From Roger… (!!)
Let me paint a picture. 1987, just got out of the ‘brugklas’, and school was starting again.
I had a new class-mate. We did not really hang out much that year, since loads of my brugklas mates were still in the same class, including a friend I had had since kindergarten so I did not really need new friends.
We part ways the next year since I went to a different class. Then Appetite for Destruction happens.
Significant in many ways.
For one, it is arguably the best album in the history of rock, but also since I was one of the first ones that had the album in my ‘circles’.. (yeah right like i was ever part of any circles). I did not have a cd-player yet, so I purchased the album (that was the era when people paid for music, you young folk!) on cassette tape (uhm, look it up on Wikipedia, young folk!).
The other significant thing that the album made happen was sort of like a like a butterfly effect.
That one kid that I did not really hang out with when he was in my class all week long got wind of the fact that I had the GNR tape as we now like to call it. He asked me to borrow it and the rest is history.
Marco and I quickly became best friends. Together we have been through a lot. The butterfly effect I meant was that if that album did not happen to be in my possession we would not have started to hang out, would not have bonded over wrestling, hockey, music etc.. we might not have gone to the US to go to said wrestling and hockey and who knows, Marco might not have ended up meeting the lovely Niki.
So on this, the 25th anniversary of Marco and I meeting, his life is about to change again, this time really for the better, when his fiancé moves across an ocean, to a different continent to be with him.
And perhaps all because of one cassette tape.
02-10-2012
Roger
Life in the Hague 