The summer after ninth grade my mother enrolled me in a counselor-in-training (CIT) program at a girls scout camp a few hours away. It was the real deal; out door cabins, mosquito netting, campfires, matching t-shirts and unbridled Bible beating.
I was a bit of an outlier—I’d had boyfriends, been drunk, and, though I hadn’t been arrested, I knew kids that had. I’d also never been a girl scout.When other trainees asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d roll my eyes and dead pan, “A porn star.” I had never seen porn and had no idea what starring in one entailed, but I figured it was something I could handle.
During the weekends, the CIT’s had the option to go home. One particular weekend fell on my fifteenth birthday, so I went back to Hillsborough for a celebratory sleepover with friends.
I’m pretty sure my parents were out of town that weekend. The following events probably would have unfolded differently had they been home.
There were about 10 girls cackling in my living room and, at some point around 11PM, someone got on the phone with someone’s brother’s “dealer” and the next thing I knew, weed and Milwaukee’s Best were being delivered to my house.
My friend Rebecca (see “the time I should have gotten my ass kicked”) was particularly resourceful in the paraphernalia department, and decided to construct smoking devices out of the plastic honey bear in the kitchen and some soda cans. This involved draining all the honey out of the bear, and taking a huge knife and carving the shit out of the bear’s face and body, in order to accomplish all the necessary openings required for smoking. Then, using the same knife, she stabbed precise little holes in all the soda cans, to create a homemade pipe. Aluminum foil and rubber bands was also part of the mix.
When Rebecca finished her impressive art project, we set to the task of smoking ourselves into adolescent oblivion.
As I stared out at the solemn country darkness, I felt nostalgic, tired and free. I loved my life and my friends, and the night was balmy and perfect. I was sitting cross-legged talking to Rebecca, Megan, and my other friend Caroline, when I actually blacked out for a second. I saw fuzzies and leaned forward and backwards and then insisted that I had miraculously just tripped on acid. My friends were not impressed by my lack of connection to reality.
Afterwards, we were all in the kitchen. Feeling a surge of responsibility, I lightheartedly tossed the can pipes, burnt aluminum, rubber bands, and decapitated, charred honey bear into the recycling bucket.
A couple of days later I was back at camp.
When I came home the next weekend, I was exhilarated. Despite my differences with the other CIT’s, I’d had a blast and couldn’t wait to get back to my new straight-laced, god loving friends.
I was doing laundry when my mom called me into the kitchen. Something about her voice cued me into slight panic mode, and I walked in to find my parents leaning against the counter.
Staring.
A moment of silence and then my dad launched into an awkward confrontation about my “weed pipes.” He spoke in general terms of youth, drug use, the law, and I stared at him, so goddamned confused, until he rounded it all out with a reference to sorting the bottles and cans in the recycling bucket.
Then I remembered. The slo-mo euphoria, me, barefoot and smiling, lightly tossing the cans into the recycling bucket and watching them rebound of the edge and fall gracefully into the black plastic depths; the satisfaction of clearing away all the evidence.
I was horrified. My dad kept speaking. My mom stifled a smile.
I didn’t really get in trouble. My parents drove home the following points:
1- I was too young to be smoking weed, and 2- If I was going to do it, I needed to hide it better.
Despite the lack of expected parent-syle punishment, (to their credit, I may have been grounded or something, I just don’t remember) these are lessons I took to heart. I never really got that into smoking pot and, when I did, I was irrationally paranoid to the point of jeopardizing the high.
Even now, when I start to relax under the influence, I’m invaded by the panicked delusion that I have a drug test the next day I’d forgotten about.
I apologized to my parents, went back to camp and tried to find Jesus. I am still looking.
Over the past few years, I’ve become an avid tea drinker, and whenever I see honey bears I have a fleeting urge to stab the shit out of their smiling plastic faces. But just for a moment.
Then the urge is replaced by a soft wistfulness for teenage indiscretions gone by.
