Wait wait! I got a hippie story! So I'm in college at Florida State back in the Dawn of Time...I buy a crappy VW van (natch!) from a local guy and his 6 mutant sons for $300, American money. So a week after I FINALLY get all the used condoms cleaned out of the van — apparently a little added benefit — the former owner and about 3 of his sons show up and knock on the door of the 1954 Spartan travel trailer I lived in. I answer and am informed that $300 seems, in retrospect, a little light and that I needed to chip in an additional $100, American money, or they would pound me into hippie jelly. "Sure," I said as they held open the door and cracked their knuckles in happy anticipation. I only wish I thought of saying, "Cool dudes...be mellow..." or something appropriately hippie-ish. I go to my desk drawer, haul out my S&W Regulation Police revolver and announce to the clan that I can't seem to find any money, but they can have the van back if they'd agree to take back all the used rubbers.
"Well damn," said, Number 1 Son, "a hippie with a gun! Is that legal?"
"Well," said Dad, "it just ain't fair!"
I'm not a hippie, I said.
"If you don't shoot me and keep the van, do you promise not to mention the rubbers to my wife?" Dad said.
"I promise," I said. Not a word about the retro-van sex will ever pass my lips.
"Okay, then we're even," Dad said.
Michael "I Hear Banjos!" B