My freshman year of high school (1994), I heard the song "Landslide" on the radio and I immediately fell in love with the song. I eventually found out that it was a band called the Smashing Pumpkins that sang it (I did later find out to much disappointment that it was not originally by them). One day while looking through his CDs, I found out that my older brother had a CD by the Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese Dream) so when he wasn't home I would sneak into his room and listen to it.

That same year, I was starting to fall in love with a girl that went to school with me. We became good friends and I found out that she was also a Smashing Pumpkins fan and loved the song "Landslide." For my birthday, she bought me "Pisces Iscariot"; that is the first CD that I owned. Ironically enough, the song "Landslide" describes quite well the relationship that this girl and I had.

Strangely enough, I didn't get heavily into the Pumpkins until I moved from Chicago to Houston the summer after my freshman year. I was known in my high school in Houston as "Mr. Pumpkin" or "Pumpkin Boy" and everyone in my school knew that if they had a question about The Smashing Pumpkins that they could come to me.

That is where my love of the Pumpkins got started, but for me it is so much more than just a connection to the one song and the relationship that I had with a girl. I think why I love the Pumpkins is best said by Billy himself, "I know now that the feelings I felt at 16 were not necessarily correct. But however overly dramatic, the desperation and hopelessness I felt at 16 was my reality." Even at that age I am at now, sometimes I still have overwhelming feelings of desperation and hopelessness and just as it did when I was 16, the Pumpkins music helps me know that I am not the only one out there that has those feelings. It's always nice to know that you're not alone.

I am now going on 13 years of being a Smashing Pumpkins/Billy Corgan fan and will continue to be one for the rest of my life.

LONG LIVE THE SMASHING PUMPKINS!