Another story about getting too high
When will I ever learn
You know when your adult child comes to visit for a couple of days, and you’re so excited to see him? And you’re like, I need to impress him with how cool we are, so he comes more often?
So you go to a modern art museum and resist regaling him with stories about how he used to cavort among the Rodins at the Brooklyn Museum when he was an adorable preschooler. But you think it. You think it hard. And then you walk around the nearby town’s Main Street, with its aggressively charming stores and cafes, and you get a snack and some coffee, and then your adult child says, hey, look, a dispensary.
And you think, well, he’s an adult, after all; we can be cool about this. And it’s not like he’s hidden his weed habit from you. (You used to wish he would try to hide it a little.) So you enter the dispensary. It’s one of the higher-end dispensaries you’ve been in, with prices to match. And then you think: Hey, maybe I should buy something for me. Sure, the last hundred times I’ve smoked or had an edible have been either a disappointment or an outright disaster, but this time surely things will be different!
And anyway maybe you just haven’t found the right strain, yet? Maybe this is the magical elixir that will hit exactly the right note? And you’re not drinking anymore! Life is hard, and you deserve a moment of escape!
So you buy expensive gummies. Listen: You—
OK enough with the second-person
Fine: I knew it was a bad idea. I did! I mean I suspected. But I was also hopeful. Because the nice young woman behind the counter pronounced these gummies her “favorite” and said they were perfect when you want to unwind at the end of the day. And that’s what I want to do! I want to unwind all the time! I’m very wound!
I took one right before we headed to a restaurant for dinner. “This will be fun,” I thought. “What could go wrong,” I thought.
What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t have known, was that a couple of hours later—just as the edible kicked in, and I was realizing I was so much higher than I had anticipated—I would get a work call.
I’m in the middle of a creative project, and I have to be vague right now (sorry) but suffice it to say it’s both fun and kinda trippy, for lack of a better word, and the call was a request for some work that needed to be done imminently. “Imminently” was really “the next morning” but in my panicked, super-high state, I heard it as WE NEED YOU TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW and the problem was that as I was being told what the “this” was, I was also forgetting everything that was being said, because: high. So high. And I was focusing so hard on sounding normal. Only I couldn’t remember what a normal person sounded like.
I managed to get off the phone without saying anything like “I’m definitely not high right now; I am a normal person doing normal things, normal normal normal.” I then immediately began to rant to Henry and Scott about how I had no idea what was being asked of me and what was I going to do, and the only possible answer was to email them immediately confessing that I was high and also a bad person.
Fortunately Scott stopped me before I could remember how email works. Then I housed a whole bunch of cookies, like a real stereotype.
A little later we were sitting around the living room and Leo wasn’t replying to my commands to sit on my lap (even he knew I was ridiculous) and I said, “why does our word not compel him?”
Well: This struck me as the funniest thing that had ever been said by anyone, and I could not stop laughing. Guess this is what kills me, I thought. (I texted it to myself, which is how I remember. Actually first Scott and Henry had to tell me what I said, and then I texted it to myself.)
I suspected that my family was tiring of my antics, so naturally, I had to call Abby. First I texted her and told her about the work emergency and she was like “why are you getting calls after dinner, are you a spy?” and I don’t think she fully understood how high I was even though I kept telling her, so then I called her. Our conversation took both 10 minutes and 10 hours, and I remember exactly none of it.
Then I called Deanna and all I can recall of that conversation is she kept reassuring me that I was hilarious and adorable which was good because I was sure I was infuriating and terrible and that everyone hated me.
(“Sometimes I get a little paranoid—will I get paranoid with this?” I asked the young woman at the dispensary. “Absolutely not,” she said. Deceiver! False witness!)
I then returned to Scott and Henry and asked them if they were sure I sounded normal on that work call, and Scott was like “yes” in a tone that implied I had asked them many, many, many times already. And I thought OK FINE SORRY I’M A MONSTER but what I said was “Goodnight!” and I went and hid upstairs where no one would judge me.
In conclusion: I now have a bag of expensive gummies I’m afraid to ever try again. Maybe if I take half? (I will, apparently, never learn.)