Everyone in my family smokes weed. After dinner, every weekend, my dad sneaks out the back door seemingly just to pace around the yard and admire our garden. On holidays, my older brother drives up from Maryland with joints hidden in Ziploc bags of dog food, and whenever I go home, my little brother and I crouch behind the shed at night and smoke a fraternal bowl together in secret. By around 11 o’clock on Friday, everyone is completely stoned at my house.
It’s become an unspoken ritual, a family bond, something of an in-joke that everyone still avoids speaking about directly. Whenever marijuana legalization is brought up in political discussion or whenever anyone so much as mentions the state of Colorado, everyone in my family perks their heads up and for a few seconds we all share a bright eyed, thin-lipped smile that says, “oh yeah, we know.”
We’re reaching a moment in American history when the federal prohibition of recreational marijuana will be lifted (knock on wood). At the very least, the “What if?” scenario of legally smoking weed is becoming enough of a reality that people are for the first time imagining what that will really look like. Soon, all the secrecy and guilt enmeshed in getting high will start to feel ridiculous. When weed is every bit as legal as wine, why bother hiding?
I imagine that soon enough my family will stop being concerned about our mutual awareness of our drug habits. Whatever taboo is left at this point comes from the fact that we’re all still doing “illegal” things. But once that’s gone, what’s left to feel bad about? What’s to stop us all from enjoying a couple bong rips together before gathering in front of the fire and watching a christmas movie? Thanksgiving dinners, along with red wine and beer, will come with little trays of artfully selected joints of Sour Diesel and Lemon Haze, and fireworks won’t be the only things getting lit on Fourth of July.
It’s almost too weird to imagine being real. All those adolescent years walking on eggshells, hiding my weed in coffee tins and balled up socks. I have friends whose entire lives were ruined in high school because they got caught with a dime in their pocket. But why? We’ve been taught for so long that the act of smoking marijuana is morally wrong that once the law finally catches up with its citizens, there’s going to be a radical attitude change. One day I’m a criminal and the next I’m…what? A normal adult? Getting high with his mother, father, and siblings as happy, healthy, law-abiding citizens of the United States of America? This truly is, as Halsey puts it, “the new Americana”. I’ll pay my taxes, kiss my children goodnight, and smoke a fat one with the neighbors. God bless.
Anonymous
Photo by: Catatonique