Now that California rep Loretta Sanchez has said that “California should explore a pilot program of legal, regulated marijuana,” I feel the time has come to confess my recent flirtation with the Gateway Drug. I live in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood very near a city park. There is often unsavory activity in this park at night, as evidenced by the beer cans and discarded condoms often found near the play equipment (eww). One day a couple of months ago, I went down there with the dog and noticed a tiny, unusual plant growing in a crack in the pavement under the pavilion. (I’m one of those look-downward people – I find a lot of pennies and four-leaf-clovers.) So I crouched down for a closer look and sure enough, it seemed to have tiny seven-pointed leaves. Could this be…pot? It was perfectly conceivable that a seed from someone’s stash had lodged itself in a crack, just like the pea in the Hans Christian Anderson story, and was valiantly struggling for life.
I plucked it from the sidewalk and held it in the palm of my hand, thrilling to the knowledge that by pulling a little plant out of a crack in the sidewalk at a public park, I had in fact committed a crime. Then – I know you’ll love this part – I brought it home and potted it up in a little 4-inch pot and stuck in in the greenhouse on the heat mat, right next to the tomato seed flats. I don’t know what possessed me – smoking dope makes me sick as a dog and I haven’t tried it since college, and I certainly wasn’t planning to offer it to the neighbors along with the rosemary and mint I already keep them supplied with. I suppose, as Geraldine used to say, the devil made me do it.
Well, it died. And so ended my career as a drug kingpin. Actually, now that I’ve looked at some marijuana seedling pictures on the internet, I don’t think it was pot to begin with. But the experience certainly made clear to me the utter futility of criminalizing not only a plant, but one so well adapted to this climate that it grows, literally, like a weed.
You radical you! Feel free to raise your fist and scream POWER TO THE PEOPLE at the top of your voice. We are all proud of you Del.
See “Medical marijuana bill should pass” @ http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009903090327
Wow, between your pot plant and the pineapple sage, we are turning into a couple of outlaws.
I was listening to a radio show on XM the other day and a father called in and said it was easy for his teenagers to buy weed because it’s illegal. He said they can’t go into a liquor store and buy booze because they have to be 18 and produce a picture ID, but they can go to the park, school, church or any other place and buy illegal drugs. I never thought of it before, but this is the perfect rationale for decriminalization and the legalization of weed. It would cut out a lot of underage drug use. And we aren’t going to even talk about the prisons that are full of youthful drug dealers and users.
Del, many years ago I lived for a short time in Mobile. I think it was at 858 Memory Lane. Shortly before my bride-to-be lived somewhere near what I think was called Lagoon Park, so I wonder if that’s the park you mentioned. She worked at a restauraunt on, I believe, on Old Shell Road called “Tito’s” which I believe no longer exists and the owner, Tito, is deceased.
Are any of those names familiar to you?
Oh, LOL! Sounds like something I would do. And then feel guilty enough about it later to announce it in cyberspace. Ha! I am still smiling!
Oh you bad girl you!! Now I know where to go for my next high!!!
Can someone please tell me how to get rid of this stupid mullet picture???????
Del….LMAO….that’s all I got to say about that.
RedEye….man you must not have read my blog much. The point you make about drug dealers not carding is one that I have been hammering on for years. People who support prohibition support unfettered access to any drug by anyone at any time. They create the very crime, death and destruction they claim to hate. But, none of that would exist if they didn’t support the policies that enable it in the first place.