i say, hit me!

Hit me with your best shot!

See what you did? You put that 80s song in my head. Of course I can't remember the rest of the words of the song, let alone the artist or title. But that's explained away by all the hard drugs I did back in the 80s. It was a wild decade. Some of my best years.

Do you remember back in 1982? Yeah,that was a good year. I was hard core into sniffing Kool-Aid at the time when a gang of nine-year olds came by to make fun of me and steal my lunch money. They saw what I was sniffing and laughed. They offered to show me a real good time and proceeded to take off their shoes and start sniffing them.

I never saw such dazed looks on anyone's faces before that day or after. I mean, those guys were in a state of total bliss. Moogey, the leader of the gang, later told me over milk and cookies at recess, that he had been sniffing his shoes since he was eight, like myself (at that time). He said he was still wearing the same pair.

I received infinite amounts of wisdom over the two lunch periods he remained friends with me, before one day he started beating me up again and moved onto other endeavors and friendships (I heard at a grammar school reunion years later that he had snuck onto the Space Shuttle Endeavor for a mission that took him into outer space (and the chance to sniff all sorts of weird interstellar scents.)

Since I can only dream of such sublime moments in my own life, I'll simply recount some of those pieces of wisdom Moogey passed on to me over our CHiPs lunch boxes.

1. It's always who you know that makes you who you are.
2. You know more people if you go out and mingle at lunch, recess and at PE.
3. People always remember you a little more if you push them down when you first meet them.
4. People remember you longer if you steal something important to them.
5. No one likes a squealer, especially you.

I can only hope you take those words to heart and that you use this knowledge and always remember those moments in our life when we came face to face with nirvana. The last time I did, I tried to gouge Kurt Cobain's eyes out.