My mother remarried in August 1966, just before I entered 8th grade. We went to the beach with his family sometime that summer, with the girl who was going to become my step-sister, who was getting ready to leave for Colby Junior College. This song came on my transistor radio and their voices dropped. "You know what this is really about, right?" said Beth. My mother murmured, "it sounds like they are talking about having too much to drink last night without saying it." My sister nodded wisely. They were clearly hoping that I didn't catch this terrible reference.
That was my first clue that my new sister was some kind of a dingbat. It was clearly a drug reference, not alcohol. You could tell that from the garage-band El Cheapo psychedelic sound if nothing else. (Rock autoharp was a little surprising.) Heck, I even made sure my nine-year old brother didn't miss stuff like that. You wouldn't want to be humiliated in fifth grade of a suburban school for missing a drug reference. You might never recover your status. It was one more moment of thinking I was just going to be alone in the world until I had a family of my own. Eighteen months later I played "What Condition My Condition Was In" in my own garage band,* and none of the mothers overhearing us had the least bit of objection. Went right over their heads.
Of course, I married a girl who also didn't get the reference, or more exactly, never considered that there might be a naughty reference of any kind. She memorised lyrics without listening to them. Her sorority sisters explained a few things to her so I didn't have to. But that's another story.
*We weren't even a garage band. None of our parents would let us use their garage. We thought we had a garage at Jimmy Labonte's house once, but when we got there his father was doing Pinewood Derby stuff with his younger brothers.
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