Oregano

I've decided to go with a theme for the week. Officially, I declare this Dave Week. All blogs will be either by Dave, about Dave, or merely tangentially related to Dave. He's submitted one guest post already, and here is another:

(my notes are in italics)

OREGANO
-by Dave

Kids in junior high are stupid. No, don't pretend your junior high school kids aren't stupid. They probably are. I may have never met them, but they're probably stupid. I have good evidence to support this, surprisingly enough. Your kids are stupid because you were stupid at that age, too. Yes you were. Go look at the photos, we'll wait.

::pauses::

See? You look stupid.

(Dave is on the money here. In the 7th grade, I looked like Peter Brady, Dave looked like a cute little cartoon tiger and Dr. Brian looked like the unfortunate little sister on Little House on the Prairie...)

Don't worry about it, though. We're all stupid at that age. It's something about that awkward phase between leaving the childhood of grade school that still includes recess, kickball and nap time; and transcending into the pseudo-adulthood of high school with barely contained sexual repression, cigarettes in the parking lot and learner's permits. Your identity is shot to hell, you don't understand the world you're in and you're stupid! I know this, because I was stupid. Yes sir, most definitely was I stupid. So was Mr. G&T. We all were. It could be argued we still are, but rarely would we perform the questionable acts of a junior high schooler now in the emeritus years of our middle age… like try to smoke oregano.

(which is stupid because EVERYONE knows that Coriander will get you fucked up.)

We had a weird little coterie of associates in junior high school, much more so than now. And the infamous Mark the Shark was infamous for having these weird sleepover birthday parties that in hindsight, seem stranger now than they did at the time. No, no. Nobody touched another person's penis. (speak for yourself) At least as far as I know. But Mark would invite about eight or so junior high school guys over to his mom's apartment, and we would stay awake until all hours of the night watching crap movies, talk about stupid things and try to pull pranks on one another.

(Then, we would do each other's hair and have a big pillow fight in our hello-kitty panties...)

I don't remember who thought it was a good idea. But someone thought it would be funny to convince everyone else that there were drugs at the party. We were junior high school dweebs in the suburbs – we were lucky if we had No-Doz, but someone grabbed a container of finely cut oregano, stuck it into a lunch baggie and tried to convince everyone else it was marijuana.

I don't think any of us had ever SEEN marijuana at that age, but we *thought* we knew what it looked like – green dried plant in a plastic bag.

(Everything I knew, I learned from Sonny Crockett.)

Like I said, stupid. And yes, Brian – you were at this party. This was before the advent of COPS, where all of America was thrust into a crash course on what drugs really look like. At the time however, to an idiot, oregano passed for marijuana. Or so we thought.

So of course, this turned into a question of validity. One person said it was fake, another said it was real, then the roles would switch and the other person claimed it fake while the others said it was real. We did this for about an hour. Finally, someone came to the brilliant conclusion that the only to verify its validity was to smoke it. Cheech and Chong, we weren't.

(We also tried to shoot up some brown sugar and snort some Bisquick.)

Now, if we're stupid enough to think oregano is marijuana, you know we're not smart enough to roll a joint, OR even know what a real joint looks like. However, we did realize that we needed paper, white paper of some sort.

So, quickly, a sheet of 8x11 notebook paper was presented, and we did our best to roll it into something we thought was somewhat joint-like. On reflection, it looked like rolled up notepaper paper, crumbled on each end with oregano sticking out of it. But we were very proud of it.

(I was more scared than proud. I was certain Jesus would not approve of this activity.)

Now who would be the one to test it out? Mark's friend, Dan, proved to be the bravest and I believe he lit the end from the kitchen stove. (Dan!) It did not burn very well, but Dan swore he was getting a buzz from it as burning bits of oregano fell to the kitchen linoleum. (Who's making Calzone??)

No one else dared try. The next day, Mark's mom didn't know about the whole fake joint incident, (I'm sure she was having her own real one) but I think she was wondering when we ordered a pizza, because the kitchen smelled of burnt oregano.

So we were stupid. And you were stupid. And your kids are probably stupid, too. It's not their fault. It's just that time of life. (So, Dave's post goes on a bit here with some melodramatic sophistry. It was kind of a drag, so I cut the last part. Instead, here is a photo of a fabulous ass...)