The day Kirk Cobain died, I was working a 9 to 5 job where I had to wear a suit and tie on Madison Avenue. I had just tied my Johnston and Murphy shoes while sitting at my desk. When I looked up and saw the Reuters news ticker: KURT COBAIN, musician, dead at 27. I froze in that moment, my day disrupted by this terrible news!
I remembered October of 1991, I was on the USS-Thorn (DD-988). It was a Spruance-Class destroyer built for anti-submarine warfare in the 70 and used throughout the 80's. I bought the album Nevermind on a pay day in the ship's store because I liked the cover.
I got to the chart room when I worked as a quartermaster. In a room of navigational charts in the middle of the Atlantic, I listed to that album for the first time on Sony MDR-V6's and a Sony Discman. I'd never head anything like it before.
By November I had shore leave in Haifa, Israel and heard Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit from a park. I was headed there with other guys from my ship.
Inside the park, this was a party. beers were being served for sheckels and the album played on repeat for the entire time I was there. Sailors and locals dancing uncontrollably to this new genre called "GRUNGE"!
I returned to reality, back at the sales office. A part of a larger brokerage that was on Wall Street and this branch up on Madison Avenue ni the 50s was a team of brokers selling stocks like Cisco and Netscape. I didn't quite fit in the job. But it was good pay at the time and good exposure to some technologies.
That's how I adapted going through life, finding jobs, where they needed help with technologies. Whatever the technology was at a time, Making the printer work, making the fax machine work. This was the mid 90s. People didn't know these things worked! It's something I've carried with me the whole time, I just help everyone with technologies around them.
I left that job in 1995 and pursued working on TV commercials. That's where I was a production assistant for small production companies around the 5 boroughs. We even went to Long Island and upstate New York on some of those shoots.
I drove vans with production equipment and talent and producers, driving while adapting to drive in the most serious of New York traffic.
I drove box trucks with even more production equipment and props. made pickups and drop offs at. Places like film agencies to pick up and drop off dailies. All the things the production assistant does. I did that for a few years.
But the untreated chronic sleep apnea that I had every night made it impossible for me to have that kind of job up early 18 hours and sleep. When you have chronic sleep apnea. Six hours is more like two. So my days in my late 20s, we're dealing with the daily anxiety attacks that go with all that.
I moved to the Connecticut River Valley some years back with my family. I love pineapples and have a CPAP machine when I sleep. Now I get great sleep!
It's the year 2026 and I'm telling this story via this Gen-X inspired Zine by dictating to my iPhone app. I still miss Kurt Cobain.