Dude!, Where's the Blunt??!!

Hello Cracians and visiting Earthlings!!

You know, I have lived in some of the greatest states in America, (supposedly) and I give a really bad rap to Atlanta in particular. With this blog, and several more, I want to tell the story of how I met and became friends with some of the people from ATL. While I hated living there, I have to admit, I met some of the greatest people ever there as well. These people will always be my friends; my family, as they were when I lived there. These were the Aunts and Uncles and cousins and brothers that I had left behind in NY. They came over for Christmas, helped me with my daughter, and were there when I needed someone to lean on. In the case of Shawn, she was also there when I needed a cypher partner, even after this fiasco...

Shawn is one of my closest and dearest friends. I met her while wasting away aka living, in Georgia, and we both worked at the same job. We have so many shared stories and experiences from our overnight shifts, but there is one in particular that solidified my friendship with her. I mean, if I were being honest, her and I being friends was iffy up until that point. (IJS!!)

Shawn is a kind, sweet, self conscious, self esteem at times challenged, yet confident, considerate, understanding, and sensitive woman. She is a lesbian, which was a constant topic of speculative discussion amongst the other waitresses when she first came to work at our store. I mean she was very quiet and to herself (seemingly) and as brash as I am, I didn't want to ask her about her sexuality because we all know those quiet types are the main ones you might have to cut and I just didn't want her to flip out over my curiosity. Not to mention, (or did I mention) Shawn is, was, and will always be super sensitive, and I did not want to set her off to crying. (she had done the crying before and I felt awkward because a) what the hell was she crying about? and b) she is a pathetic crier, like you feel BAD no matter what, who, why, whatever)

Anyway, Shawn and I happened to talk one night and we discovered that we had a lot in common. Again,  I wouldn't say we were friends yet, but she was cool, close to my age group, and working at our job, you HAD to be in good graces with at least one other person. We also discovered that we shared a cannibus interest. At our job, everyone knew everyone else's business; something Shawn and I marveled and laughed at, and they hated each other secretly, but yet had cyphers before, during, and after work. (enemies, friends, coworkers, managers-all coming together in a common interest-AAHH the power of a blunt!) Shawn and myself lived by the BYOB and more importantly we agreed that people you work with are NOT your friends so why would you do friend stuff with people you only work with? Perhaps because we were both older than most of the chickenrats we worked with we better understood the distinction. Or perhaps we had our own money and could afford our own vices and did not need to suck up the first available cigaweed that was offered, even if it meant smoking it with a bitch you could not stand. I don't know, it could have been one or both...

Anyway, once Shawn and I started becoming cool, we often had cannibus time together. Remember I said we had our own money and could afford our own vices? Well that was bravado, we were just both antisocial. Me-because I'm a bitch and didn't want to be around the chicks I worked with unless absolutely necessary and Shawn-because she is just cautious and smart. Not to mention, we were at work and you just cannot trust everybody! Well, one night Shawn comes in and we were both broke hoping to have a great night of tips so we could afford cannibus time sometime during the shift, but Shawn had a big surprise for me. She had scraped the bottom of her cannibus storage box and opened up all of her clips and made up a decent joint to at least get us through the first rush of customers. Trust me, doing that job sober is like having your tooth pulled with no novicane. You can do it, but it hurts! Man, I was starting to like this Shawn Banks! How nice of her to share her last meager little buds with lil ole me! I think she loved me even then...

Now every joint smoker will tell you that they have a routine. They will not deviate from it because it is not an act, it is a LIFESTYLE man! Once you join forces with someone, you develop a shared routine. Our routine had been established a few weeks prior. Since we were both waitresses, we usually couldn't go out together and smoke so we had a system where one would go first, sit in my car and do the do, and then the other would go once the first one of us returned. Simple. This night was pretty steady so it was going to be the take turns routine. Shawn is such a gracious selfless person that she insisted that I go first. I almost said no, and insisted she go first, but I really did need to relax and part of the routine was to also smoke a cigarette and I was feening so after much arm twisting, first I went. (This was the arm twist convo. Shawn-"you go first", Me-'OK'-like I said, MAKING ME GO FIRST) Oh how fateful a decision. Had I known what was going to happen, I would have never allowed her to FORCE me to go first! I would have insisted that since she had brought the party favors, she should party first, but I did not. Selfish greedy ole arrogant ME expecting to go first, so I didn't think nothing of going first. Have you ever been plagued by a 'what if!?" What if I had said how I felt? What if I would have taken that road? Just some random regrettable moment where what if may have given you a totally different outcome. So... what if Shawn would have went first. MAYBE things would have been different, but as we explore all of the elements (me, Shawn, the damn car, the cook; Brian), we may discover that who went first had nothing to do with it at all...

So I made a nice hot cup of coffee, grabbed my cigarettes, snatched up the cannibus, and out the door I went. I think I skipped. I sat in the car sipping my coffee and enjoying my routine, alternately smoking my vices (Which I have to point out that I may or may not indulge in anymore. The point here people is WHAT happened, not what IS happening, stay focused!) As per our routine, I had my share and put the rest in the ashtray for Shawn, but in my haste and highness, I knocked it out of the ashtray. I didn't see WHERE it went, but really, where COULD it have gone? I am in a car, doors closed, by myself, right? I gathered my stuff, looked under the passenger seat; no blunt. I looked under the drivers seat; no blunt. I looked in the back seat, under the back seats, in between the damn front and back seats; no, no, and no. I pulled the whole ashtray out, opened all four doors and got on my hands and knees-still nothing. I was out there a good 30 more minutes and could not find that darn blunt! I began wondering, dang, did I smoke ALL of it and just imagine putting it back? (yes, sadly, I question my sanity at least 3 times a day; other people question my sanity about twice that) Now, usually I am a very silly person. I laugh a lot and I am pretty funny too, but curiously; even as I was under the influence of something that can make me crack up, I was not laughing at this situation. YET...

I go inside and I tell Shawn what happened. The look on her face was annoyance, but also kind of sadness like I was a sorry excuse for a cypher partner. I felt like that was kinda harsh, especially since she would probably just find it when she went out, but I wisely didn't say anything. More so because I felt the silliness and the giggles coming on. I so did not WANT TO laugh about it and make Shawn mad, so I swallowed the laugh and thought I would just wait til she came back in and we could laugh together, right?
Wrong, so wrong.

Shawn did go outside and she returned about 10 minutes later. She looked angry. She stalked over to me right in my face and said, 'I cannot find it either, Stacey." I was a little put off because think about it, once you know someone and are around them a lot, they rarely actually SAY your name. Think about it for a minute. When you are directly talking to someone, they KNOW who they are, so why do you have to SAY their name? Unless it's for effect and in this case, it was to wipe the stupid grin off my face, which immediately swelled into laughter. I could not stop it. Shawn looked so serious and so mad! I know that shouldn't make me laugh but it did. I blame it on the drugs. I did a lot of things I am not proud of while under the influence, like eat an entire family size bag of Cheetos and one time I cursed out an old man because he took the last Slim Jim at the store, but this time, I was not proud of my behavior. Well, later I came to that conclusion. Shawn immediately got defensive and she went in on me! What the F is so funny!? That's not funny Stacey. Stop laughing Stacey! And she was following behind me saying all of this I guess in an attempt to make me stop, but it only got worse. I begged Brian, the cook to please go look because I felt our newly forming friendship taking a major hit behind this lost blunt. He agreed. Brian took the keys and since the store only had 2 customers who were settled and eating, Shawn and I sat in front of the window and watched. I tried really hard to NOT be high because I felt like maybe that made her even more mad to look at my half closed eyes and soft expression and my smirk as I tried to keep the outright laughter in, but that's like trying not to be drunk after drinking an entire bottle of vodka. (like the big 22.00 bottle of FRIS vodka which is a big bottle man) Brian was inside the car, then outside, then inside again. Then he drove off, and parked under the streetlight and started all over again. At this point, Shawn was turning red with her barely concealed anger and kept glancing at me shaking her head as if I were a sad sack of sorriness. I did feel like a bad person, but another part of me was getting a little indignant. It wasn't like I MEANT to lose it and seriously, how is it LOST in the car!? Again I blame this shift in attitude on the drugs. Drugs are bad. So anyway, Brian leaves the car there and comes back in. Shawn was cashing out one of the customers so he reported to me that he did not see it. He and I were dYYYYING laughing by the time Shawn came over because the situation was so hysterical. I mean I thought it was the funniest thing all year...; until I turned around and saw Shawn standing there. She had her hands on her hips and she just shook her head and walked off. I meekly, but still laughing because as I said, it would NOT stop, and I also want to add that it was a good batch too because I was STILL under the influence and this was a good hour later! I tried to reason with Shawn but she was not trying to hear it. She started lecturing me about how she went through all this trouble and all I could do was lose the damn blunt. She lectured me about how inconsiderate I was for laughing the entire time and even though she did not say it, I suspected that she thought I HAD smoked the whole thing, so I got mad. The pressure was too much. Mind you, although I was mad, I was STILL laughing and STILL high. It was like even as I wanted to feel bad and BE sorry, I just couldn't see my fault in what was essentially a lifestyle risk. Like, blunts do get lost!! I mean, ok, maybe not in the Taurus and while under the control of one person, but I am sure it has happened a time or two before to someone. Anyone?

To cap it off, we looked for that blunt for the next 5 hours, alternately taking turns going out to the car and at one point we all went together, but to no avail. The car must had eaten it! Shawn was so angry with me. I tried to give her ten dollars but she was all in her feeling and refused to take it talking bout the principal is NOT the money, it's the fact that... AWWW man do we really need to be lectured AGAIN. Shawn cried and here's where it gets tricky because as I said, she is a sad crier boi!! You just want to hug her but in this case, it made me more angry because really!!? You are crying over the blunt! She said I wasn't a REAL smoker so I didn't get it and she used the LAST of her stuff and I WASTED it! (which technically was not true being that I was high as hell and could not come down so waste was a poor word choice) She was crying and had that poor pathetic face on that just made me feel worse which made me more mad which made me laugh even more. I just could not understand how she BLAMED me though!! She finally went out back to smoke a cigarette with Brian, leaving me alone to think about my behavior. (that's what it felt like, secluded punishment, like YOU go sit there by yourself in your haze of high and you THINK about what you did. Sooo out of context in MY biased opinion) BUT, I did think about it, but not how she thinks. I thought about how a blunt was what kind of brought us together and was now going to be the reason for us to break apart. After that night, Shawn and I rarely went outside separately and we made it our BUSINESS to be able to do it together. I don't know if it was because she didn't trust me or my car, but I do know that I was never arm twisted to go first and I also know that every single time Shawn got in that car, she looked for that blunt, which by the way, we never ever found in the 4 years I had the Taurus.

After that night, I started driving Shawn to work and picking her up an I am happy to say that we did become friends. I mean if you can go through the entire spectrum of human emotion in one night with someone and not come to blows, you pretty much formed  friendship, you know?? I mean they say drugs are bad, and in this case, drugs were at the center of what could have been a war, but if you think about it, that blunt and what happened becase of it brought me and my bestie Shawn together and what can be wrong about that!? Oh and whoever buys a beige 2006 Ford Taurus from Cavender Auto in Gainsville Ga, (I sold the car back to them when I moved), be on the lookout for that blunt; you don't want it resurfacing during a traffic stop, and  by the way, if that happens, don't say it's not yours cuz it comes with the car homie!!
Love ya Shawn Banks! lol

~Cracey