Weed

Michael Phelps smoking from a bong. Oh, the horror. I am more turned off by his goofy face and his lumpy nuts on display for all to see. Personally, I find him to be a complete tool. He should be smoking weed, I think it will do his personality a world of good. I was curious if he put Scope in it. That is what we used to do in college. Stoned with minty fresh breath, the only way to attend a keg party with groping boys. Then of course I want to know if it was named. We always named our bongs. There was: Smokestack, Precious, and Little Jimmy. I remember the party when Smokestack took a 20 ft. plunge out of a second story window. He lived. It was miraculous. We spent more time wrangling with the big cosmic mystery of that event then I ever put into a paper on Victorian Literature. A class I would attend stoned out of my mind and passed with an A-. Silas Marner takes on an entire new life when read with the aid of recreational drugs. I'd also get stoned for my Feminist Literature class. That was where the "non-traditional" student told us her story in a raspy voice of how she gave birth to a 5 lb tumor all the time she had been under the assumption it was a baby. "I named it, wouldn't you?!" She'd challenge, pointing at us with nicotine stained fingers poking out from under her wool cloak she wore every day. I nodded along in agreement, fearful of her furry upper lip and onion smell. Two years of college at a state school in the woods of NH will send anyone screaming back to the city.

My father was a big pot smoker when I was a kid. The weird thing is that I never really figured that out until I was in college. I can remember the first time someone said something to me while they were holding in a hit. That strange voice people emit when they are talking while holding in their breath. I made the connection when my roommate's boyfriend asked me if I wanted some pasta after inhaling. I had heard people talk holding in hits all the time in high school, but usually it was some sort of comment on the weed itself. Not a everyday type of question. Hearing someone ask me something that my father would say jolted me into the realization that he had been stoned as well. It all became clear to me. "Chrissy, put on your shoes it's time to go to the museum." he'd squeak out. Ding!

My dad's love for hide and seek became easier to understand. He would always want to play this game with my sister and I when we were little. My mother would go to teach crochet classes at Adult Education and dad would be in charge. I can remember walking through my house terrified because I could not find the man, but I could hear him giggling. He was having the time of his life, and we were having a nervous breakdown. My dad is a tiny Italian guy. He would perch up on top of the radiator in our bathroom. Crouching in the dark like a wee Ninja. Gloriously high, and waiting to scare the absolute shit out of his kids.

Then of course there was my Dad's office. My dad had a massive wooden desk in the sun room that I used to love to sit and play at. He had drawers filled with all sorts of crazy stuff that I would mess with. I would drag all of my Barbies in there and pretend it was a hotel I'd put them to sleep in the many drawers. Here, rest your weary backs in this you poor boob-filled creatures. I had this one thing I had excavated that I thought was a wonderful way to catapult my pretty girls into the pool I had made for them out of my Mom's Tupperwear. Ingenious. My hotel had a pool, and my pool had a great bouncy thing to help the long legged creatures in the water.

Two months into my freshman year of college we were all sitting around a couch on a Friday night preparing to head out into whatever the evening held for us. My friend, Stash decided it was warm enough that we should walk and smoke a joint along the way. He was attempting to roll it but kept having issues, he told us to hold on a minute he was going out to his van to get something. So typical but yes, he really did have a van. He used it to follow the Dead down the east coast and sell oranges and the homemade bracelets he wove with his feet. He came back with this plastic contraption and set it on the table and began to line it with a rolling paper. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I actually yelled out, "Oh my God! A Barbie trampoline! Where did you get this? I have not seen one of these since I was 8 years old!" Silence..., then laughter. I knew right away. Another glaring chunk of proof that my dad was hardcore. My Barbies swam with weed dust on their feet. I took a hit of the joint and someone sitting next to me asked if I really had played with a joint roller with my dolls. I answered with my intake voice, "Put your shoes on everyone, it's time to go to the party."