Mary ju wanna & Elephants

The good stuff

I don't care if you want to smoke weed or you don't want to smoke weed but there is an elephant in the room and it seems to be getting very little notice.
When I was eleven my father caught me lighting my first cigarette.  The match was already lit  but when I saw my father I put the match out.  He gave me a long non threatening look  and said, "OK light it up".  So I did and I took a mouth full of smoke, blowing it out without inhaling.  He said, "What's the matter with you.  That's not the way to smoke a cigarette."  Here he said, "Watch me."  He took my cigarette, took a big drag, and then rounded  his lips and blew some very perfectly round smoke rings.  He smoked cigars and I had seen him do it before.  It looked terrific.  Real cool.  He gave the cigarette back to me and I took a deep drag . . . I was still puking three days later.  I didn't smoke again till I was about fifteen.  And after that, my first and only weed tryout was not til years later.  I was an accomplished smoker by then and I could blow smoke rings just like my pop.  But, my first drag on a weed made me just as sick as my first cigarette, except the puking.  It only lasted about one very long, very painful puke.  

  In Colorado.  (Cartoon:Mark Brayer)

Before I got married I was the manager for the largest record store in Philadelphia.  High Point Record Shop, on 19th and Market Streets.  I was  hired away from my job at the Decca  Records distributor.  In less than a year I became the manager of the store. (Just bragging.)  While working there I made many fiends and they and some other customers invited me to a party on the weekend.  So I went.  It was held at a big hotel on Broad Street.  A mixture of musicians and some local entertainers were hosting the party and they had invited some locals and a musical group from Detroit, who were doing a gig   featured at one of our most advertised night clubs..  Everybody was talking about the 'shit' (the name for weed in those days) they had brought to the party and that it was the best.  No doubt about it, the way everybody was reacting, they were right.  When my turn to try it  came, I said, "No thanks, I don't smoke shit."    OMG!!  The reaction was astounding.  You would have thought my collar was turned around and I had a bible in my hand.  They were ready to bounce me.  The door to the hall was already open when I said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute.  Tell me whatever the %&8##  hell it is, that you will do, after you get  high, that you think I wont do, without the pot?  I'll probably do it and I don't need any of that 'shit' as an excuse for doing  it. And you ought to try doing some of that stuff without getting high, you might enjoy it more, just like me.  Especially you (I forgot her name) she was a customer of the store.  I went over to her, pulled her to me and gave her a long kiss.  Ummummm.  It got a laugh and some people who knew me said, "He's hip.  He's ok. He's hip."  So somehow I lasted to the end of the party.  And believe me it was some party.  The smoke was so heavy in the rooms that when you opened the door and walked into the hallway you could inhale and get high on the second hand smoke before you made it to the elevator or your room.  Boy oh boy, those were the days.  When I got married my wife didn't appreciate all the stuff I stopped doing.
 
But what is overlooked here is, if smoking regular cigarettes damages your lungs and your health system, how much damage does smoking weed do?   I mean, you drag the smoke deep into your lungs.  We used to do the handkerchief test with cigarettes all the time.  You know, after you take a  drag you blow the smoke right from your lungs through your stretched tight hanky.  But we never inhaled the smoke that deep, like a weed drag,  or held it that long in our lungs, like you do with weed..  And yet the  yellow stain on the hanky was oily, ugly as hell and hard to wash out of the hanky.  I  never saw anyone do the hanky thing with weed.  And if you are still smoking, try it.  For most people, the arguments should be over, thank goodness.  But, forget about it.  I'm not a doctor and I'm not qualified to give medical advice, but to me its a no brainer.  I'm not moralizing either.  I have been  in the middle of clouds of weed smoke with entertainers and wanna be entertainers, and others just hanging out or having fun, like the party above, who were or got higher than the proverbial kite.  But to me common sense says, "It must do damage to your lungs, just like cigarettes."   Just common sense.  The elephant?   There he is!

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