Stubborn

I pride myself on being an open minded person. I have often said that I’m too open minded to be a purist about anything. That being said, I have many, many, many opinions and I usually stick to my guns when I form an opinion about something. Seems like a contradiction doesn’t it?

When Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger came out, I was in Grade Seven. My friends all went CRAZY for Duran Duran. Two of the girls I walked to school with listened to the album on their Walkmans on the way to school singing their heads off. They went to the concert and wore their concert t-shirts and talked about Nick and John and Simon and Roger and Andy like they knew them personally. They watched every music video on Friday Night Videos and bought every magazine with articles about Duran Duran and plastered their walls with posters.

Every time they would talk about Duran Duran I would roll my eyes. I thought they were so dumb. I wished they would get a life and talk about something else. I just didn’t see what the big deal was.

Every single person who knows me just exclaimed a collective “wha-?!”

I had never heard the music. I had never really paid attention to the photos. I never watched the videos. I was too busy being crazy about David Bowie and David Cassidy and Davy Jones to care. I thought they were just a bunch of pretty boys and that’s it. I can’t remember what caused me to make such a complete one eighty, but I’m pretty sure it was the music video for The Reflex. Either that, or puberty kicked in.

Nick was my first favourite, then I decided I loved John, to end up with a HUGE poster of Simon on my wall until I graduated from high school. I have seen them twice. I saved up all my money from my summer job at McDonald’s to see the Strange Behaviour tour when I was in Grade Eleven, and I saw the Big Thing tour even though I had mono. I absolutely love Duran Duran. I have every album in every format: vinyl, cassette, CD and iTune.

What I learned from this experience was to keep an open mind and to learn about things before forming an unmovable opinion about something. This is why I am a collector of information. My brain is an overflowing fount of useless information.