It's 4:20 somewhere, right?
“And on the seventh day, God looked down upon the earth and said… ‘OH MY ME! I LEFT MY WEED EVERYWHERE!!!’ ”
(- credit for my favorite weed joke goes to some late night comedian seen on TV while I was pregnant with my son wishing I could have something ‘hard’ like.. nyquil..)
(That sound you heard after the quote was my mother’s groan, btw. And probably a threat to wallup me a good one… heh.)
So. Michael Phelps hits the bong, and self-righteous twits rise up from everywhere, and shake their fingers, and equate consider it a “gateway drug” that will lead to “steroid use”. Think I’m kidding? I’m not – just check out The View’s resident prude, Elizabeth Hasselback’s comments. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Ok, so, while I once again wonder if Elisabeth Hasselback does anything but watch Fox News and worship Rush Limbaugh (…wait, doesn’t HE smoke weed or pop pills or some such? Yet he’s still a viable source for her…), Parents everywhere are covering their children’s eyes and tsktsking about the (possibly) greatest athlete of our time’s decent into depravity and drug addiction. After all, everyone who’s ever partaken of marijuana is now a raving addict craving heroin so badly they sell their crackhead kids just so they can overdose and die.
Extreme? You betcha. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying that everyone should go out right now and hit the bong (Wait till 4:20, man! We’ll hit together!), but the reaction to Phelps’ pictures this weekend have bordered on the ridiculous. For me, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say lay off the kid, for crissakes. He’s still a kid, and he isn’t perfect.
My stance probably can be blamed on a number of things. I’m from Alaska (Matanuska Thunderfuck, anyone?), I hung with the Stoner Crowd in high school, I’ve smoked weed myself…
(waits for mom to revive again)
…granted, I was 31 years old the first time, and TBF is a bad, horrible influence for which I love him dearly, but yes, partaking has occurred. It just doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal to me. Sure, some people get psychologically addicted – Marijuana, despite what people will insist on telling you, is NOT physically addictive – sure, some people are weak minded and decide they must have a bigger, badder high, etc. but to me, it’s just.. weed. Along with other vices (BAAAAAAAAACOOOOOON), done in moderation and with forethought, it’s just not that big of a deal.
I know, all the parents out there are screaming that I’m a horrible mom about now, but well, I don’t care. My point is this – if you have taught your kids well, to be safe, careful, and in control of themselves (as that is the ONLY thing they can control, anyway), then is it REALLY something to flip out over?
In the end, Phelps has issued an apology for his ‘mistake’ and promised it wouldn’t happen again. People are up in arms that this man who’s paid to be a role model to our kids has done something so devastatingly horrible – but the fact is, he’s a paid spokesperson, not a paid role model, though he’s still someone to look up too for his athletic prowess.
So how about this, parents – instead of preaching and yelling and self-righteous twithood, we teach our kids that people are HUMAN, and that NO ONE is perfect. Everyone does questionable things, and what matters is how we react to them. Placing athletes and celebrities on a pedestal is a waste of time and energy.
At the end of the day, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like we do.
ETA: AMEN!
A walk on the wild side…
There are MANY MANY funny stories involving Kevin – 15 years of marriage to an Irish guy will do that. This one won me a contest, and publication in our small town – the reward? Reading it out loud. Mom rescued me and read it for me, that night as I get a massive case of stage fright and nerves. But to counter the earlier entry – here’s one that makes everyone smile – especially me…
A walk on the wild side
(c) Lessa, in her own name, just like everything on this blog.
June 3, 2006
I married an Irish man. Not just Irish, but only 3rd generation American-Irish. Rumor has it that they had to come to the land of the free to stay free – something about a bridge, a bomb, and an English Lord. All attempts to confirm are impossible, of course, due to the very nature of Irish storytelling. For many people this explains everything about my husband in a nutshell. Life with Kevin was always an adventure, one always told in stories that began with those seven fateful words: So, my buddies and I were drinking…
This story is no different.
First, I must explain some things about our neighbor across the road. Chris was old – older then God, old. As he neared up on the grand age of 90 or so, he decided that he would fence in part of his yard next to his extensively fenced in garden, and raise baby geese. He could been seen out there daily, pampering the ever noisier goslings, giving them the best of feed and fattening them up for his pre-determined slaughtering day. Unfortunately, when the time came to actually slaughter, pluck, clean and freeze them, Old Chris found himself far too attached to the stinking, dirty, noisy birds, and thus didn’t have the heart to harm his feathered friends.
Sal, Chris’s son who is only slightly younger then God, indulged his aging dad, and they kept the stupid geese. The geese soon found ways to get out of their pen and wander the neighborhood, chasing the cats, and being chased by the dogs. They were even known to run off the occasional moose with their honking in the wee hours of the morning – or so it was told, when we neighbors would complain of the noise. But Chris loved them, and thus we didn’t complain too much. That’s what neighbors are for, right?
sometimes..
..sometimes, I wish I didn’t have the tendency to want to shelter the broken, to put them back together, to be the strength when they can’t be strong for themselves. Sometimes, I wish I could give in and yell and scream and declare all things in life unfair and that I don’t DESERVE this, so on and so forth. But it’s not me. I’ve always been the strong one, the one anyone can turn to and know that there’s a steadfast belief in their innate goodness and ability to deal. Sometimes, it’s just too much – today was one of those days.
Life with someone in constant pain is not easy. In a lot of ways, it’s harder for the caretakers, the wives and the loved ones, then it is on the person in pain. We’re he ones that deal with the mood swings, the drastic measures taken to get relief, the blowups, the tears, the manic episodes when they feel good, countered by the deep downswing when they can’t take another minute of the pain. It’s exhausting, and incredibly painful to watch someone you care about wrestle with… well, life.
But we do it. I did it for over 10 years – in truth, almost our entire 15 years together as Kevin was suffering a knee injury when we got together, and it was two years of reconstructive surgery and physical therapy until it was fixed. Then just 2 years after that, the arm injury and he beginning of a 10 year long battle with pain.
One of the things Kevin was most worried about was addiction. It ran in his family, and he was determined never to become an addict, yet with the amount of medication he had to take just to get through the day was more then a normal everyday person would use, and they’d be labeled ‘addict’ in a heartbeat. I watched him wrestle with the decisions to take more meds, to change his meds, to take any at all, to give up or to work over and over again. Did I mention I HATE it when I can’t fix something?
It did teach me something though. I can’t fix everything. And sometimes? Sometimes you have to step back, and let go. As much support as I gave Kevin, as much as I tried to help him and weathered the storm, in the end he was the master of his own self, and each decision was his own. Through it all I learned a very important lesson – the only reactions I can control, the only person I have ultimate control over, is my own, and my self.
I can’t stop someone from making a mistake, though I can listen. And when it gets to be too much, when I can no longer keep my mouth shut, when I can’t say anything without growling… I’ve learned to step back, back off, and shut down.
I’ve learned when to be D. U. N. Done.
I watched people tell him, and tell me, that he couldn’t be in that kind of pain, that it was a desperate cry for attention. I watched people say that they had pain worse, that they would react better, that they would DO better – meaning they thought themselves to BE better. I watched the passive aggressive little jabs and pokes and slices of sharp words meant to cut and cut deeply, as they tried to make him feel less then capable of taking care of his family, because of his injury. It’s only an arm, after all. It couldn’t be THAT bad – while the doctors looked at him in shock and asked why in the world he was still trying to work instead of staying home…
And even now, I react poorly to passive aggressive tugs at my sanity. I react poorly to someone popping pills because they’re upset, and using excuses as to why, and trying to get my sympathy because woe, woe is them in the same kind of cry for attention that people accused Kevin of. I physically recoil when people tell me what they do or do not deserve. I react extremely poorly to people who don’t. get. help. I react way bad to people poking at me, slicing with words that cut, clutching and clinging on as if I’m supposed to save them too, just because I talked to them, just because I listened, just because they won’t take responsibility for themselves.
I am not your savior.
Don’t you think that if I could have saved ANYone – it would have been the other half of my soul?
