Jeff Hopkinson

Jeff Hopkinson was a powerful force in my high school life because he was a good friend but was also as I would put it, the was the Ferris Bueller of my school. Jeff was clever and an individual all his own always wearing a ball cap like most but Jeff only had maybe 2 hats for the duration of school. By the time the first one was ready to be replaced it probably should have been replaced about 3 years previous. Things like this didn't matter to Jeff what he cared about was doing what he enjoyed and nothing else. And what Jeff enjoyed was alcohol mostly. But, don't get the wrong impression Jeff wasn't the popular football player who got drunk every weekend, got in fights and stole your woman. Instead Jeff was the guy who got drunk and lifted fake credit card numbers off the internet somehow and tried to order infrared glasses to a hotel.

Jeff was tech guy for the school which essentially meant running the lightboard for all the events that would happen in our auditorium. Through five years of doing this job Jeff managed through running events to somehow get a key to every door in the school. Since when you're a teenager school dominates a lot of your time finding ways to challenge that time becomes a full time job. And when you have a friend with a lot of keys that job became a career. We had a key to the elevator which came in handy from time to time and a key to the roof if you wanted to go and have beer on spare or a game of hockey during the winter when it froze.
Of course he also had a key to the lighting booth which Jeff had converted into a fairly well stocked bar. When police dogs were set loose into the halls to sniff out small time dealers pot in their lockers we quickly learned that we were in the clear because dogs can't smell alcohol in glass bottles. In fact I doubt they were ever even trained to because who figures some 17 year old is going to set up a bar in their high school. Well, they never met Jeff.
Jeff worked for internet Kingston because he was good with computers and he also worked at a grocery store. The only thing I can remember about Jeff and the grocery store is that he had taken a giant roll of expired meat stickers so that he could place individual stickers on his beers at parties so he wouldn't lose said beer.

The really cool stuff came from Internet Kingston. Jeff got everything that we have today that are a part of everyday life first. He got his hands on the first digital camera the summer of grade 11 which would have been 1997.
We brought it to my cottage and Jeff got a plastic case to take it under water so we could take pictures of ourselves underwater off of my dock. Then we launched Chubby bottles of pop at boats off my deck with a giant 3 man slingshot Jeff had built.

Jeff also got the first cd burner a concept I couldn't even grasp when he told me it. Mix tapes were still envogue and the fact that you could now in 1997 make you're own mix cd was a big deal. Using this to his advantage Jeff did a marketing project on his grocery store, wrote it drunk the night before and talked in length about how Adult Only Video located beside the grocery store helped improve business by luring perverts in to buy food. Then he handed the entire project in on a cd rom he had made from the brand new burner and got 100%.

Jeff had a new idea everyday and it was always devious yet carefully planned like the time he tried to buy a giant, old coastguard boat and throw keg parties on it until he raised the $60, 000 cost to fill the tank and then travel to Florida. It was a good idea but Jeff's bid on the vessel wasn't high enough at $2,000. He had a working stop light in his basement that he aquired when it blew down in a wind storm. Jeff could played the tin flute and guitar and he loved the Pogues and Guns and Roses. Infact Jeff dropped grade 12 math the day of the exam so he could go and see the Pogues in Toronto.

When he went to college he got kicked out of the only 2 bars in his college town in under a week and as the resourceful person that he is figured out how to make wine from a package fermented in mason jars.