By – Brian Teasley

Sometimes people ask me why I love Van Halen so much. Well, seventh grade was the worst year. It was the year I switched from private to public school. I guess my parents had planned it that way, forcing me to be extra smart, nerdy, and further along than the other kids. So, there I was, walking down a grim hallway with hundreds of slamming lockers, feeling like an outsider.

The classes were boring, and there were 50 different cliques of kids, none of which I fit into. One day they wheeled a television into my Algebra II class so we could repeatedly watch the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Despite all this, I excelled at baseball and BMX, and I made straight As. I was super into Van Halen from all their MTV videos, but I also started listening to Black Flag, Bauhaus, and The Cramps, and I loved playing drums almost as much as Dungeons and Dragons. The point is, literally NO ONE liked me.

Fast forward to the final day of gym class that year. A really big eighth-grader was taunting me aggressively. How did I react? I did what any self-respecting seventh-grader would do: I made a fist, forced the middle knuckle of my middle finger to protrude at a sharp angle, and then I frogged the hell out of that bully right at the base of his spine. Victory for the nerds, right? Well, maybe for 20 seconds until about 10 more eighth-graders started to beat the hell out of me. After a harrowing minute or two, it finally ceased. I think I blacked out during most of it. A coach must have come in to “break it up.” When I finally stood up, my pants felt odd, stretched out, and heavy. I looked down and saw that those young geniuses had taken every single locker combination lock and closed them around my belt loops.

I went behind the balance beams and ripped every loop off my pants, knowing that trying to guess the combo to every lock might take 200 years. My pants looked like an exploded firecracker when it was done. With the task completed, I shame-walked out of school, with only the thought of summer break keeping my bruised legs moving. It was pretty traumatic, but eighth grade was far better, and eventually, high school happened. After a couple of years, I worked my odd combination of teenage quirks to a high level of admiration from my peers.

Oh, and about me loving Van Halen forever? A week after the combination lock incident, I fell asleep while listening to I95 on a clock radio and had a vivid dream. I was called to the office, where the principal told me I was being checked out for the day. I turned my head to the hallway and saw Van Halen! Dave and Eddie came to sign me out, and Alex and Michael were waiting in the car. The end-of-period bell rang, and all the kids saw me with Van Halen. It was so satisfying. Even though it was just a dream, it was the best dream ever and why I will always love Van Halen.