Coffee, the unsung gateway drug

Some people call marijuana a gateway drug, others believe that cigarettes are the route of all evil. I have heard many parents attribute their children's unruly behavior to massive over doses of sugar. So which one really is the gateway drug? I'm not sure, but I do remember the first time I felt the affects of a mood altering stimulant. It wasn't pot, smokes or candy canes, it was coffee and I remember the first time I drank the black nector.

The best place to start this story is at a garage sale, oh so many years ago. When I was a kid me and my friends used to belong to a social club called the Livingston Mobile Strike Force, a military themed club. We had a very cool base of operations we called The Fort. We destroyed two trees and lots of foliage in the process of building this fort but it had a prison and a roof, thus I offer know apologies to all of you tree hugging hippies out there.

Most of the funding for our social club didn't come from PBS pledge drives, it came from private sources such as the bank of my mother's purse, but every so often we would steal ideas from the Boy Scouts, so we could make our own money. One time we gathered as much junk as we could find, mostly toys that we didn't play with anymore and we had a garage sale. Me and Billy F donated most of the stuff we sold at this garage sale, but Matt contributed a little, and this other kid named Billy who we will call Bik for clarity sake, dug out what ever rubble he could find in his yard, that was either buried by his little brother, or their dog. Some other kids donated stuff as well, a kid named Lou and yet another kid named Billy L (Important information for later).

The garage sale was held at my friend Billy F's house and since this isn't an AA meeting I will simply refer to him as Bif from here on out. It just so happened that this garage sale coincided with Bif's, sleep over, birthday party. Billy's parents were way ahead of their time and as a result they were one of the first family's in the neighborhood to have a VCR. The fact that it had wooden paneling on the side of it and took up half the space in their den, hardly mattered, it got the job done. So we played with GI Joe figures for the first half of the sleep over and then we looked at naked chicks in a movie called, The Grove Tube, for the second half of the night. Keep in mind that we had to get up at 7:am to set up our garage sale, but it was a fun party.

We finally got to sleep around 6:30 and a half hour later we were up, hating life and setting up the garage sale, cursing under our breaths. After the morning rush, which probably amounted to 6 people or so, I was dozing off in my chair. Then I was offered a cup of coffee. And just like that, I was in heaven. I could feel the caffeine working its wonderful magic. I was wide awake. Eyes bulging out of my head and everything. I knew that this was just the beginning of a wonderful love affair, that still endures to this day.

Anyway we wound up making like 40 bucks, and what did we do with the money? The next day Me, Bif and Bik got on our bikes and rode up to Toy's R Us on a very dangerous road for 12 year olds to be riding on, and of course we bought new toys with the money. I think we got Matt a water pistol with the change we had left over. It's important to note that Bik barely donated anything to this garagbe sale and he got the most expensive toy gun, he was craft that way. Bif got what he wanted, a rifle with a scope and I got a replica 45, a fitting gun for a Captain. The rest of the club was SOL because they didn't make the trek with us. We caught more than a ear full from Billy L and Lou.

Just so you all know, this is Billy appreciation month here at the log, so we will be profiling many characters named Bill.