What do you do when you finally get the confirmation that your son is smoking pot? Particularly when you used to smoke it; his mother smokes it; and, his older brother may-or-may-not still smoke it!?
Since I quit smoking the whacky-tabacky way-back-when – it was actually 1987 when one of my patients woke me out of a drug-laden reverie at about 2:30am telling me that she was going to commit suicide. Well, what-a-thing! Calling your therapist with a suicide wish and screwing up his stoned stupor. In the immortal words of old roommate, Tony, (also nicknamed ‘T’ like Son Tyler) – “Don’t fuck with me while I’m tripping!” Actually, I think he borrowed this line from Hunter S. Thompson.
Well, THIS patient didn’t commit suicide – but trying to take the matter seriously at 2:30am, and, high-as-a-kite — is no easy thing. I could just as easily have said: “Go fucking kill yourself,” as “Let’s talk about this in the morning” (when I can collect my thoughts) – because after I listened to my train of PINK FLOYD, MIKE OLDFIELD, HAWKWIND and KRAFTWERK – it was quite a feat getting back to this plane and this time.
So, who am I to get upset with the T-Bone during his pot experimentation? Well, I’m afraid that his soccer game will go to shit! His grades have certainly taken a tumble. And I always wonder who he’s pissed off – and if THAT person will try to “burn his spot” (get him in trouble with the law).
I have an old friend (whom I haven’t seen in 30-some-years) and she once wrote me a luverly note that suggested that she felt that I had the toughest childhood of anyone she has ever known. Indeed, she suggested that I had the toughest childhood EVER – with my two European parents who apparently attempted to program me for something-or-another! So the one thing I didn’t want to do with Tyler was to force him to do things – and I definitely wanted him to steer clear of drugs – cuz they don’t call it “dope” for nuthin’!
But, alas, the Foghat is firmly in place – and a potentially awesome soccer career hangs-in-the-balance: I still believe he could have become the next Zindane! And I can’t blame him! Hell! I smoked the stuff for about 13 years straight – but it never makes you better at anything…it just makes the world look funny from underneath the Foghat. I remember a time when 9-out-10 people smoked that whacky-tabacky. (This may have hastened the crumbling of the American empire?!)
Other parents seek to reassure me saying the “Y” generation (also spelled ‘Why?’) experiences a pivotal year in the 11th grade year; a year when these precocious youth garner some adult values. I can hope…because when I wanted to set T on EZ Street – it wasn’t down this avenue of Beautiful Losers…