David Pincus Where Are You?

It seems fitting that my first posting will be of no concern to anybody. Well, anybody except myself and the name-sake of this story. It also seems fitting that I should make my web debut with a brief yarn about my debut into adulthood... That is, the vices of adulthood.
Somewhere on the North Shore of Chicago many years ago, though not that many, two long-haired boys of ten in short-pants and knee socks sat in a musty basement listening to records. One of the boys, having the advantage of two older sisters and divorced parents, was far more a man of the world than the other. The worldly boy-wonder was David Pincus. I was the other. Pincus reached for an album I had never seen.
"This one is my sister's," he explained. "And it's really cool."
He handed me a white, double album, the cover illustrated with an ink drawing of bricks. In fact the lines of bricks with their alternating vertical lines filled both covers.
"Cool," I said. "It looks kinda like the White Album... Only with bricks." I was a Beatle fan.
"It's better," David assured me.
I opened the double album to see what was inside. What was inside startled me: Pellets. Dozens of tiny pellets rolled out of the album like Lilliputians fleeing the giant who's really a ten year old kid.
"What the hell are those?" I asked confused.
David panicked. "Oh shit!" He said as if I had just accidentally set his house on fire. "Those are my sister's pot seeds!"
I thought about this, trying to understand if this meant his house was indeed on fire. Those words ricocheted around my head for a minute: "My sister's pot seeds." The truth was that on their own, individually, I could define each of those words with ease. But assembled in that context they meant the same as "my mother's dish plant."
It was no secret that David, worldy and wise, knew more about the complexities of the planet than I, or most people in general on the North Shore. So I fessed up.
"What are your sister's pot seeds?"
He explained. I understood. Though I wondered what effect being in such close proximity to marijuana seeds would have on my ability to finish the 5th grade. Pot, as they said at the time, is a gateway drug, a seed narcotic (if you will), that ultimately compels one to try angel dust and eventually murder your parents for a few dollars to pay a pusher for more.
We listened to The Wall... twice before I went home for dinner and silently contemplated David's sister walking down the street with a handful of strange seeds, purchased from a man who promised her that if planted, would sprout a beanstalk guaranteed to grow high. Very high.
David moved to Milwaukee in the 6th grade. But not before introducing my palate to the sophisticated tastes of beer (Neer Beer), Pink Floyd, Marlboros, Oui Magazine and a few other vices too private, bizarre and/or humiliating to mention here. He was Bar Mitzvah'd on his 13th birthday somewhere outside of Milwaukee. I remember it well. My parents drove me up there in a violent and treacherous blizzard in which we nearly died. That's why I remember his birthday. January 14th.
Happy Birthday, Pincus.