered it pretty well, with a core group of friends and good grades. Middle school was a culture shock for me. I started the process in North Carolina, where I was suprised to come in contact with professed satanists and kids who were doing things I had never experienced before, even though I went to an inner-city elementary school. We moved to Virginia shortly after middle school started and I ended up in elementary school for one more year, which was a much better fit for me.

When I transitioned to junior high the following year, I was again confronted with a different culture. I remember everyone going over their favorite album as a way to introduce ourselves. Mine was *Fore* by Huey Lewis. 98% of the other kids named *Appetite For Destruction* by Guns N’ Roses. I didn’t have MTV at the time, so GNR wasn’t really on my radar. Imagine my surprise to find out this was album of rampant misogyny with a rape scene on the inner cover.

When in Rome, though. Within a year, I had adapted to not only listening to similar bands, but getting really into their music. I even had a Winger t-shirt like the kid everyone made fun of in *Beavis & Butthead*.[1](#fn1-228) I always felt the need to tell people that I didn’t like the bands themselves (they were reprehensible), but I liked the music. It was a blessing to find music that was closer to my values after my passage through junior high/middle school.

Grunge of course obliterated hair metal when it captured the collective consciousness. Like [Mo Diggs writes](https://supculture.substack.com/p/human-mediocrity-will-pave-the-way), “Grunge without the context of hair metal that it rebelled against is just brainy Black Sabbath.” When you had the context, though, it landed.

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1. A year later, I had moved on, but one fine laundry day, I wore that Winger shirt. A kid in the cafeteria boldly informed me, “Winger sucks.” Never shy with my honesty, I responded with a confident, “I know.” [↩︎](#fnr1-228)