Based as it is upon a personal memory, this requires some explanation to make any sense at all. One late afternoon during the summer of 1969, as a couple of friends and I entered a convenience store to buy some brewskies to better the evening’s ballgame-watching party, a pair of exiting 12-or-so-year olds pushed rowdily past us clutching bags and loudly cursing the proprietor. Arriving with our purchases at the counter, we ere treated to said proprietor's own angry, air-blueing angry imprecations, essentially as follows: “Them goddamned kids! Every f*ckin’ day they come in here buyin’ whole boxes o’ that goddam airplane glue. Littl f*ckers ain’t making _that_ many models .., I _know_ they’re getting it t’ sniff. Well, I ain’t havin’ it! Not in _my_ f*ckin store! Not any more! I told’em, ‘Startin’ now I’m cuttin’ you little b*st*rds off.’ From now, on, ev'ry time they come in I’m only sellin’em 10 tubes apiece!”

Yeah ... only 10 tubes at a time to sniff. Tho’ the preposterous irony of the this "get tough" solution seemed to us at the time wildly amusing, its parodistic treatment here will probably at most mildly amuse non-eyewitnesses. Also, it renders the proprietor’s concern for the kids’ well-being—if that’s what it was—rather more poignantly that it was actually expressed.

Finally, names have been changed to protect the not guilty. It was a 7-11, not a Quickie Mart and the proprietor, a tall, burly, bearded, 60-ish white guy bore no resemblance whatever to “Apu” of “Simpsons” fame. :-)

Not sure something so idiosyncratic was even worth submitting, but what the heck ... I've submitted some odder. :-) Besides, triggered by simply seeing the OS title attached to another recent "If I Fell" parody, this all but wrote itself in a matter of minutes. © Stan Hall 11/07/2008