The Punk and the Professor. Billy Lawrence

propose,

      “Hey, you all wanna get stoned? You know, smoke a joint?”

      And you would pretend you did it a hundred times before and say,

      “All right, man, if you got it.”

      The older kid would spark up the rolled paper joint and pass it to you. You’d suck it in the way the older kid did, but you’d cough like crazy for some reason. Within minutes you’d be full of giggles you just couldn’t shake.

      We all went through it. For me, it was Don’s sister’s friend Simon. He had gotten me stoned with a clip of a joint when I was thirteen. We’d bump into each other out walking the streets. Since he was twenty-one, he had also picked up alcohol for me a few times. One day Simon gave me a full joint and told me to share it with my friends.

      For Steven, Ryan, and Gene, I was that kid who made the proposal to get stoned for the first time. Andy was there that day too, but he declined and left to go play basketball. Paul was into a girl, and Jeff was into skate boarding, so their first time would be deferred. Steven, Ryan, Gene, and I went to the Catholic school parking lot down the road from the junior high. We sat on the curb and lit the joint, our very first full joint. We coughed hard.

      “Take it in easy,” I told them.

      No one ever understands until they have that first cough. You also never again feel the way you felt the first few times getting stoned. Maybe that’s why people end up smoking so much— they chase that initial bliss. The silly giggles. Coughs turn to laughs and laughs turn to coughs.

      We were on a new path. For some of us this was exactly what those old folks in suits called it, the gateway drug. But if it hadn’t been pot, it would’ve been something else and if it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else offering them their first high. So I’m glad we got to share this together.

      $$$

      Steven and I didn’t smoke anything that night in my room. In fact, we always had such real down to Earth conversations about life. He only clowned around when we were out with other friends. One on one, he was as mellow as they come, most of the time.

      Early the next morning, my father came to get me. He pulled up in his truck. Steven and I climbed up. We laughed and hollered all the way to Steven’s house to drop him off. My father pulled the horn as we drove away and I waved to Steven.

      The next day in school, Steven told me how great my dad was. I told him I didn’t call him my dad, and that he was more like a father who came around once in a while. He had a point though. I could have had it so much worse— a criminal, complete abandonment, or someone like Steven’s dad who stuck around and abused them. Someone in my family had told me I was lucky my father wasn’t around, for my own safety.

      My father wasn’t the greatest, but he wasn’t the worst. Steven’s father might have been. He was always in and out of work. He would disappear for months, sometimes to his other home at the county jail. When he was home there were months where he would lay around in his underwear drinking and looking scruffy like the stereotypical drunk. Steven’s mother always worked long hours. It was all on her. She drove a beat up old Chevy and smoked Camels, which added to her raspy voice and aged skin. Her sister lived with them in the house. So did the grandfather, grandmother, and his uncle for a time. The grandfather died at some point in late elementary school. The grandmother lived out her years in a back room with daily visits from a public health aide from the state. They all smoked outside now that the emphysema had kicked in on grandma.

      $$$