We were eighteen — that strange age where you’re legally allowed to vote but emotionally qualified only to operate a microwave. Our friend had gone off to Stout, chasing higher education like a responsible adult, while my best friend and I were deep in the culinary underworld, flipping burgers and making life choices that would make a priest sweat.
Our manager was thrilled we were going. He’d gone to Stout back in the day and partied so hard they called him Ferris, not because he was cool, but because he skipped class like he was trying to speedrun academic failure. The man lived his life like a deleted scene from Animal House.
We had a budget that would make a Depression‑era accountant cry:
- $50 for gas
- Half an ounce of weed
- $20 for food
- And a car named MacGyver, because it was a Pontiac Phoenix held together by duct tape, prayer, and 80s optimism. If you get the reference, congratulations — you’re old enough to remember when TV theme songs slapped.
We were halfway there, in Neillsville, when my friend — in a moment of cosmic stupidity — said, “MacGyver is running good for us!”
Five seconds later, the engine died like it heard him and said, “Challenge accepted.”
We rolled to a stop at a lonely intersection that looked like the opening shot of a Coen Brothers movie — the kind where you know someone’s about to make a terrible decision.
Then — and I swear on the ghost of Blockbuster Video— an old man materialized out of nowhere. Not walked up. Spawned . Like he clipped in from a different save file. He told us to push the car down a hill to a dealership. My buddy got out, pushed, and I coasted down like a sad parade float.
We got to the dealership, pointed out the old man who helped us, and the mechanics looked at us like we’d just confessed to seeing the Mothman. “That guy died ten years ago,” one of them said.
We sobered up so fast we could’ve passed a Mormon drug test.
Forty‑five minutes later, the car was fixed and they told us the bill was $150. Our entire budget was $70 and a dream. We called our GM — the patron saint of dumb teenagers — and he paid it without hesitation. The man had the energy of someone who’d once woken up in a Taco Bell parking lot and said, “Yeah, that tracks.”
We made it to Stout, rolled a joint, and hotboxed the car in a carwash like two geniuses reenacting the van scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. When we opened the door, a cop was sitting ten feet away. We couldn’t see him through the smoke because our car looked like Cheech & Chong’s tour bus had a baby with a fog machine.
The night was perfect:
- House parties
- Music
- Joints between houses
- Me making out with people despite being built like a refrigerator with charisma They used to call me Fastso. Now they call me Castro. My raps flow. Biggie would’ve nodded in approval like a proud uncle.
The next morning, we woke up, lit up, drank coffee, and realized we had $10 left. Gas or food? We chose chaos.
We got the gas we could afford and left. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans. A cop pulled us over faster than you can say “bad decision.” He asked where we got the gas. My buddy said, “The gas station,” which was technically true but spiritually unhelpful.
They brought me back to the station to identify the clerk. I described him in detail — down to the broken slushy machine — which did not make the officer happy. We sat in the station for twenty minutes, smelling like a skunk that lost a custody battle.
They found the weed. They weighed it. It barely — barely — avoided being enough to get us arrested. We were saved by the grace of one single gram, like the universe said, “These idiots have suffered enough.”
We walked out with:
- A $150 fine for the gas
- A $350 fine for the weed
- A $650 weekend
- And still $10 left for Hot‑n‑Now, which was the real victory. (If you don’t know Hot‑n‑Now, imagine McDonald’s but cheaper and with the energy of a restaurant that knows it’s dying.)
We were an hour late to our shift that night. Our GM just shook his head. He knew who we were. He hired us anyway. Probably because we made him feel better about his own life choices.
Funk & The Flipside 