The Marijuana Tales...another blast from the SV Moms Past

Remember the first time you found your parent's bong?  Okay, that didn't actually happen to me, but when I asked my sister what she used for her illicit habits, she said "mom's bong."  She just found it one day, and the rest is history.  Well, my kids are carrying on this potentially dangerous tradition.  Last I night I stumbled across my sewing box, although that's a pretty generous term, considering I haven't opened this box in four years.  The contents consist of an old address book, couple safety pins, container of buttons and a package of needles, so I thought. This pretty much reflects my sewing activity.

I left the box out in the living room, praying that it would distract my kids, giving me an extra ten minutes of sleep.  It turned out the box also included my tiny little gold pipe, a remnant of my post-divorce day.  Yes, I was hanging out with a bunch of Oracle computer programmers, seeking inspiration, relaxation, and just good, not-so-clean fun.  As usual, the kids came into our bedroom fighting over some little thing.  After hearing the standard "I got it first," "he took it," "give me that" refrain, I saw a flash of gold and immediately suspected that's what it was and wondered if I ever got rid of the matching tiny bag of pot.  "It's called a nozzle, mommy," proclaimed my son, and that was the end of that.  I think I can safely put off the drug talk.

The "evil" weed and my family have a pretty funny history.  We're not so much "anti-drug" as drug-resistant, seemingly too geeky to know where to get it, and completely inept at smoking it when we succeed.  Although we did fire a babysitter once after my dad discovered she was growing pot in the backyard, oops.  Whereas my husband can show up in pretty much any part of SF or Mexico and be sought out as a buyer, my friends and I once tried for the entire summer before starting college to get high and never succeeded in "scoring."

The absolute funniest story concerned my grandma.  She lived in SF and had a very liberal doctor, who told her to smoke marijuana for side effects from chemo.  The doctor prescribed pills but said they wouldn't work nearly as well as the real stuff. I'm not sure if medical marijuana was even available, or it might be that my grandma didn't want to go that route.  So my mom took it upon herself to find some for my grandma, "I think it would make a good Hanukkah present" was actually how she put it.  She called me and I started my effort to get some, but I wouldn't be visiting from back east for a while.  My high school brother would have no problem on that front, but got in so much trouble for so many things he wasn't about to confess to access to drugs.   She managed to get this giant bong from somewhere, with unicorns and like 4 tubes coming out.  She finally resorted to asking her secretary, who happened to be an African-American woman with a son at Berkeley.  The secretary immediately started to explain that just because her son was black and at Berkeley did not make him a druggie.  My mom was persistent and desperate, said she had not made assumptions - just had exhausted all her other very limited options.  The "deal" was made, and although my mom thought there was barely enough, she did her best.  My brother told me later it was actually a pretty substantial amount of highly potent buds, but mom was remembering the giant bags of low quality stuff from the 70s.

The final chapter of the tale was explained in utter hilarity by my grandma.  My parents driving up to her apartment in SF, bong and buds in hand.  My mom knew Grandma would never smoke alone so she'd decide they would all do it together, and didn't want to wait for me (her only responsible child at the time).  Sitting around with this big bong, dad getting a bit silly, mom yelling at him about something or other, and my grandma, not smoking an ounce.  So much for that treatment.  It was very sad that not only did the chemo have terrible side effects, but other medications totally killed her taste buds, and my grandma loved her food, so we really wanted this to work.  I'm glad she kept her sense of humor until the end....... and we were all grateful that she found a doctor who was willing to defy the law to help her patient.