Remember when “gay” meant “happy” or “festive” as in “we had a gay old time?” Then there was a period when straight people felt just a wee bit odd at Christmas singing lines like “don we now our gay apparel” and “everyone’s happy and gay.”
We knew it was silly but we gradually stopped using the word gay to describe bright colours or the good time we had because we didn’t want to say the wrong thing and we didn’t know what the wrong thing was.
Now I’ll go through all that again when I hear myself saying that we (Newman and I) are going to pot. Ha ha again.
I can tell you that in these legal times. I can tell funny stories like when one of the Daughters asked for a grow light for Christmas and I was so pleased that she was taking an interest in gardening.
I’ve never smoked pot. I am so old that pot wasn’t around in Corner Brook when I was a teenager. I can’t speak for Newman but he says he didn’t either, and I can’t speak for St. John’s because anything could have been happening in there and we wouldn’t have known it in Corner Brook.
The first time I was exposed to pot I was 20 years old and living in Belleville, Ont. It seemed like overnight our parties went from being one big happy crowd to two distinct crowds at the same party; the drinkers and the pot smokers. As my refined palate had already discovered Tom Collins and Baby Duck I decided one vice was enough. Plus I didn’t even know how to smoke cigarettes and my pot-smoking buddies joked that pot would be wasted on me.
Fast forward to 2013. I’m a newly minted cancer survivor who would do just about anything to stay that way and I read an article on the front page of this paper about a man with cancer (a doctor?) who, from his own experience, swore by the benefits of medical marijuana.
Daughters immediately went online, searched out a reputable source and before I could say “in my day a joint was a body part” a small vial of what looked like tar showed up in my kitchen.
Daughter # 1 prepared “a small amount on the tip of a toothpick dissolved in a cup of hot water” and I lay in the backyard while Daughter # 2 hung out my laundry. When she started looking like she was floating and I realized I couldn’t get up from the chair I momentarily forgot about the ‘tea’ and thought I must be having a stroke. I didn’t know how to tell them that their mother who was having chemo was also having a stroke.
Daughters got a great kick out of helping me to the couch while I started giggling uncontrollably. I progressed to laughing and babbling for I don’t know how long. Everything was hilarious. I caught Daughters taping me and I managed to warn them not to dare post it on “the Facebook” which they also got a great kick out of.
Medical marijuana is not supposed to do that. Daughter # 1 decided maybe she had used too much. In a couple of weeks I was willing to give it another try and mixed the most miniscule amount, but I got floaty again so that was that. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the vial but I have my suspicions. Ha ha.
I can tell you that in these legal times. I can tell funny stories like when one of the Daughters asked for a grow light for Christmas and I was so pleased that she was taking an interest in gardening.
I still don’t smoke, but I do love me a brownie. I have no idea if I will decide to try a new flavoured brownie because I’m a bit thankful that I still have only one vice, (if you don’t call daily consumption of potato chips a vice.)
I don’t want any more vices. What if I like it? Will I like it enough to give up my old friends Marilyn Merlot and Jungle Gin? Or will I end up with two vices? Or maybe I won’t like it because I am afraid of heights. High, get it? Ha ha.
For us Boomers, it’s a whole new world. A pothead is not just a whale and you don’t necessarily call an exterminator for a roach.
Janice Wells lives in St. John’s. She can be reached at [email protected].
