Goddamn “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

Sweet Child came out in 1987. In the mid eighties and early nineties I was living like a refugee. And I reserve Tom Petty’s Refugee for another day. I’m sharing some fucked up stories but at the same time I’d hate for you to walk away thinking I revel in my abandon. I’m sharing for a few reasons. Mostly though, I want it all to count for something. It’s been a shit show at times. A real garbage can on fire. Sometimes I say it hasn’t been all that bad. And then yesterday my girlfriend had me take the ACES test, which measures abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction on a scale of 0–10 derived from 10 yes or no questions. The thing that I find most interesting is the sheer number of people who get a score of 3 or less on this thing. You see, in my head most families are Jerry Springer guests. But that is not true. It really inst even a majority. 87.5% have 3 or less adverse childhood experiences of the 10. I’m a minority. I’m an ACES 10. I can’t even find a statistic for my group but 12.5% have 4 or more. It’s not all bad news though. I’ve had grandparents and teachers, librarians and friends, these have helped me develop the resilience I needed to survive. I had a mom. She was young but I think she did love me back then. She was traumatized by her own experiences. But she read to me and made flash cards and sung songs to me from her high school French class. I had a father for awhile and he taught me how to handle firearms when I was as little as 4. I know, fucking scary, but he did. I’ve shot tracers in Navy bombing ranges and collected brass for melt down money like a true fallout scab. I excelled in school, perhaps because of the flash cards and firearms, and attracted teachers to my corner. I read like a goddamn champ and that made people see me as worthy. My mom kept me tidy until my dad split in two-deuces style, peace out and good luck kid. Tidy kids are treated better. People saw something and tested me for the gifted and talented education program. This kept me separate from gen pop kids or as I like to say, the unwashed masses. Only Ramit Sethi and I find this amusing as far as I can tell. Anyways, I’m alive and I’m still here in this cooking competition and goddamn me if I don’t make something tasty from this mostly garbage bin of ingredients because I also have been given some good surprise shit to dazzle you with.

I work 2 full-time jobs and they are GREAT jobs. I’m a tenured professor first and also a cubizen of the state doing some high-end infosec management. Right now it’s lunchtime for my fellow cube dwellers. I have Sweet Child O’ Mine coming out of this Logitech headset plus mic and the mic is standing at attention as not to get in my way. Nothing better get in my way when I have things to say. Well, the black cable coming out of the headset is a bother and in my way again, but Bluetooth gives me a headache. May cause cancer, who can say. I’m wasting time not knowing where to start this story really. Guns N’ Roses has some great songs but also some pretty godawful lyrics about groups I care about so I almost regret picking this song. But, the heart wants what it wants and this is the song on repeat.

The guitar intro is brilliantly basic and catchy as fuck. I’m 9, maybe 10. I call my grandparents Nana and Tata. I live with them in a spare room with my mom. I can’t remember her at all during this time frame. It’s really just me there. In the room next to us is my Aunt Angie and Uncle Richie. Next to them is my cousin Tommy’s room and an extra bed for whoever else needs to crash. My Nana and Tata have the master but Nana never sleeps in it. It’s a decently large house build by my Tata, another example of a complicated tragic hero and another story. The thing about this house is it takes in refugees. Adults who just can’t and the kids that are stuck to them like used gum. Unlike my mom, Angie and Richie are always home, because they are too high to go anywhere most of the time. I don’t know what they are mostly on, but they are almost always zombies and that is the best they can be. Tommy and I roam around wherever and whenever we want. We pedal to 7/11 at 2am in the morning when we want to get an Icee with a jolly rancher mixer stick and play arcade games. Tommy is 5 so he is a badass. He is still a badass. We always have cash because there is cash always around. No one notices or cares what we take. Nana is asleep in the lazyboy chair by the giant projection tv with HBO always on. When she wakes up she drives us to places and buys us stuff. Tommy is demanding and I resent how pushy he gets, but his demands mean I get something too: Nintendo games, baseball and garbage pail kids cards, action figures, and ice cream. When folks sleep we grab Paul Mall cigarettes and wine coolers because bud light tastes like ass. Tommy was given wine coolers in his bottle so he parties hard by default. Sweet eh? Sometimes the zombies beat the shit out of each other though and that is fucking terrifying. I take Tommy and any other visiting refugees to Tommy’s room to keep them safe. I am the biggest. I am the protector. Sometimes the zombies break down the door. This isn’t minecraft. Doors don’t keep zombies out.

Richie and Angie are bisexual and definitely in an open relationship which includes a bunch or other people. I know that now. Then I just knew they had a lot of friends always over. Being zombies mostly, listening to Guns N Roses on repeat. Sometimes Richie and/or Angie would leave for a few weeks with some of these friends after a particularly damaging zombie battle. It did not matter as Tommy had me. Sometimes relatives would come over and yell at Richie and Angie because of their “evil ways.” As far as I could tell, the “evil ways” were all queer related and not drugs or violence. I’m sure bashing walls and faces was frowned upon, just not nearly as much as being faggots and sluts is.

So one time, and this is the only memory I have of my mom from this time frame, which is sad, and I wish my brain could pull the other memories that I’m certain it stores, but it can’t or wont. So this one time, my mom was one of those disapproving relatives. We were in the half circle driveway in front of the house. It was full of cars. Richie stood by the front door, drunk or high or both. My mom tore into him and Richie shouted/slurred, “You just wait. Haley is going to be just like me, we all know it, what will you fucking say then?” My mom looked at me in disgust. I didn’t know what it meant. I was a tomboy, that was clear. I was no longer tidy. I wasn’t anyone's sweet child and I had no where else to go.