She couldn’t really say how this happened, but here she was, now in her mid-sixties about to light up a pipe full after having been straight for over thirty-five years.
She had run with the best of them back in the hey days of the sixties when everyone of a certain age was pie-eyed from tokin’ it up. She could roll it, snort it, pop it, bake it, and take it – partying full-tilt anytime of the day or night.
There were days back then when she rolled one to have with her morning coffee and then continued to smoke all through the day and into late nights spent philosophizing about every minute thought that came into her brain.
She enjoyed getting high. It wasn’t the same dull, sick feeling she got from drinking alcohol, although she did like to have a couple of beers or a margarita – even a shot of tequila was fun…. But marijuana was more of a mental high that let her mind roam easily, freely, and delightfully into the depths and crevices of thought bringing inspiration, light, and levity along with it.
It was also just fun to get high in a friendly social setting. She’d been in plenty of smoking circles among instant friends brought together by their love of the weed.
After college and when her kids were little, she decided that it wasn’t kosher for her to be smoking pot, drinking, and partying while trying to impart the
Noble Eightfold Path of Righteousness:
- Right View
- Right Intention
- Right Speech
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Concentration
She gave it all up at once – the smoking, the drinking, the scandalous behavior that co-starred in her formative years. She did still have lascivious thoughts – mostly about her husband, Jack, and the occasional expletive escaped her seafarer’s mouth, but she was straight for all those years.
Now in retirement, her children grown and on to their own lives, her students just a memory on Facebook, she pondered… lit the match and took the toke that seemed like embracing a long lost friend. She smiled. Only two or three hits of this new California sensimilla was all that was necessary. Jack was asleep or she could tell him that she was now officially a proponent of medical marijuana. The minor aches and pains of her well-traveled body subsided.
A little crooked smile remained pasted on her face for two hours as she watched a Bollywood feature alone in the dark with Jack soundly asleep next to her. A new chapter was just beginning and she was already liking it a lot.
The movie was over and Jack woke up momentarily, “Are you high?” he asked sleepily.
She was already fondling him, “You know what I like to do when I’ve smoked a little reefer, don’t you?”
“I never thought you needed a chemical prompt to do that,” he said as he submitted to her marital right. Their love still burned like a hot box of purple haze. “Hmmm…” They both sighed and fell asleep in the absolute comfort that comes from decades of commitment.
“Hmmm…” They were both smiling… “Light My Fire”… The song went through her head melding the past, present, and future into one. “Come on baby, Light My Fire.”
(First published 1/26/12)
