John Popper

I was a pretty fat kid.

So was it one of those things where you just gassed it and it made a different sound, but it didn't go anywhere?

That's how you knew it was working.

But you weren't moving.

And I put a gas mask on the headlight to make it look really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was awesome.

Yeah, I remember mopeds.

Yes.

And it had the top tank, but the engine was missing, so it was like someone shot out the middle part of the engine.

It's really... Everyone got...

Everyone, I didn't have a moped.

People would ride by me and go, why don't you get a real motorcycle?

Right.

Well, it's sort of all the danger of a real motorcycle and none of the cool.

Well, you know why I got it was we moved on my 16th birthday from Stanford, and the driving age in Connecticut is 16, and the driving age in New Jersey is 17.

And my parents told me this on moving day, which happened to be my birthday.

Mm-hmm.

Guess what?

You're not driving for – so I used the guilt that I was quite good at being a Catholic to get a moped, which you could get a thing for.