But I look back on my time with marijuana with great respect. I stand behind it 100%. I don’t know why I still don’t do it three times a day like I used to, back in 1996. It never did me a single lick of harm, even though I always felt like I abused it. I JUST ADMITTED IT TO THEM ONE DAY:
My mom will not let me touch the washing machine, or any of her household appliances. Though I’ve done my own wash for years, she still doubts I won’t fuck up her precious washer and dryer. So when I bring my laundry home, she insists on doing it for me. Fine.
One day while she washed my clothes while I watched TV, she yelled from the family room balcony so the whole house could hear: “Mike, your marijuana fell out of your pocket.”
I didn't have any on me (though my sister and I used to get very stoned before Thanksgiving Dinner: that was our own holiday tradition. God, trying not to laugh was murder.But haven't done any drugs since 1996)
But reflexively, I panicked. Ran upstairs to see what was up.
My mom held up a pair of my jeans that hovered above a pile of dark blue lint. Lint had fallen from the pocket. Like my mom doesn't know the difference?
“God, mom, it’s lint.” I said as I picked it up and inspected the debris. Half out of breath from running up the stairs.
“You better not be smoking pot.” She mumbled.
I stopped, stood up, and announced from the balcony so the whole house could hear “Mom, you KNOW I smoke pot.”
“Well…” she paused, pregnantly, “…you better not be doing it a lot.”
I quit while I was ahead with her and didn’t mention that, despite my honor roll status at college, I was smoking a lot. A LOT.
It took a long time for my parents to respect me or take me seriously at all. About anything. They do now.
I can see in so many of his actions that, especially my dad admires me, wants to be down.
He used to be, but is no longer, very hardheaded. At my current age, he discusses things
with me. I definitely impose my opinion on him, more than he does on me. No doubt.
EXAMPLE:
He plays guitar. He’s o.k. at it, doesn't take it seriously. But he might have quit had I not taken up music myself.
Though he plays very little, he will go out and spend hundreds of dollars on new guitar supplies, because he knows that it will engage me.
We will have much to talk about while he’s shopping for this guitar he's buying, which he doesn’t need at all and will hardly ever use, except when I come to Ft Myers to visit (he was in hog heaven when I was going out with MY EX-GIRLFRIEND who I was in the band with. We'd both come to Ft. Myers and play music with him: her being twice as good as me on the guitar. He was amazed at us. Especially her. It was always very touching to see the two of them play together and laugh. But that’s beside the point).
I shred on the axe and I hang out with girls who shred on the axe and I do good in school and my dad respects me because of that. You take what you can get.
So when I told my parents I smoked dope (I don't anymore), they had enough faith in me where my declaration actually made them believe that I was, if not right about smoking pot, at least O.K. It was their first step toward doubting the bullshit they had had heaped on them by the media.
By announcing that I smoked pot to my entire family, I felt proud that I had struck a blow for my friend, marijuana Which I, sadly, left in 1996.
Recently I had a phone conversation with my dad. He got on the topic of how he’d heard of this new drug, Ecstasy. How it was killing people, making their heads explode, making them rape their siblings, whatever. You know the drill.
It was so frustrating hearing him regurgitate media bullshit. So I tried to explain to him how that wasn’t the case. How the ecstasy was being put in category in which it didn’t belong because the media just had to have something to talk about. To blow out of proportion. I gave the basic defenses. You know that drill too.
He kept reiterating the false dangers of ecstasy when, remembering my past success with defending pot, blurted out, “I’ve done ecstasy, and it’s not like that at all.”
“You have?” He said. Obviously scared.
I doubted myself for doing that to him.
See, I have two older stepbrothers and a stepsister who live in Iowa. His children from a previous marriage. We are not close to any of them:
Shannon: She is a nurse. No problem there.
Sean: He is the dart champion of the state of Iowa. And while this seems like an astute achievement, it is also a sign that he spends too much time in bars. He does. He has a problem. It causes my dad much worry.
Then there is Kevin. Kevin is a truck driver who is now approaching 40 (my father is 62). I could write a novel on the way Kevin lives: transgressing the country with his son in tow. Living in a beautiful truck, which he owns. Prostitutes and drug dealers knocking on the truck door as they sleep at night. An inconceivable life in the eyes of a spoiled white boy likes me.
After however many years, it has recently come out that Kevin is addicted to drugs. Crack cocaine etc. I actually can’t believe that his lifestyle did not precipitate this sooner. But nonetheless, we all just found out and my dad is sick in his soul about it. Kevin had to sell his truck. Drugs have ruined him.
That's what I hear. We're not very close.
But eventually with people like Kevin, SOMETHING is going to ruin them anyway.
While I may have some perspective on even hard drugs, a perspective I try to impose upon my father, telling him Kevin will make it through. To my dad, drugs = death. This whole thing is driving him fucking nuts. I know it is.
Which brings me to why I feel bad for blurting out my admission about ecstasy to my father: my dad is so far removed from drug culture. And while he respects me, and what I do in my life effects how he feels about certain issues: I think I’ve started something horrible. I think I overestimated how strong of an influence I am.
In this case, he’s not going to just change his mind because I said “it’s not true.”
I think I’ve spun my father off into the frightening belief that, “My SMART son is on the wrong track too…?”
But there’s no turning back from what I said, and I have no idea how to quell his fears. I might as well have said I’d done cocaine (which I have only even seen one time in my whole life and would never even THINK of CONSIDERING trying it. I’m high strung enough).
I’m suppose to go home this Easter, (four Easters since the last time I touched any drugs at all), to teach him how to use a new drum machine he just bought (which has something to do with him noticing I have an interest in electronic music. He's always jockin my shit).
While we’re bonding over music, I need to find a way to let him know I’m not in trouble.
WHEN I STARTED THIS JOURNAL I wanted it to be funny all the time. I think lots of it is.
Oddly enough I was in a horrible slump of a mood the funnier the journal was.
Now I’m in a great mood and I feel like I’m being too morbid in these pages.
I hope it’s still interesting for you people who read it. Just drop me a line if it’s not.
Don’t worry, I’ll be in a bad mood again soon enough.
HOME
Great Minds in the Commonplace
FunKruze