"Don't go downstairs. They're at it again." my sister told me, sticking her head in the door.
      "I can hear. But thanks anyway."
      "Can I talk to you about something?" "Sure. Come on in."
      "Just a minute." She left and returned a minute later. She brought in a tabloid and set it on the bed in front of me.
      "Space Dogs Terrorize Town." I read a headline.
      "No."
      "Mother Gives Birth to Three Headed Baby?"
      "No. The ad. This one."
      "Solve all your problems the fast and easy way with Dr. Leiter's Formulas? What is it you want?"
      "Read it."
      "Dr. Leiter can solve your worst problems. He's done so for thousands and he can do so for you with Dr. Leiter Futuristic Formulas. He can make you attractive, solve infections, stop domestic violence. . . ." I was interrupted by a loud thump downstairs. "Make you smart, make you rich, make you popular, give you an incredible love life, restore broken bones, replace missing and rotted teeth, replace lost hair, and much much more."
      "What do you think?"
      "You want my honest opinion?"
      "Look at that."
      "You must be totally satisfied or triple your money back. I still don't know."
      "Look at the address."
      "That's here in town, only a few blocks away. I could reach it on my bike in minutes."
      "How much money do you have?"
      "Fifteen dollars."
      "And I have almost twenty saved up."
      "You want to waste our money on this quack?"
      "We could triple our money if it doesn't work."
      "I still don't know."
      "You want to put up with Mom and Dad fighting without trying?"
      "Oh, all right." Sis was getting a bit hysterical, so what could I say?
      "This is the one that you want. The mega-sampler. See, it has one listed for domestic violence. Let me go get my money. Thirty dollars is the price. And there will probably be tax."
      "I still think that this is kind of stupid. It's playing with drugs, from what I can tell."
      "It's not like smoking crack, and the man is a doctor and a biochemist."
      "I've heard that there are a lot of doctors that do drugs."
      "Look, just go get it." She had that tone of voice which, I had learned the hard way, could not be denied.
      "All right."
      She went to her room and returned and handed me her money. I went out the window and down the trellis. I got on my bike and rode over to the address in the ad.

      The shop was a shotgun shop, long and skinny. From the front door, you could have hit everything with one shotgun shell, so the story goes. A chubby guy with greasy shoulder length hair gave me the eye.
      "You got the right place, kid?"
      "Is this the place where you sell the potions?"
      "This is the place. You're not looking for an aphrodisiac for your next date, are you?"
      "No sir. I was looking for something to get my parents to stop fighting all of the time."
      "Oh, well, that's no problem."
      "Actually, my sister wanted me to get the mega-sampler that you had in your ad. It had a potion for domestic violence."
      "So it does. But let me warn you, the potions that I'm selling are not toys."
      "I realize that. I'm not a numby or a dummy."
      "No, you do look pretty smart at that. You plan on paying for this with cash?"
      "My sister and I pitched in our savings. It's more her idea than mine. I just happen to have the bike."
      "How long have you saved up the money?"
      "A few months for both of us."
      "Well, I'll tell you what. W.C. Fields would have had a heyday with me, but I like you, kid. I'll give you the mega-sampler free. Just tell the other kids about the results that you get with the potions, and I'll call it even. What do you say to that?"
      "Free?"
      "You have your end of the bargain to keep. Call it paying for advertising. But you can keep your money. And if I see your friends coming in here, then we can work something out where you can get more free."
      "You'd do that for me?"
      "A good business man knows how to judge clients. You strike me as a good boy that has good habits and who's in a bind. Do your parents fight a lot?"
      "Every other day, it seems."
      "And you came here looking for some peace in the household."
      "Yeah."
      "Well, do we have a deal?"
      "Yeah, sure."
      He handed the big package from behind the counter to me, then slipped a bag around it as I held it.
      "Good luck, kid. And be careful. Don't go using them until you've read the directions and understand them thoroughly. Call if you have a problem understanding things. Call before you use them."
      "Sure."
      "The phone number is on the box."
      The phone rang, and he answered and waved good-bye to me. I carried the package out to my bike. I rode home with it under my arm, being extra careful.

      I got out under my window and whistled. Sis looked out and saw me with the package. She went to my room and threw down the nylon cord that I used to get things into the house without notice. I tied up the package, and Sis began the lift it. I moved away from the house and guided the package up so that it wouldn't hang on anything. I followed the package by climbing the trellis.
      Sis already had the package open. She started reading the instruction manual. "What did it cost?"
      "Nothing. I guess he liked me or something. He gave it to me on the condition that I tell the other kids about how the stuff works."
      "What a deal. Wow, look at all the formulas. Look sexy, breathe easy, see perfectly, hear well, ap-hro-dizzy-ac. . . ."
      "Aphrodisiac." I corrected, showing off. "Makes you want to have sex."
      "Really?" Her eyes widened.
      "Get serious, look up the one to stop Mom and Dad from fighting."
      "Okay. Where's my money?"
      I handed her the money that she had given me. Footsteps came up the stairs. The package went under the bed, along with the manual that I plucked from my sister's hand. She stuffed her money into her pants pocket. The door opened just as things were normal.
      Mom opened the door. "Get packed, you two. We're going to visit your grandmother for a while."
      "Not again." I whined.
      "Don't argue with me. Just do it." The door shut.
      I pulled out the manual and read. "Go downstairs and stall them. Try to get them to reason. That always works for fifteen minutes. I'll get this ready, and we'll see if it works."
      "Why don't you?"
      "They won't spank you like they would me. You could do it better. Go on and stall them."
      I read as Sis went down the stairs. I found the section and it said that both people had to drink the solution. It said that it could be put in another liquid, and that heat from a hot drink wouldn't hurt the potion from doing its job.
      I pulled out the two small bottles that were labeled #23. I put them in my pocket and went down to the kitchen, waiting for Sis to get them where they wouldn't notice me. I got out two coffee cups and poured the contents of the bottles into the cups and added coffee.
      I very carefully took both cups to the dining table where Sis was talking to Mom and Dad. I sat them down for them, then stood back. Neither looked in the mood for coffee, but they both drank it out of habit.
      About five minutes passed as they drank and talked to Sis and listened to her. Then suddenly, Mom started crying, and Dad moved over to her and put his arms around her. They hugged and kissed, then sent us up to our rooms. They were really starting to get mushy.
      Sis and I went up to my room.
      "It worked!" she yelled quietly into my ear. She kissed me, and I wiped it off.
      I sighed. "I hope it lasts. And I hope they don't get wierd on us."
      "They'll be busy for a while. Let's see what else is in the kit."
      "I think that we ought to flush the rest of the stuff down the toilet. Like Dad says, don't fix it if it isn't broken."
      "We can look. Maybe we could use something else from it. I could sure stand to be smarter in school. Those three D's on my last report card got me in all kinds of trouble. Let's see. #16."
      She mumbled as she read, then pulled out the kit from under the bed. She found one of the two bottles labeled #16 and quickly drank it before I could stop her. She made a face. "Yech!"
      We sat there waiting, and nothing seemed to happen.
      "You smarter yet?"
      "It said that it takes about ten minutes. You got any candy to get the taste out of my mouth?"
      I gave her a gum drop. She sucked on it and read the manual further. She perked up after a few minutes.
      "Did you know that the ambient temperature of Jupiter averages two hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit? And that the Pacific Ocean covers almost sixty four million square miles of the Earth's surface? Keratin is the substance that turns living body cells into hair and fingernails. Newton's first law of gravitational attraction states that the force of attraction is equal to the gravitational constant times the product of the two masses divided by the square of the distance."
      "Leaping cows, Sis. Did you just learn that?"
      "I never knew it before. I guess I heard it on TV and just now remember. I wonder what these other bottles do."
      "Wait. This could get dangerous."
      "Here. Drink this. It could get really boring if you stay a dummy."
      "I'm not a dummy."
      "Compared to me now, you are. Here, drink."
      She put the open bottle to my lips. It did taste awful and sent me running for the candy jar.
      Ten minutes later took forever. Ten minutes later, we were discussing Sartre's tenets of social responsibility relating to the framework of Heidegger's existentialism. Boy, was my head full.
      "If we're so smart, school is going to be a drag. We can't just show up smart. We're going to have to fake it, or we'll be in a real mess."
      "Don't worry. It will be easy. We can spend time thinking about other things." She read the manual in two minutes. She pulled out three bottles and drank them before I could stop her.
      "What did you take?"
      "Numbers 3, 19, and 27."
      I looked up the numbers. "Attractive appearance, wittiness, and strength. How are you going to hide your new looks?"
      "Won't have to. The manual says that people won't notice the change in their minds."
      I watched as her features softened, then took new shape. It was still Sis, but she was much prettier than she used to be. She handed me the same three bottles. "What the heck, we're already in this deep."
      I took the three bottles in succession. While I was waiting, I watched Sis pocket a series of bottles. "Just in case." She patted me on the cheek and went to her room. I sat on the bed and read the manual. When I finished, I noticed that my arms felt much stronger. I went down the stairs and out the back door.
      I got on my bike, wishing that I had a driver's license, since I now knew how to drive like the best race car drivers. I pull a wheelie out of the garage and headed over to Terry's house. He came with me on his bike. I told him nothing until we got to the park. I handed him a branch that had fallen from a tree.
      "Try and break this."
      "Too big. Not rotten enough."
      "Try anyway."
      He struggled to lift the limb, and all of his effort broke only the ends. I reached for it, hefted it easily, and broke it into twelve short pieces. He stared wide eyed.
      "How did you do that?"
      "Took a potion."
      "A potion, like magic?"
      "I guess that you could say that." I told him about the shop, how my parents had quit fighting, and all the other things. I even showed him how smart I was. He insisted that I show him where the shop was. We rode over there, and the man greeted me with a smile.
      He began to tell me about the rest of his products that weren't in the sampler while Terry browsed. In the background, the music played. "I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink. I didn't know if it was day or night. I started kissing everything in sight. But when I kissed the cop at Thirty Fourth and Vine, he broke my little bottle of Love Potion #9."Ý The music gave me ideas. To be knowledgeable and a virgin leads to ideas.
      Terry bought four bottles and drank them before we left the store. I bought one, and was given it at no charge. The man winked at me as we left the store.
      The potions began to take effect on Terry, and we stopped for the effects to finish. He was wild with enthusiasm, and we went and rounded up the whole gang, and we put on a demonstration. Terry led the pack to the store afterwards, and I went elsewhere. Elsewhere happened to be to Theresa's house. Theresa had been pulling my heart strings for some time. Well, maybe not heart strings, but you get the idea.
      She was fortunately out in the front yard, so I didn't have to deal with her parents. She was surprised that I stopped, since I had been too shy to talk to her much in the past. I told her about the potions and demonstrated by rearranging my handlebars. She was also impressed with my new looks and the intelligence with which I spoke. She was interested in going to the store, and I made a date to meet her at the park in an hour.
      That hour seemed to take forever. But she finally showed, and I took her to the shop. She selected the same potions as I had taken, and she paid for them, though I had offered to do so. The man thanked me for the references, and gave Theresa a discount.
      We returned to the park and found a good hiding place. She took the potions, along with the one that I added to the collection. #9.

      It wasn't until twilight that she left me to return home.
      She wanted to stay, but feared getting in trouble. I sat there, pondering life as no longer a virgin. There was a worry in my mind, so I went home and found the manual. I read through it again and selected a bottle. I called Theresa and told her to look for me in a few minutes.
      I met her at a window and gave her the bottle. She took it and was relieved. I was even more relieved that she wouldn't be getting pregnant. We made a date to see each other in the park the next day.
      I took the long way home, by the shop. I went inside and the man offered me bottles from his private stock, thanking me for the business that I had generated for him. I took them home and hid them.
      I was asked where I had been. I was expecting real trouble, but Mom took my explanation without a second thought and reheated my dinner in the microwave.
      Sis smiled at me, indicating that she wanted to talk. I nodded.
      Up in my room, we compared notes. She was no longer a virgin either. We laughed a lot at the things that the potions had given us, and we felt very grown up, discussing the things that we had done. Neither of went to bed until way late, a trick that we had never been able to achieve, even on a Saturday night, which it was.
      I met Theresa at the park the next morning and we spent hours doing more of the same, expanding the possibilities and filling the gaps in our knowledge. #11 had allowed me to stay able and willing for hours.
      We stopped only because we were almost caught by the park patrol. We were quick enough in getting dressed to avoid serious trouble, aided by our new intelligence in fast talking the guard into seeing that we really weren't old enough to do such things. Theresa blushed a lot.
      We began to realize how complex being an adult was going to become. We found a large portion of the gang and began to tell them about what we had done. They were all ears, until they all left for the shop, intent on spending more money.
      Theresa and I went to another park and got back down to business. I felt no need, but #9 was doing its work on her.
      I got home late again, without any troubles for being late. I was thinking about seeing Theresa again, tomorrow after school when I finally fell asleep.

      I made a hundred on my math test, but so did fourteen other kids. This puzzled the teacher, since it was the hardest test of the year, and no one had made a hundred yet, except Steve Glaegow, the whiz kid. He made an eighty on this one. She left the room after grading the papers and went to the principal's office, while we read from our literature books. Fifteen of us were finished when she returned.
      We were all marched down to the principal's office. We were asked if we had cheated on the test. We denied it, and the questions got hot and heavy. Charlie finally broke down and spilled the beans.
      We were questioned as to what we knew, and the teacher and the principal were floored at the answers that we gave, somewhere at the post graduate level. During the time we were there, other teachers came in with the same problem. The other kids were brought in, and Sis was among them. I gave her a look that told her that the cat was out of the bag. Theresa came in a few minutes later. She came to stand beside me, and we held hands for moral support.
      Our parents were called. The room held over a hundred of us. Time passed, hour after eternal hour. The parents began arriving. Most were angry over the affair, but those that were given #23 took it in stride. These were only a few among many.
      The meeting went well into the night, and members of the sherrif's office were brought in. We were all give college entrance exams to test our level of knowledge. The results showed that we would have been accepted anywhere we applied.
      They finally let us go. Theresa was driven home by her father, and she tried to give me a message, but her father wouldn't let go of her wrist. Mom and Dad told me to go straight home on my bike.
      I went by the shop, and found it in ruins, bottles smashed and potion all over everything. There was no sign of the man. I managed to find a rack that hadn't been found, plus a formula book that told how to make everything that the man had sold. I took these home and hid them well.

      After much debate and testing, it was decided that it was a waste of time for us to return to school. Instead, they took us to a camp out west in New Mexico. We were kept inside a tall barbed wire topped chain link fence. But we were allowed to conduct ourselves while we weren't being quizzed or tested further, and I finally got to spend ample time with Theresa. I had managed to smuggle in the man's notes, and methodically, we began to give the potions to the guards and administrators that ran the place.
      We soon had things going our way, while maintaining the appearance of the way that the government had planned. We got the things that we wanted: video games, computers, ATV's, and a whole lot more.
      Since then, we've been planning, working as a think tank. We did just fine, left unattended, so why wouldn't the rest of the world? Right now, we're working on the logistics. Don't be surprised if one day you find yourself smart, strong, and sexy.



* Lyrics from Love Potion #9 by The Searchers, written by Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber, published by ASCAP