Uncle Ferrett's Tales From The Marijuana Patch

You know, I’m probably kissing my shot at a Supreme Court Judge goodbye right now, but what the hell.
I’ll say it; I have smoked marijuana.
I’d expect you to be impressed by my brave admission, but the truth is that almost everyone has sucked a weed down at one point or another. A recent polls showed that out of all Americans only thirty-eight percent said that they have never, EVER used marijuana and the remainining sixty-two percent said that they knew those thirty-eight percent when they were in high school and they did TOO use marijuana. Apparently “Just Say No” is taking on a whole new meaning here.
In my favor, however, I haven’t smoked marijuana in over two years now. Because I’m hypersensitive. One whiff of second-hand pot smoke and I’m doing the Watusi on I-95. Either that, or I sit in the corner, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights, so insanely paranoid that I am convinced that the entire audience of “Seinfeld” is watching me and waiting eagerly for me to screw up. But I am a sad minority in the world of pot-smokers. The rest of the weedheads can be divided up into fairly clear categories:
For example, some people smoking turns their life into a sitcom – and they provide the laugh track. This is the sort of person who, while on pot, will laugh himself into a hernia at a wry witticism like “You know, man?… if Stop and Shop joined up with the A & P Supermarkets, why, they’d be…. Stop and Pee! WAH ha heh heh heh he ha…..”
I never laugh. I’m too goddamn paranoid to laugh. The only real belly laugh I had on pot was when we gave some idiot some catnip instead of marijuana. He smoked it…. and he thought he was high. There was he was, babbling about “the colors” while my cat, who had found the bag the marijuana was in and ate it all, was tie-dying his scratching post and apologizing to the squirrels for being so bloody violent, man.
Another type of smoker is Buddha Pothead, for whom everything is a religious experience. “This blender,” he’ll say softly, watching air molecules float gently back and forth across his field of vision, “Is a… a real blender. A beautiful blender. A lovely blender.” He’ll then stroke the blender fondly until you realize that he wants to be left alone with it. Later on you find out he’s in the hospital recuperating from emergency prostate reconstruction surgery and won’t tell you what happened.
None of that happens to me.
When I smoke, a number of other things happen.
The first thing that happens is suddenly my stomach becomes Roseanne Barr. This is technically called “getting the munchies”, but I don’t munch, I engulf. I’ll gnaw wallpaper if there’s no food. Live Aid starts holding concerts to feed me. I’d mortage my house for a Pop Tart. I mean, we’re talking hungry.
The other thing is that my short-term memory goes out to lunch, and, considering how good lunch sounds when you’re stoned, the rest of my brain goes with it. My attention span can then be measured in milliseconds. This may sound exagerrated, but just to prove it here are some actual things I have done while high:
1) I bought a Snickers bar with a twenty. The cashier handed me back my change. Having by then forgotten that I had already paid for the candy, and suddenly finding nineteen dollars mysteriously appear in my hand, I paid for the candy again. I got back more change. I paid for the candy bar again. And again. I bought the same Snickers bar forty times and wondered why I was broke the next morning.
2) I read the same sentence in a book over and over for three hours because by the time I got to the end of the sentence I forgot what the beginning of the sentence was about.
3) In trying to eat a chocolate cake, I actually forgot how to eat. No lie. My friends told me to put it in my mouth and chew, but at the time this seemed like an evil practical joke they were trying to pull on me. So I stuck the cake in my armpit, my ear, my belly button, but somehow none of those places seemed right for eating, if you know what I mean. I woke up the next morning looking like I had been mugged by the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
4) While making dinner for my friends I discovered there is absolutely no way you can tell the difference between pot and oregano. For once I didn’t have to worry about cleaning dishes. They ate the plates.
So, as you can tell, I’m not too cool on pot. I haven’t toked up in almost a year – two years – something – so any brain damage you may notice in me is completely natural, thank you very much.