Weed

"Choose your friends. Don't let your friends choose you. "

I'd moved from Southern California, where I'd lived all my life in the same house, to Sacramento. My three older brothers all stayed in southern california. I had no friends and I had a horrible time making any. A year had passed and I still had very few people I could hang out with. The one friend I could call up, a transplant himself from Texas, was a bully named Jake.

I was in summer school and Robbie, the kid who sat in front of me in the Hawaiian shirt complimented me on my David Bowie t-shirt. I thanked him and we didn't exchange much converstaion after that but he always laughed when I clowned in class.

The last day of school came and I decided I would seize this opportunity to make a friend. I had become so neurotic socialy that I had butterflies in my stomach as I contimplated asking him if he wanted to hang out.

"Hey dude, you said you liked David Bowie."

"Yeah?"

"Well Labrynth is on HBO tonight, you want to come watch it?"

"Yeah that sounds cool."

I gave him my address and it turned out he didn't live too far from me. Mere minutes by bicycle. We swam and watched Labrynth. He ended up staying the night and my mom, so glad to see me hanging out with such a nice kid took us to rent a whole pile of horror films.

Robbie offered me some weed. Dammit all. I just wanted a friend. I wasn't going to let the weed keep me from being friends with Robbie. After all I attended continuation school with lots of stoners and they were nice enough. I told him I didn't smoke and I sat with him on the roof outside my window while he loaded his pipe and toked away.

I was friends with Robbie and his stoner buddies all that summer, skateboarding and watching movies, Brazil, Monty Python, The Wall, every horror film ever made. Everyone was amazed that I had never smoked pot but after awhile it was just my little quirk. Brook didn't like pizza, Robbie had really weird parents and Keith didn't smoke pot.

Then, one day, I sat watching some porno films from Robbie's parents collection while the rest of the gang was in the garage getting loaded. Robbie came in, poured what was left of a two litre bottle of Coke into my glass and started cutting the bottom off. Then he got a pictcher and filled it with water.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked him.

"I'm making a gravity bong." I followed him into the smoke filled garage, curious about this contraption. I was amazed as they showed me how it worked and I loudly expained it back to them.

"You've created a simple artificial lung. As you lift the bottle out of the water the water flows out of it expanding the capacity of the lung. Nature abhors a vaccumme so air has to get in to fill the space. The air naturally enter where it finds the least resistence, through the spout, through the weed, which you light, and the bong actually takes the hit. The smoke cools in this lung instead of yours and then you get a nice cool hit. Wow!"

Four stoners sat staring at me. Brook was the first to respond to my science lesson. "You want a hit?"

Yeah. I did. I took a hit. It was science. I took a big cool hit from the artificial lung. I didn't feel anything.

"You got to give it time." Brook said as he took a big rip of his own.

After everyone had smoked their share we hopped on our bikes and headed to the flea market.

"I still don't feel anything. Maybe I won't. You know I used to take ritalin and it didn't do much to me because I'm hyper, but if you took it'd be like speed. Maybe hyper kids don't get high either."

We got to the flea market and as I stepped off my bike, I felt it. I felt it in my foot hitting the ground. I felt it in the skin of my face as it tightened in the warm sun. The sky was blue, it was a gorgeous day. "Guys, I'm stoned."

My four friends raised a cheer and we went into the flea market. This place was just made for stoned kids. Mini donuts and lots of blinking lights and trippy things you might miss without that special marijuana brand concentration. Elaborate would carvings that boggled the mind with their tiny, intricate details.

I found a t-shirt booth and had to buy three; Pluto, as in Micky Mouse's dog shaking between to fire hydrants with "Decisions, decisions" written above him, Spuds McKinsey, the Budweiser dog, splattered across the road by a passing Coors truck and the prize winnner, a caterpillar, in glasses, giving some love to a crinkle cut french fry as the french fry proclaims, "Get off of me you asshole! I'm a french fry." It was, I was sure, the funniest thing I'd ever seen.

It felt great to get back on our bikes and enjoy the awesome weather. This was weed? I'd been drunk, once and it was mostly headaches and dizzyness, not so different from too much sugar or hyperventilating, but this. This was amazing. Damn I was hungry.

We got back to Robbie's and invaded the kitchen. Frozen pizzas, sodas, french fries, ha ha "I'm a french fry!". Robbie's dad was a survivalist and kept the house amazingly well stocked in food with an extra couple of freezers in the garage. Robbie's dad worked 24 hour shift at the fire house so we had it made. I called my folks, and managed to act normal as I asked to stay late at Robbies. I didn't want to go home until this wore off.

I discovered then that weed did indeed hit me a bit different than the other kids. For one, it made them lethargic but it made me talkaltive and more hyper than usual. It also lasted for hours. I assumed this was just a first time thing and that I would develope a tolerance but I was wrong. I would always be a hyper stoner.