That special sort of family time

So sorry about your recent loss bb... I would have said something earlier but frankly I haven't been visiting here as much as I meant to (and apparently I'm not the only one).

I lost my dad about 7 years ago and it really sucked. Still does. But don't worry, it does get better.

So I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a pot smoker and have been for years. I'm not a stoner or anything, but one of what I think is a large number of Americans who partake in the comfort of their own home unbenownst to their own neighbors who would be shocked... mostly be cause they're doing the same thing.

So, my dad had been a pot-smoker for as long as I remember but I'd always avoided it. One of the first times I ever got high was with my dad; and while we're stoned, my mom calls. Some of you reading this will be only casually acquainted with marijuana or some may be complete strangers to it; but there's a big difference between being high and being stoned. It's not just colloquial. High is "oh that's nice" "or wow that feels good" or "Dane Cook is funny" or something like that. Stoned is more like "What's the guy in the back of the room at the Dane Cook show I'm watching saying ... I can just about make it out over Whatever the hell this Dane Cook guy is saying" or "hey, I should totally write a blog entry about getting stoned with dad and then make a casual reference to my being stoned while writing it and see if anyone can figure out my secret." You see what I mean.

Before I forget, I always have this mental conversation with myself when I'm stoned that I always want to write down but I'm never stupid enough to be online when I'm smoking. So it goes like this "When I'm really stoned I have these mental conversations with myself about whether the clever insights and good ideas I come up with when I'm stoned are actually clever or good implying that somehow my brain is higher-functioning when I'm high or if it's the opposite -- that my ideas are no more clever or good than usual, it's just that my IQ has quickly dipped to the point that mundane concepts seem to be brilliant. Take for instance Bingo Night in America.

So I'm stoned with my dad and my Mom calls. They weren't living together but they were still on good terms, so it wasn't that she was calling, it was that I answered the phone and I was baked and I look at dad and he gives me the "crap, we're busted" look and tries not to laugh. I was in that place in your mind where you think you can have a normal conversation, but you accomplish it by slowly telling yourself what to say as if you're in that most imitated scene in all of sitcome-land, the scene from Cyrano where the one guy is feeding lines to the not-so-smart guy who's repeating them to the hot chick on the balcony. Oddly, it's not as cliche as the scene that Cyrano is borrowing from, Romeo and Juliet, but it is vastly more imitated, meaning that all of those sitcom homages are actually covers of the cover. [note to me tomorrow, that was one of those things that sounded really smart when i was writing it].

So, it was funny at the time. And I have no idea if she knew or not.

Life goes on, remember the good times, live in the moment, yada, yada, yada.