Not Getting Hassled, Not Getting Hustled

I'm it.

Boone just tagged me to come up with a story about our days in grad school. Head over to his post first and read up on a couple of our L.A. friends.

Now that you're back, I'll hash out a real quickie here. Boone, Roundtree and Beammeup were a pretty tight bunch. I was living about twenty minutes from where they lived when most of the pranking went down and they were still in school together, so I wasn't around for most of it. Roundtree would tell me stories some times, and I was pretty jealous of the fun they were having. Whenever I would hang out with those guys, I was kind of intimidated by their chumminess. I could never tell if what they were saying was sincere or not. And Boone is such a teddy bear, that when he did cut loose with something funny, it was out of left field.

Anyway, one night, I went to Roundtree's place to hang out. Soon, Beammeup had arrived, and the three of us decided to go into Rountree's room (he had roommates, some whacky-weed was present, you get the picture). We cracked on each other for awhile and played new music for each other. After a while, we kind of stopped talking and just listened to the music. The silence was making me paranoid and every time one of the guys looked at me, I thought they were trying to mess with me. They assured me they weren't.

This set us to giggling and trying to psyche each other out. Out of the blue, Beammeup looks over at a guitar leaning on a wall, he then asks Roundtree a question:

Beammeup: Is that your guitar?

Roundtree: Yup.

Beammeup: Why don't you play us something.

Roundtree: Okay.

Now, as far as Beammeup and I knew, Roundtree did not play guitar. We both thought he was bluffing. So Roundtree picks it up, places his fingers on the frets, and starts to play. It wasn't great playing, but there was music coming out. Beammeup and I just look at each other, marvelling at this new found talent. No sooner had our jaws dropped, when Roundtrees playing begins to fall apart and he collapses in a fit of laughter. He couldn't really play. Miraculously he managed to strum something out that resembled a tune. Roundtree had won. We all lost it.