Feature: Goo Goo Dolls

Photo from mtv.com

Words by: Emma Dunne

I personally love The Goo Goo Dolls. In middle school with my best friend Rachel Tallman- we understood the song “Iris.” What the song taught us? It taught us about vulnerability and how hard it is to truly be totally vulnerable with someone. We were best friends for ten years for a reason; her and I. We understood each other on a deeper level. We came from the same types of homes; the same types of families: broken; dysfunctional; screwed up. We both felt lost; alone; and abandoned by our parents. My mother started to drink more and more after my dad’s mom died suddenly. My parents were fighting constantly. She was literally one of the only people I could open up to about my feelings of depression, anxiety, hopelessness and helplessness at home. My dad was taking out his sense of total grief, his sense of total loss on us: his children, his wife, his family. When my grandmother died at the age of 69, it was very sudden. She fell down some stairs carrying juice. The basement stairs. Broke everything. Her legs, her neck, almost died. We were the week before supposed to have a family reunion in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I remember being excited about summer. Then we got the news she fell, and we all went down to Long Island instead. My parents were already starting to have knock down drag out fights before she died. My dad is an uptight, tightly wound, anxious, control freak sort of man. I honestly think that my grandmother died, he didn’t know how to handle it. I don’t even think he really knew how to handle how she fell down the stairs. It was totally and completely out of his control, and it showed. It showed to everyone who was NOT* him. Maybe he honestly thought too much about it. Or maybe he was close with his mother, and when he lost her suddenly in his early 40’s; he couldn’t deal. I don’t know the answer; I’ll probably never really know. His parents had been happily married for over fifty years; that shit just doesn’t stop happening. They must have been great parents to their kids. Anyways; I could tell that my parent’s marriage was falling apart; I could even see it splitting in half before my grandmother died. I don’t want to blame my grandmother’s death on everything that happened later on; the ending of my parent’s marriage probably was bound to happen anyways. But I will say this: my grandmother’s death certainly propelled my mother to start drinking more and more. And driving me, my brother, and probably other people around drunk around this time too. I didn’t question it; I just went along with it. I was barely 12 at the time. My brother was 6. We were children. And kids don’t know any better. I honestly wish they had been better parents to us during this time. They had no idea how badly we were struggling: with her sudden death; with them fighting all the time, with mom drinking all the time, drowning her sorrows in a bottle of vodka; and having to deal with being bullied all the time at school. Kids used to call me “four eyes.” Kids used to push me into lockers. Kids used to throw the books that I had in my hands and throw them onto the ground. Middle school sucked for me. I was dealing with not- diagnosed depression, and I couldn’t see a way out of it. I had some escapes though; and some comforts. One of my comforts was music. Another comfort I had was Rachel Tallman; my best friend at the time. Another escape I had was a little TV show I was starting to watch every day after school on the FX Channel starting at four pm every day: Buffy the vampire slayer. These things were all great comforts to me. And the reason I didn’t end up killing myself at 12 and 13. Rachel and I bonded over a lot. We were (and still are) both artists. Rachel had the talent and the ability to be able to draw anything. Give her a mental picture of a mermaid and she can draw it. Want a tattoo of an elephant? Done. Rachel was gifted, and I was jealous.  One of the music artists we bonded over were “The Goo Goo Dolls”. Looking at Itunes at their greatest hits album makes me think of the times I spent with Rachel in middle school and High school, and feeling grateful and thankful for those times. We are no longer friends. I haven’t spoken to her in over five and a half years. She pretty much had one of her good friends tell me at the homecoming dance Senior year of our high school senior year, that Rachel “no longer wanted me to follow her around anymore.” It was definitely a jab to my heart. I couldn’t even reach out to her when I found out that got pregnant while having a three-way with her ex boyfriend Tom Mahar and his current girlfriend. Not only did the guy pressure her to have a three way; but having her not use a condom while doing the act made me feel very sad for her. She ended up dropping out of SUNY Potsdam, she had a full ride there; was able to go to college for free; and ended up having to drop out of college her freshman year to have an abortion. I hear that she’s a tattoo artist now working three jobs. Sometimes I feel like we lose ourselves when we either become cooler than our friends are in school, or in any social situation. I felt very looked down upon in Middle and High school. I felt I didn’t belong there. I was an average student; an average kid, and one of our Valedictorians got to go to Harvard. Gag me. And he was like Mark Zukerberg socially: socially inept and awkward. I found that High school was very much some people’s “golden years.” It certainly wasn’t mine. I wanted to join a club on South Colonie Central School District’s campus that could be called: “I don’t belong in any social clique, I wander from room to room; clique to clique, and I don’t belong to any gender social stereo-type, but come love me and this club anyways?” It felt like “Lord of The Flies”: all central and compounding: and may the best cheerleader win. Or the sluttiest cheerleader. Or the dirtiest cheerleader. Or the short cheerleader that can make basket after basket while playing basket ball in gym so she can get the star basketball player to sleep with her while she bullies and humiliates the one uncool kid in her high school: aka ME. I don’t want to look at that time in my life. I want to close that chapter hurriedly. I want that part of my life to be completely and utterly erased. I want a mental block from ages 12-17. All I really want to remember from that time is puking in a restaurant after I was handed my high school diploma at my graduation party. And the weird thing for me; is that at our tenth High School reunion in 2019 won’t be anything special. We all will be still pumping our chests; and continuing our long standing pissing contest of who’s life is better. Because that’s what I was surrounded with since the very beginning: Children who put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect, to do everything right; to go above and beyond the protocol and become over achieving miserable alcoholics. Trust me; I know who these people are; and how I fit in this script as well. For a long time; I thought by pretending I was on the outside; or actually acting and participating being on the outside looking in would save me. Or that my tastes in music would; or my love affair with Buffy The Vampire slayer would. But to tell you the truth; it didn’t. The truth was, I wasn’t invited to the party that was Colonie Central High School; I didn’t want to go particularly to the party; and I didn’t belong. And no music, or TV show or movie or friend was going to shield me; or save me from that kind of realization. When I look at this album I see a lot of nostalgia that I took almost for granted as a kid. I can’t say it’s the best album in the world; I can only safely say it’s a great comfort that there is an album that I can relate to, I can listen to without judgement; and that i can graciously say that I wasn’t the only person in the world who listened to it. “Let love in” is a love song/ballad that I might want to sing to my husband at my wedding someday.Or put in the opening credits to a movie. “Dizzy” is retrograde. 
"Here is gone" is a clinching opener to any social situation; everyone who knows the band knows the song "Slide". It’s beautiful, it’s topped charts, it put the band on the map, much like "When I come around" by Greenday did back in the day. The song "Name" does the same thing to me: brings me back to childhood; thwarts me back into my cousin Carra’s room; or my older cousin’s "Kelsey’s" room; being in their rooms in Niski was like a well kept secret you had as a kid. It was the "cool" thing to do: was to be in someone you knew who was older than you’s room. I heard the song "Lose yourself" for the first time by Eminem in my cousin Kelsey’s room; and I can never forget that. The song "Stay with you" is another love song by "The Goo goo dolls" that reminds you that there are people out there who can indeed stick around and "stay with you." "Before it’s too late" and "Broadway" you can fall asleep to; but wake up to hear "Feel ya", so you can do lots of fist pumping in the air while you’re listening to it. "Better Days" I own, and think of my mother whenever I hear it. Sometimes knowing that my mother can have a better day than I can gives me great relief and happiness. I think of my mother every time I hear it. "Black Balloon" makes me cry."Sympathy" makes you think of the problems you might or might not have in a relationship; but you decided to stick it out for the long haul. And "Iris" the song that defined my definition of true puberty; the connection I felt to that song; and the connection my best friend at the time had with it, all the feels, the connection, I can’t string this song out on a guitar, but whenever it plays I can’t help but sing it. And when I sing it, I belt it. It is a song that came from my childhood, a song that came out that band to describe what every pre-teen and what every teenager wanted for themselves at the time: to be seen, to be loved, to be held.