I have a fond memory of returning to school the day after our Junior year ended to check on our grades. While there, we noticed bags upon bags of already finished Vocabulary Books from the year past. Since these generic vocab books were an endless source of frustration for all students grades Freshman through Junior, we had the brilliant notion of stealing the books and selling them to students during the next year. We piled them into the trunk of my car, laughed our way back to your house, and started categorizing the books into levels, both based on which version of the vocab book it was and how much work the student actually did. Some of the slackers had filled out roughly a chapter and a half of the twenty some they were supposed to. James Tolbert was one such slacker, which was a riot to us. You went upstairs to play pilot wings and eat dinner; I stayed downstairs, reading some book from the nineteenth century about a man sentenced to death on a boat. I found it humorous that your parents had tons of never-before-opened classic books resting atop bookshelves in their basement. You failed to see the humor.
And when your mom came home and noticed the books at the foot of the stairs in the basement, she questioned and questioned and a concensus was never met. Your mom was just like that. She never just agreed to an idea we had. She had to question it.
Then, when we left to cause some other mischeif, she had thrown out every single vocab book. We could have sold them for $10 a piece, but she threw them away. Even your dad took our side on the issue. As I was over one day, you told me to ask your dad what he thought of the situation. He responded to me with, "It was a brilliant entrepeneur idea turned belly up" or something to that effect. I laughed, but not as hard as the day we decided to sell the books.
But then you started hating me. And our enterprise couldn�t work under those conditions. I guess nothing gold can stay. Have a good life, old friend.