A Little Twisted

Heading out to the store to pick up a couple items for the wife, and something for myself. I jumped in the car, and for some unknown reason flipped the radio over to the 80's on 8. Getting just down the block came on a song that brought back so many memories.

That song was none other than "We're Not Gonna To Take It" by Twisted Sister.

The relevance of this song goes all the way back to when I was a kid only 14 years old. Back in those days baseball was something we played, and collected very few cards of. In our world football was king, and we collected the cards from our favorite teams religiously. A friend, and myself would trade cards back, and forth without even considering who the player was. His team was the Raiders, and mine the Broncos.

All this was because we played a game with our football cards. A game that we created ourselves, and as the years went by progressed. Originally it was brutal on the cards as we would put a die on the card, and move it with our hands. You would move the other cards, and then suddenly either flip it with the card to a receiver. If it landed on the card that was a catch, and you could move it until another card touched it. The other option was while distracting your opponent with receivers. From there you'd move the quarterback to the running back, and do a hand off. After that it was all a matter of how fast you could move your card before it getting touched. The running back was most popular, and the most brutal. My team the Broncos was led by our legendary running back Gerald Willhite.

Gerald held all the running records in our little football league, and most important survived the thrashing cards took better than anyone. Within a couple years things had progressed to where cards no longer took the beating they were once subjected to. By 1984, and time Twisted Sister hit the scene we actually rolled dice as part of the game. This time frame led to a change from running to passing, and is when a new Broncos player rose to the limelight.

This time frame is where the music came into play. Almost always we played at his house as it was bigger, and had room for the football field we had made out of fabric. While there he would play music which mostly consisted of new wave, but had the Twisted Sister stuff tossed in as well. Amazingly the Raiders would dominate until Twisted Sister started playing. As soon as they started Denver would take over especially when "We're Not Gonna Take It" would come on. No matter the score the Broncos would be leading as the music would turn to Thompson Twins more often than not. It was a fun time that I just can't forget, and comes back whenever I hear that song.