I guess selling a dirty movie wasn't a good idea...

We were seniors in high school when my twin brother, Bill, received a rather unexpected visitor at our front door, who was carrying an item that he thought we'd never see before and the reunion was not joyful at all. In fact, it was downright uncomfortable.

"Are you Bill or Bob?" the angry looking woman at the door asked. She looked as if she had gotten off work and was not pleased.

"Uhh.. I'm Bill," Bill said apprehensively.

The woman pulled out a tape and thrust it at my brother. He recognized it by the label that was on it: WPINK. Bill's heart sank while his stomach did a flip flop.

"I am Monty's mother!" she snapped. "I found this tape. Monty has told me that you boys gave him this tape."

Bill didn't say anything.

"Do you think this is appropriate for a 15-year-old to watch?" she demanded.

Bill, of course, came up with the most logical answer that he could think of. "Well, he wanted it," he said matter-of-factly.

The woman announced that she was going to be contacting our parents about this and stormed off.

What was the fuss all about? Well, it was about a movie called, "WPINK is Red Hot!"

In junior high sometime, a friend of ours named Matt sold us this tape that had the movie "WPINK is Red Hot!" on it. Matt was a really nice kid that had a very mellow wild streak in him. He wasn't rude or flippant, but he did some inappropriate things from time to time. I'm wondering if it had to do with his Dad being the biggest asshole on the planet. It was an ackward dilemma for sure whenever we went over to Matt's house to see if he was home. We liked hanging out at his place, but then his Dad would come home and start bitching and cussing at Matt for not doing his chores yet or at us for just being there. Once, Matt was showing my brother his trombone so Bill asked if he could try it out. Matt said it was okay. Bill started to blow on it when Matt's father saw it and snatched out of his hands yelling, "Put that fucking thing down!"

Now I don't know what your view of parenting is, but I do agree that some people try too hard to be their kid's friend and not their parent. So a lot of "experts" insist that you can't be your kids friend, which would explain all of those commercials that make it seem like every teenager under the sun is trying to get out to drink and do drugs. My view is that you need a middle ground. Yes, be a hard ass sometimes, but don't make it so unbearable that your kids don't ever want to hang out there! You're really asking for trouble. I think you'd want to be loose enought that your friends kids would want to hang out at your house because you could be a hardass, but you could also be cool...

But I digress...

Now where was I? Oh yes. We got the tape from Matt. How did it come up? Not sure. Did we even know that Matt had this for sale? Again, I couldn't tell you. Basically, I think we were over at Matt's house and he just casually mentioned that he had an adult film for sale. We didn't know what the movie was called or who was in it, but we snatched it up. 5 dollars later and we had our film.

What is WPINK about? Well, it's a tale of a whole crew of news people led by Ron Jeremy, the famous everyman film star, whose nickname is the Hedgehog, who decide to break into their news station and transmit a feed of naughty shows. Before that happens, they make sure to stop the feed from the mayor's house and every cop in town, which is totally possible, even in 1985 technology! They get on the air and produce everything from game shows to exercise with everything having an x-rated twist, of course. In the meantime, the feed has been viewed by the CIA, who send in their own agent, Scorpio, played by Harry Reems, to infiltrate and stop the show. He doesn't get the job done and a great time is had by all.

It's actually a semi-funny movie, if a little stupid.

The film was viewed mainly by Bill, me, Brian and our Vietmanese friend named, Ngoc. Ngoc especially liked the movie. The movie would eventually be watched by many friends that passed by Brian's house, which is where it was stored.

So we had this tape and we knew this kid named Monty, who was two years younger than us and kind of annoying. He'd come over to our friend Brian's house and hang out, but he was always uninvited. Brian generally poked fun at Monty, but that didn't stop Monty from coming over. Maybe he thought it was cool that he was hanging out with older kids.

As luck would have it, we were watching the video one day when the door opened to Brian's basement and Monty came storming down. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight on the television.

He asked what we were watching. We told him and he stuck around, uninvited again, to watch the movie with us. What was nice about it was that instead of talking incessantly about everything, Monty didn't say much at all. He was nice and quiet, which was a nice change.

A few days later, Monty came over with a request. He wanted a copy of the tape!

We said sure, but seeing an opportunity, we pounced on it. We traded baseball cards at the time and wanted a Brett Saberhagen (a Royals pitcher at the time) rookie card that he had. Up to this point, Monty had steadfastedly refused to trade us the card unless we were to trade several cards that were worth way more. We always refused. Now we had the upper hand and we were going to make Monty pay for it dearly. We requested the Brett Saberhagen rookie card AND ten dollars. He balked a little, but he came through. Money and baseball card was paid and we handed over the copy we had made. We though that was the end of it.

Fast forward a few years and we're back to the situation. I think I was at work at the time when all of this happened with the angry mother. I came home later that night with my brother sitting at the kitchen table with my mom and dad sitting there with smirks on their faces.

"What's up?" I asked a little apprehensively.

"So what's this I hear you guys sold an adult video to a teenager?" my Dad asked while smirking, which was a reaction I didn't think he would have on his face in this situation, but he can surprise you from time to time.

I panicked a little, but managed to keep a straight face.

"What tape?" I asked innocently.

"What tape?!" my Mom asks with a laugh. "How about the tape that you guys sold to this Monty kid. What's it called, 'W - P - I - N - K'?"

My heart sank. I thought I was dead. I had experienced a lot of these types of conversations when my older brothers had gotten in trouble for wearing questionable t-shirts, telling inappropriate jokes or having objectional material in the house.

"How did you guys find out about that?" I asked finally.

"Monty's mother gave us a call," my Mom said with a smile. I look over at my Dad. He's chuckling.

"Apparently, he was using his copy to charge his friends for showings of the tape!" my Mom burst out with as my Mom and Dad started laughing again.

"What?"

"Yep. He was in the middle of another showing when his mother came home early. She walked in on them watching the movie."

That's right. Monty, the ever resourceful kid had resorted to extorting his friends to take advantage of their teenage feelings of rampant horniness coupled with the not-so-unusual circumstances of being able to do nothing about it with the fairer sex.

I pictured a roomful of pimply-faced teenagers that could barely drive all crammed into a dark living room in dead silence watching the movie as if they were studying the periodic table. I also pictured a shocked and angry mother who was probably screaming, scooting the kids out, slapping her son and clutching her chest like Fred Sanford for the shock and awe campaign that had been going on under her nose.

After a little discussion about it, I began to wonder if we were in trouble. My parents smiled and said that our punishment was to watch the tape with them.

I stiffened. Oh, they were good! They knew that humiation would be an excellent punishment. Being grounded for a few weeks would have been heaven compared to the shame and humiliation of having to watch an adult film with our parents.

I'm sure it would have gone along the lines of them watching it with us and them making comments or asking questions like:

"Oh, isn't she pretty."

"Do you boys have any questions about what they are doing?"

"Do you know what that's called?"

"Oh my goodness!"

and so on... It would have been excruciating. I can honestly say that I had never seen or heard my parents in the midst of love or even talk about sex and I intended to keep it that way if at all possible. Watching an adult film with them would have been as close to that as I wanted to get. Once, my Mom saw a commercial about talking to your kids about sex and she asked me if I had any questions. Being that I was a kid that had HBO and the benefits of our seventh grade Health class that went weeks into the subject I said, "Sure. What do you want to know?"

They asked us if we had the tape and we told them that "No" we didn't have the tape anymore, so they were out of luck. Actually, we DID have the tape, but there was NO way we were going to admit it. I may be gullible, but I'm not THAT gullible. Sometimes, I actually think before acting.

Later, my brother Paul grabs Bill and I and instructs us to go with him.

"We're going to rent that video," he said with a big grin.

Uh oh! We hadn't thought of that! What if the video store actually had it?

We get to the video store and Paul goes to the book of adult video titles and starts looking through them. Not finding what he's looking for, he asks the clerk behind the counter if they have WPINK. My brother and I look at each other with that twin look that says, "Oh God. I hope they don't have that tape."

Thankfully, they didn't have the tape. Even better, Paul didn't rent a substitute and force us to watch another title with our parents. We managed to escape this one unscathed, which is still incredible to me. One doesn't often have material that parents would object to, let alone sell a copy to a friend, who then charges admission to his friends to see it and still come out clean, but we did.

Which reminds me Mom and Dad, while I am bragging about this incident since we did kind of got away with murder than doesn't mean it's time to punish us. It's a little late for that.