Ben Smith

Was an interesting, poorly paid person from 1987-1993 (CIA Case Officer)

Harvard (Blecch) Business School MBA, 1995

2 years indentured servitude (management consulting), Cambridge, MA

1997-2004, International Business Development, Textron Defense Systems (Middle East and Eastern Europe). HQs in Wilmington, MA

2004-present: Director, Government Affairs, Textron Corporation, WDC

It was about our third day at the Buoy Too, and I was getting mighty sick of all the rednecks and hippies who kept SMOKING in the house. Deprived of my precious fresh air, I looked for a chance for revenge.

The chance came one day right after we had gone down to buy fireworks in SC. I found myself sitting on the couch, holding a bag with "ladyfinger" firecrackers, and looking at an open pack of Marlboro Lights someone had left on the table. I assumed (rightly) they were Jeff's. No one was around just then, and I managed to "alter" three of the cigarettes with ladyfingers before someone came in and I had to stop.
I totally forgot about doing this until that evening. We had been playing football out on the beach, and were walking back up to the Buoy Too, where Jeff was sitting drinking on the porch. Just as we got close, we saw his lighter flash in the darkness. A red cherry glowed, then sparked, and then appeared to have blown his head clear off. He fell over backwards in his chair, croaking with laughter, still holding the shredded filter in his teeth.
But that's not the funny part of the story. The funny thing was the route that that pack of cigarettes, with its two remaining booby trapped smokes, took over the next two days.
The morning after, in the house next door, a very hung over Cecil Irwin stumbled into the kitchen, shook out a cigarette, turned on the gas stove, and leaned over. BOOM. He later related (quite angrily, in fact) that he nearly had a heart attack because he thought the stove had exploded.
Which leaves the third, two nights later, when a certain female (not to be named) was sitting at a crowded bar called Castaways down in Myrtle Beach, talking to some cute guy that she had just met. She pulled out a cigarette, he suavely lit it for her, and then it exploded, bringing with it a moment of total silence and astonishment at this very loud, violent non sequitur. I am not sure there is a standard response for a guy when this type of thing happens to a chick that he is chatting up.