As an overall free spirit (whatever that means) living in Seattle, I've found myself around a lot of hippies over the years. A hippie, like any other race, must defy the stereotypes linked to them. My roommate's friend is by all accounts as near as one can get to the classic definition of a hippie. He's a sweetheart of a guy, free-spirited, veggie-happy, hash-lovin', and damn close to homeless.

A couple months ago, my roommate and I were enjoying a quiet weeknight, watching old South Park and doing our fair share of giggling at the episode entitled "Die Hippie, Die". You probably recall it - Cartman single-handedly tries to prevent South Park from being overrun by hippies; namely in the form of a dreaded music festival.

Right as we finished watching the episode, my roomie's friend called and asked if he could stop by for a drink. So he swung by the house, coincidentally with a young hippiechick in tow. He found I mean met her at a music festival a couple weeks earlier and she simply hadn't gone home yet. Her name was Sage. But I may have accidentally called her Jade once or twice.

I retired to my bedroom early in the evening after trying to make conversation with Sage and quickly discovering that her head wasn't around the vicinity of this dimension, which made it generally tough to engage with her. Later on as I was sitting in my room reading, the door swung open and Sage stumbled in with her long disheveled red dreads, announcing that she was there to meet my kitty. Without hesitation, she came over to the bed, laid down next to me and proceeded to spoon my cat.

Despite my confusion on what was happening and being caught off guard by the whole lack of knocking, I thought of Eric Cartman spraying the hippies to disperse the drum circle. In my head I called out, "Can someone come scrape the hippie off my bed!?" My cat was gone in an instant. But Sage remained, seemingly comfortable right where she lay (2:15 and 4:20-mark).

A different Sage-less night, I was having a great discussion with the OH (original hippie) about life and labor, related to a recent back-breaking job he had. He said something that has stuck with me since because it seems semi-useful, though I wasn't sure what to make of it: "Every time I think something is hard work, I remind myself that it wasn't as hard as rainbow gathering."