I guess it was having closer proximity (of course, not too close) to members of the opposite sex (moreso than today. It's a rarer occurrence for me to be near females unless I'm at a bar or something.)
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sharePost 2001: A Spaced Odyssey
This was one of the most memorable and forgettable nights of my life.
January 2006, my senior year, I had turned 18 a few weeks prior, and wouldn't graduate for several months. I finished school in the top 50 of my 800 student class. I'd always been a good boy, worked pretty hard in school and never broke too many rules, certainly not laws; my dad had been a high ranking cop in town my whole life, and still was. I was a virgin.
My best friend then and now had recently smoked weed and I was sort of shocked to hear it. He was just as good of a student if not better than I. He had hung out with someone we knew to be something of a deadbeat, and I was skeptical, but the narrative of his experience really drew me in. If he could get high and not die, why couldn't I? Didn't I deserve a little fun after always deferring to my parents' near puritan teachings? I decided I must try this thing, as an experiment, and never do it again.
Up until this point I rarely went out late into the evenings, even on a Saturday, and rarely ventured into the city from the burbs. Most of my city-going experiences were to the Landmark Lagoon theater to see an indie film downtown. This night was to be a fresh experience unlike any I had had before.
Minnesota Orchestra performs Led Zeppelin featuring rock band Zebra was on the ticket. This was my cover, and we did go, but this night was so much more.
My friend Matt was my connection with the bad boys. He wanted to try it again and show me the ropes, but neither of us knew any way besides hanging with the stoners. Turns out I actually really liked them, and could have been their good friends if we'd only given each other the chance sooner. School was up sooner than we knew and this was really the only night we ever properly hung out.
They picked me up; I was the last one to join the two experienced potheads plus Matt. I sat shotgun as apparently that was protocol for the newbie. I think they were hesitant...
at first, thinking I might be trying to screw them over or narc them out, but we all loosened up a bit and slow-rolled on the back roads of our town.
My hometown was a fairly large well-to-do burb on the edge of farm country, sort of the divide between city and country. This made it easy for us to find a road to cruise down and spark my first bowl. For those not in-the-know, experienced weed smokers have no problem driving vehicles and getting high at the same time. Dangerous? Probably risky, but we considered it less of a risk than hotboxing in a parked vehicle and having cops wonder what we were up to just killing time. A moving vehicle allows you to air it out as you go, and as long as you signal your turns and stop for signs, there's no reason to be pulled over.
Being the uninitiated, I was offered greens. This means I could take the hit off a fresh bowl and taste only the earthy goodness of the cannabis. I had previously taken one small hit off a makeshift socket pipe at Boy Scout camp when I was 13, but felt no effects and considered it over-hyped. This night would be different, I understood the potency and was determined to get stoned and really evaluate what it was all about.
When I was about to spark the greens, the weed guru guide of our journey cued this song:
https://youtu.be/XKghOWz5d0g
I took as big of a hit as I could, and boy did I cough. Thanks to my guides (and a certain blonde-haired surfer girl) I knew this would get me higher. Embrace the cough. At first I thought nothing was going to happen; this is crap, I thought, and what a waste.
Then the song started to take over.
A sign that passed by on the back road seemed huge, and moved in slow motion. Everything from this point on was like a movie. Little snippets stand out that I can recall vividly, and other periods of time are total blackout.
I remember a hunger that overwhelmed me, we must eat, I thought, and luckily our gurus had planned to stop off...
I remember pulling into the Old Country Buffet parking lot. The line was long, it was a rush time apparently, and we didn't want to wait. We couldn't.
When getting back in the car I couldn't control my body and I slammed into my new buddy's pull-out cupholder, busting it clean off. Don't worry about it he said, I was embarrassed but soon forgot about it. Things were framey, like the opening credits of Reservoir Dogs, like the sight version of hearing through a fan, flanging.
Suddenly I was at Wendy's. I already had a spread of food and was gorging. It tasted so good. The first several times I got stoned I experienced something I call "throat marbles." When you're eating something, especially a greasy, delicious burger, the bits of chewed food bounce down and around your throat like through a pinball machine. It feels wonderful.
I remember being on the streets of Minneapolis, wanting to eat again, trying to find a Subway, but we don't even go, and I'm not sure how we got downtown. My hometown is about a 20 minute drive from the city, but I barely remember the journey. I vaguely recall a 2nd (or 3rd) round of weed smoking on the freeway en route. I remember that after I was already high, the once funky and weird smelling pot was now like candy to my nose. I couldn't get enough.
We were at the concert, I remember loving it, but what was about 2 hours seemed like 10 minutes. I don't have a lot of memory of the actual event, except that I thought they did Zep justice, and then we were gone.
I remember being dropped off and hoping my parents would be asleep, only horrified to find my dad waiting up. I talked about the show, and I felt like I kept my cool, but there's no way I was coherent and he must have known. He never said anything.
I slept so well, and had a strange weed hangover feeling for the entire day after. I remember feeling like it was the most fun I ever had.
I had planned to smoke weed once, and call it quits. Let's just say it didn't work out like that. I didn't smoke for the remainder of high school, and for months it seemed like a crazy one-off.
When I started at college the next fall I experienced a reawakening of my stoner self, and I wouldn't change a thing. I spent 12 years smoking all the damn time, and I had some great experiences, but none were ever quite like the queer through-the-looking-glass feeling of that first mad stone.
I haven't smoked marijuana for about 6 months now, and I feel pretty good about it, but part of me misses those heady days. I may go back, but for now I'm enjoying a clear head and whatever comes next.
I was in a class with my music teacher. He had his computer screen projected onto the wall as he was demonstrating something to us and there were all these word documents on his desktop of various song parts (lyrics, notes and whatnot). He had the song title names on each document with the word "parts" right at the end. One of the songs was called "My Girl"
I was genuinely confused when I read that and I pointed it out to him then we both laughed. He had had literally no idea about the double entendre when he wrote it.
Me going to Disneyland with my job skills training classmates when I was a senior in high school, me hanging out with a bunch of lovely ladies who I enjoyed hanging out with in high school and the music i was discovering in high school.
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