In the time between dropping out of high school and starting computer school, I was occasionally unemployed, really poor, or both.

Tony and I met around this time and we shared a lot of common interests in addition to poverty.

When Perry offered a bunch of us a chance to earn some beer, we jumped at it. Perry figured it should take 4 of us a couple of hours to paint the one room. He dropped off the beer with the paint in the room late on a Saturday afternoon.

Since we were irresponsible teenagers, we were already half in the bag when we got there. We opened the beer before we opened the paint.

None of us were professional painters and it showed. We thought that the alcohol didn’t really detract from our painting but…

The following day, I saw Perry and he said that he wasn’t very happy with our work. Then he cracked a smile and asked “Is that a tic-tac-toe game on the door?”

A memory crawled out from under my hangover. Tony and I thought that was brilliant at the time.

I lost.

Anyway, never pay upfront in beer