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At the start of a new year in college, I met a friend's across-the-hall neighbor who was a freshman. One day, we were warning her that winters at our campus in the mountains could be quite cold and earlier than she would expect. As the third member of my family to attend this school and a veteran of one whole winter there, I told the young lady that we could expect to have a measurable snowfall no later than the fifteenth of October. Down-state where we both lived, this would have been unheard of, so she didn't believe me. I said, "You want to bet?" and she quickly replied, "How much?" I blurted out the first thing I thought of, "A quarter and a kiss," to which she readily agreed. At 9:00 PM on the fifteenth, we had at least one-eighth of an inch of snow on the grass. So, I marched over to her dorm to demand payment. She let me into her room, shut the door, and paid up. After receiving her very nice kiss, I returned the quarter to her and explained that I was only after the kiss, which I would have gotten win or lose. She had a laugh over being tricked, and then I went back to my dorm. Yes, this is fairly tame in this day and age, but things were different thirty years ago. Who knows how much I could have raised the stakes in today's campus climate! -Bryant, 47