Wasted Training

When you're in elementary school, you're warned countless times about the perils of drugs and alcohol, and how when you get older, "friends" will inevitably try to pear-pressure you into chemical dependency. Officers would tell you in classrooms. Straight-laced teens would demonstrate it in plays. And health teachers would show you pictures of unusable freeze-dried lungs. That's all it took to scare me straight. By 10 I joined D.A.R.E., memorized PSAs and day-dreamed about how one day I would expertly refuse poppers, pills and all forms of miscellaneous dope. But middle school and high school came and went and not once was I offered, even the mildest, pharmaceutical! I don't know if it was because I didn't look "cool" enough, that the kid's in my neighborhood weren't into drugs, or that maybe I just didn't know where to look. I didn't know where those villains were, but there I was with all that training and no one to use it on. I felt cheated.

It wasn't until I was in university that someone offered me a marijuana cigarette. They asked and I said, "(*chuckle) No thanks!" and that was the end of it. I was tempted to ask if they wanted to know why. It was then I realized the 90s had turned me into a square. It made me make napkin roofie-shields for unattended cocktails, toss out perfectly good Halloween candy and, most lamely, made me never try drugs! For all I know drugs could've been my ticket to a richer life. Or at least, a window to a preferred alternate reality. And now I'll never know. I know you're thinking, "Oh, come now! Your best dope days are ahead of you!" Thanks, but no thanks. I'm in my late twenties. Who'd offer an old bird like me drugs? No, I'd love to "trip", but I'll just sit here content with my tea and judgement. Thanks a lot, Nancy!