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I had a moment today when I thought about updating this, but then I decided a glass of wine sounded better.
At one point today I was venting to a colleague about one of my classes. I am somewhat astounded by the fact that as I stood there, trying to teach about ‘ethos’ (aka, one of the three tenants of Aristotle’s triangle of rhetorical speech, which states that ‘character’ or perception of a person is critical for persuasion), two girls on different ends of the room — who I’d moved apart because of their penchant for talking loudly, and often — began discussing whether to get a ‘blunt’ or a ‘swishy’ after school got out.
I explained to my colleague that my first instinct is to ask, “Hey Mona [name changed]? Do you go to church?” She does, I imagine, or is — at the very least — religious, based on her family and background. With an affirmative I could continue, “Would you like it if a I were to go to your church and proclaim loudly, ‘Man, I am going to wash down two Xanax with a bottle of two buck Chuck, watch pirated internet porn, and have illicit extramarital sex with my boyfriend tonight. Hell, if I throw in some Vicodin, I might let him huck it in my dumpster?’”
My colleague suggested an alternative route, “I might just smoke up before I leave the parking lot. Medicinal grade. Then go home and order a pizza with MY OWN money.”
It is hard to explain the confusion of emotions that you have to try and deal with looking at a bunch of 12th graders who feel like they are perfectly in their right to discuss drug deals five feet from you, while their voices reverberate across the classroom. Mostly I just sometimes want to explain, “Honey, you are not impressing anyone. You like weed. WOOO! I am shocked. No one before you has ever liked weed. Your brothers/parents/uncles/grandparents would be scandalized.” [Note: no, they wouldn’t. It’s fucking 2011. My cat probably got a contact high before you were born, you cred-jocking chowder monkey.] I mean hell, my fifty year old brother teases ME about how shocked I get at his days in the 70’s, when you could lick a friend’s collar and get a high off the LSD he is sweating.
Is he trying to tell me that my friends in the early nineties DIDN’T invent that five point wacky tabaccy plant? What?! But my friends back then were all SO COOL, right? Defying authority, smoking the green, drawing pot leafs on binders, giggling when it was April 20th. You mean… to tell me… this predated me?
A part of me wants to tell her, “Preach on, ignorant sister. Everyone will remember this day, where you shouted across the classroom, “Let’s roll a blunt after school!” and think you were SOOOO COOL. You truly pioneered the idea of post-school tokage. Go forth little pioneer, while your friends applaud your departure from the work force.” Some day you can sit down, with a big fat fucking blunt, and tell everyone how fucking cool you were to shout out about smoking pot in the middle of a classroom senior year. Surely everyone will remember that fine moment in teenage drug culture, because you were just SOOO FUCKING COOL.
The other part of me kind of wants to tell her: “Psssst. You sound like an idiot, a lightweight, and an amature. Shut the fuck up, because you are embarrassing everyone present.”
