1. My Mom returning my copy of Green Day’s “Nimrod.”

When I wanted to get a friend of mine a copy of Green Day’s “Nimrod” for their birthday, my mom made me let her read the lyrics first from my copy. Not only did she make me pick a different gift for my friend, but she also returned my copy of the album to the store. To compensate, I got the CD from the public library and copied it to a cassette tape – this was pre-Napster. However, I was still pretty bummed out over losing the CD copy. Sorry for bringing this up again, Mom.

2. Missing Kurt Cobain.

When the kids in my fourth grade class picked on me for not knowing the top song on B96’s countdown, I started listening to the station. However, by the time the fifth grade came around, I started listening to Nirvana, the Offspring, Metallica and Green Day along with the only two of my classmates who had any reasonable musical taste. Wait, this actually improved my childhood. The problem was that I could have discovered Nirvana BEFORE Kurt Cobain died.

3. Realizing my orchestra teachers failed me and not the other way around.

So my orchestra directors always made me sit in the last seat of my section because I didn’t practice the assigned material. In hindsight, I should have switched from violin to viola, because last seat of viola is by far better than first seat of first violins.

After I finally built up the nerve to quit orchestra, pick up a bass guitar and try to teach myself how to play, I quickly caught up in performance ability and I learned I actually had some. For years I thought I had no musical talent whatsoever. I didn’t see the purpose in practicing in the public school system.

4. Getting in trouble in music class for refusing to sing along to songs I thought were poorly written.

Whenever I felt a song in my music class was stupid, I would sit quietly at my desk and refuse to sing. This wasn’t too cool with the teacher, so he informed my parents I wasn’t participating in class. This lead to my learning many songs in French that I never learned to translate.

5. Pearl Jam

When I first discovered radio, I quickly discovered alternative rock music. This lead to many hours of listening to Q101 while I did my homework and acquired musical taste. Being a popular band, Pearl Jam had many radio singles throughout the ’90s. At the time, I thought the songs were nice, but not my cup of tea. I’m convinced that 12 years later Q101 is still trying to get me to buy every Pearl Jam CD.