sl.blog

For the good doctor, God rest him, it would have been a mild-mannered Saturday for the Air Force veteran somewhere in the high altitude of Colorado. But since I rarely smoke dope these days, I was prepared for a bit of a misadventure. With a few friends gathered in my cozy basement dwelling, I had hoped to showcase a new HD television, along with the Irish on the road against Air Force. If television is the opiate of the masses (even one to replace the Jesus I would not recreate today), why not let it wash over us in high definition?

My drug buddy (let’s call him Snoop Dogg) showed up with his eight-year-old garage stash, and faster than a slippery slope we were passing the pipe and arguing about what games to watch. Notre Dame, hopped up by some pre-game words from Weis or perhaps paranoid about the ground attack of the once shifty Air Force who used to run around Gerry’s kids (of Faust fame) for something like four straight victories, went to the air early and often to make the game a laugher. In back-to-back passes after the kickoff, Quinn found Samardzija, who scampered quickly and cockily with his flowing hair behind him into the end zone. Meanwhile, the handful of stoners in my apartment ridiculed my smoking skills. “Don’t suck it in so fast,” said one. “Keep it in your lungs longer,” chimed another. “You’ll never be one of us!” mocked a third. 

I got the skank weed down my neck as best I could and waited for my buzz. I poured beer through my liver, stained my teeth with red wine, but never felt the switch flip to stoned. It wasn’t like the first time I found myself, high as a motherfucker in high school, at some kid’s house in Homeplace, the rough part of Carmel. His mother was in the next room. My jaw lost connection with my mouth and I could have been a poster boy for a “just ask why” campaign of the 1980s. Another time, home alone and higher than a teenage Macaulay Culkin on the outs with Michael Jackson, I stared into a mirror and saw my face transform into that of my brother’s. My mind, an overcrowded, clamoring space, was no place for drugs. I knew then that I should get that boy to a brewery. 

Still, I wondered if the years had calmed me. Maybe somehow made more suitable to doobie. I was turning 41 a day after this Veteran’s Day, where the Irish would rest well on Sunday knowing that four teams above them in the polls would by Monday sag below them. As the day wore on, one couch-bound reveler compared the shindig to his college days, a couple of decades bygone. “Sitting around, smoking pot, watching TV, and listening to the Allman Brothers,” said he whom we’ll call George W., “it’s great.” 

Sometimes it is great. Notre Dame is 9-1, and with God and some Irish luck willing, still in the hunt for a national championship. And won’t we have a high time if they can win their next three games.