One #6 with extra pickles over the line

I love the dudes down at the local sub shop. They serve up cheap, tasty sammiches and usually have them ready before I even have my Barq’s poured (rooter always takes somewhat longer at the fountain due to excessive carbonation. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to accept 25% less just because I chose rootbeer.)

They seem to have a good espirit de corps going down there at the shop. The dudes, aging from 18 to about 22, are what you would imagine work at a sub shop: long hair, black t-shirts, piercings, general ironic outlook on life. If I managed one of these joints, it would make sense to have dudes of one culture like this working there. It makes it easier to pay them 6 bucks an hour if they can spend their down time agreeing how dumb the customers are, trashing yuppies and regaling each other on their love for Staind.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised today when two of them announced, to no one in particular, that they were going out for a “smoke:” Now the smoking of cigarettes is endemic to this crowd, so as I left I expected to see them standing on the corner and making quotation fingers over words like “successful” and “family” and giggling the giggle of those on the inside of an inside joke.

Instead, I saw them enter a 1987 Accord and begin blatantly taking long hits from a small stone pipe. As I got in my car and passed them, I saw the long plumes of purple smoke emanating from the vehicle and couldn’t help but engage in some hijinks.

You guys hear a bell?
What?
DONNGGG
What?
The bell, didn’t you hear it?
DONNGGG DONNGGG DONNGGG
Now, you had to hear that
Man, why you messin’ with us?
Just having a few yuks guys, see you later
Man....

When I was of this age, I always thought smoking reefer put me one step ahead of the squares. One time in high school, myself and two friends of mine actually blazed up inside the Science Museum’s Omni Theater. We would put a jacket over our heads and do our thing, thinking no one was the wiser. Thinking back, probably everyone in the theater knew what we were up to, including dozens of grade school age children. It was probably only through some bizarre type of noblesse oblige that someone didn’t turn our lame asses in.

With a little perspective, it was fun getting a glimpse on how I used to see the world.