In the spring of 1990 my senior year was winding down and I was hanging out at my buddy's house. We were having a pretty intense and animated tournament of Double Dribble on the NES. My friend's dad was an intimidating giant brick shit house of a man. A veteran and firefighter with an authoritarian streak 100 miles wide. While my friend and I were playing the game our smack talk got pretty colorful and uninterrupted. Verbal jabs were being tossed around indiscriminately. It was at this point his imposing father must have entered the room because we were both startled by a booming voice declaring: "these video games are a sickness with you!" In our frenzied state of shit-talk my poor friend responded to him "oh yeah? What about your stamp collection?". I couldn't fucking believe it. I swung my head in disbelief to look at him. He was already looking at me, fear vibrating in his eyes. I heard two booming footsteps and he disappeared from view. I reeled around to see his father one-armed pick him up and chuck him over their coffee table onto their couch. I panicked and actually thought about diving through a window. He snarled "joel, it's time to leave." I was already in motion towards the door abandoning my friend to his fate. The next day I skated to his house and timidly knocked on the door when I saw his father's car wasn't there. We joked about our near death experience and marveled at my friends loose lips. We spent that afternoon grateful he was alive and hit a parking lot with yellow parking curbs to skate and listened to this tape on a boombox. We started shit talking again almost immediately.
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