HIGH TIMES: BONG STORY

Let’s take a little journey back to high school. My senior year to be exact. One weekend a group of the neighborhood guys were getting ready to smoke. It was already dark out and I had no plans that night so I joined in. I had to be sneaky about it though and do it behind my parent's backs. We walked over to an elementary school that is centrally located in the middle of all our neighborhoods. There’s an overgrown nature trail all the way in the back, behind the PE fields, so we went back there. Conveniently enough, there was a huge circular bench back there, engulfed by bushes, so we all sat around. One of the guys already had his bong hidden in the bushes nearby, so he cleaned it out, poured fresh water into it we packed it up.

My buddy Jake had never ripped a bong before either, so we both had to get lessons on how to properly hit it. I remember taking a couple big hits and not feeling anything. Jake was saying the same thing, but I they reassure us it would hit hard in a bit. I’m not sure how many bowls we smoked, but I would guess 5 or 6. Everyone was SO HIGH. We just kept passing it around and around. I  couldn't stop laughing and I knew I was stoned.

We joked around for a while, until Jake started panicking out of nowhere. He had to be home by midnight and he lost all sense of time. We were all within a five minute walking distance from our houses and it was only 11:30, so we tried to calm him down. He started wigging out and SPRINTED towards our bikes. I got pissed because we live in the same neighborhood and now I would have to walk home alone. We shouted at him to come back, but he disappeared into the night and the rest of us were too stoned to chase after him. We smoked another bowl and hung out on the nature trail until around 1:30ish.

We went our separate ways and I started walking back to my house. It’s only a five minute walk, but it felt like an adventure. I specifically remember one thing and one thing only from my walk back. I remember having a full on conversation with the fairies from Fairly Odd Parents.

I made it back to my house and as I was walking up the driveway, my cellphone starts vibrating. I look down at the screen and it was my dad. I was out two hours past my curfew. I started panicking. I knew I couldn’t talk to him in that state of mind, so I ignored the call and immediately texted him back saying I was on my way home from Christian's place and I had lost track of time.

I decided to go around the side of my house and wait on the back porch for 5 minutes in hopes he would believe my story and go back to bed. I didn’t want to stay on my driveway, just in case he came outside and waited for me. I navigated my way to my backyard and quietly walked into my back porch. I sat down in one of the chairs and started jamming out to Pink Floyd and Bob Marley. The light from my kitchen turned on from inside my house and I almost had a heart attack. I leaped out of the chair and hid against the wall between my two sliding doors.

To this day, I have never been as high as I was that night. I was crouched along the wall and my heart was beating so fast! I didn’t know if my dad saw me or not. I sat there for a couple minutes and calmed myself down. I stood up, closed my eyes and thought I was in Hawaii surfing on a wave. I started moving my body around as if I was shredding waves on a surfboard.

There was a portable fan on the table that I was standing next to. I smacked it with my hand and the thing flew off the table and smashed onto the floor. The bang could have been heard from down the street. I have never come so close to peeing in my pants!

I got down into a fetal position and hid behind the table. My mom ran over to the sliding door and turned the back patio lights on. She thought I was a burglar and had the phone in her hand, ready to call the police!

I thought my life was over. I got to my feet and looked into the house with my bloodshot eyes, as my parents stared back. It was the most awkward moment of my life. My dad screamed from through the door, “Kid, what the hell are you doing, I thought you were at Christian's!?”(My parents nicknamed me “Kid’). Hahahahahaha

My mom opened up the sliding door and waited for an answer. I looked at them and will never forget the words that came out of my mouth. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, I’m going to bed.” And that was it. I walked past them, darted to my room, locked the door, threw on my headphones and passed out.

The next morning I woke up I was terrified to leave my room, seriously horrified. I walked into the kitchen and of course my dad was sitting at the table doing office work. I refused to make eye contact with him. I grabbed the first thing I saw in the cabinet and tried to scurry back to my room. My dad said my name in the sternest voice. I sat there and had no idea what was in store for me. He got out of his chair and asked me “So how long you been smoking pot for?”

I almost busted out laughing. I was sick of smoking behind their backs, so I was completely honest with him. I told him I started smoking sophomore year over winter break. Then he goes “well I don’t know what your mother is going to say about this!”

I looked at him and got really confused. I told him that I thought mom would be a lot cooler about it than he would be. He almost got flustered by that comment and said “Oh, well, I had my fair share of smoking in college!” Bingo! That’s all I needed to hear. I started rolling with that. I was like “woahh Dad, you? No way, that’s awesome!” He tried to get back into ‘intimidating parent mode’ but I was way too thrilled from what he said to me.

He left to go run errands and then my mom came home from Publix. She walked in the door and immediately smiled at me and started laughing. “Kid, were you drunk, high or both last night?” I told her I was really high and we laughed over what my dad had said to me earlier. I had asked her a month or two before this whole thing happened if she ever smoked as a teenager, but her response was always “I was too good for that stuff or I tried it once in my life but it hurt my throat from coughing” This time she said "I may have had a few encounters with it as well." Hahaha

I freaked out and started screaming “You liar! You told me you never did!” My mom just kind of smirked and the entire time I was asking her about her burn sessions with her friends from back in the day. It was such a funny conversation. She said she smoked a couple times but every time they smoked, it was from a joint and she didn’t enjoy the heat/burning sensation on her mouth so she stopped.

After the conversation ended she said “you know there’s still going to be a punishment.” Fair enough, I did come home way after my curfew, so I had every right to get grounded. Butttt I never did get any punishment whatsoever for that night. Hahahaha

A couple days later I called up my brother and sister and told them about my crazy ass adventure and they were DYING! They would have never been able to get away with all the stuff I do. It totally pays off to be the baby in the family.

I told all my friends about that night and a few of them still joke about it to this day, "so you going surfing tonight?" Hahaha

That is a memory that I'll never forget. I thought my parents were going to flip a shit if they found out I smoked, but lo and behold, they were so chill.

So here’s a toast to my parents. That one day my entire family will sit around the family room and light up a bowl and get high together.