I started smoking tobacco when I was 12.
I was a pretty weird kid when I was that age. I used to get picked on in school a lot. When I was in the 7th grade, I took woodworking and there were a couple of assholes (I would bet money that they are still assholes) who thought it was a lot of fun to pick on me. A guy named Jim Reed took up for me and told them to leave me alone. Jim was 16 and repeating the 9th grade for the second time. Imagine Fonzie, but much scarier and far more dangerous. The two assholes decided that picking on me any further was a phenomenally bad idea. Imagine that. That day at lunch, Jim invited me to go with him to hang out with his friends. There are those defining moments in time that forever change your life and head you down a completely different path. That was one of them
Hill Junior High School in Denver. Junior high was what happened between elementary and high school back in those days. That was before some pinhead got the brilliant idea of putting 9th grade girls in the same school building with 12th grade boys. Middle school is what they called the remainder. I've never looked at the statistics, but I'll bet teenage pregnancy hit a big spike with the widespread adoption of middle schools. But I digress.
Behind the school, there was a huge field. The far end of the field was where the rough trade hung out. When Jim introduced me to his friends, there were a number of puzzled looks, but Jim was the coolest of the cool in that crowd, so I was in. The main activity we engaged in was smoking. Someone gave me a cigarette and lit it for me. I didn't gag or puke, so that sealed the deal. We liked to pretend that the teachers didn't know what we were doing, but they did. The only reason they didn't do anything about it was, to be honest, that they were terrified of us.
A few months after that, Jim ended up in "juvie" for stealing a car and didn't come back until close to the end of the school year. That was pretty much it as far as public education went for Jim. He was permanently expelled. They used to do that for hard cases back then. Now they give them a ribbon for participation. I heard a couple of years later that Jim was shot while participating in a B&E. He was probably 18. For that couple of months, though, he was the best friend I ever had, up to that point. Well, pretty much, the only friend I had had up to that point. Jim would hang out and talk to me. Not like other people who just tolerated me, or the people who talked to me long enough to figure out which buttons to push. Jim liked me. He talked to me like a friend. It was a new experience. I liked it.
One of the things about this crowd was that they weren't on the high end of the intelligence distribution. That was my in. That was my staying power. The people in the crew respected me because I was smart. Now, I did my fair share of other people's homework during that time, but I also got a reputation for being able to keep people out of trouble. I also got a reputation for being able to steal anything. Yep, at 12 years old, I became a master shoplifter. I really could steal anything. I think the people who owned the stores just thought I was some goofy kid and never imagined that I would steal anything. I was also smart about taking risks. Not that I was always smart, though. One kid dared me to steal one of each of the girlie magazines at a particular store. That was 6 magazines. Everyone in the crew swore that there was no way I could do it without getting caught. At the time, I had a giant pea coat that I wore everywhere. I was a skinny little kid. 6 magazines fit in that coat with room to spare. Not only did I get away with the magazines, but I added three candy bars and a Zippo lighter for good measure. I became a god.
Shortly after my 12th birthday, someone gave me a joint. I
went with another guy I knew to a spot safely away from the school and
we smoked it. Nothing. I got nothing from it. It really was pot, because
I remember the smell. I also remember the other guy having fits of
laughter about his shoes. A couple of other times over the next couple
of years I smoked with people. About the most I got from it was a
pleasant buzz. I had no idea what all of the commotion was about. I
tried speed once when I was in the 9th grade. It made me jumpy and
uncomfortable. No thanks. Maybe I'll post something another time about
how I went full Hunter S. Thompson a few years later.
The next year, in the 8th grade, I made friends with a boy named John Green. Yes, that was really his name. We did everything together. John was the ultimate bad kid. We skipped school to go hang out in a park and smoke. We actively sought out the company of people worse than us. John was a scrapper. He would fight in a minute, and it wasn't the usual kind of kid fighting. He was in it for blood. I saw him take down a guy twice his size, just on the savagery of his attack. The kid never knew what hit him. So, we formed a symbiotic relationship. John was dumber than a bag of hammers. I did his homework for him. I let him copy my test in the classes we shared. I wrote him crib notes for the ones we didn't. In short, I was the only reason he passed the eighth and ninth grades. In return, I was untouchable. I was still a weird kid who everyone liked to pick on, especially the jocks. They never picked on me more than once. One numbskull, who full out attacked me one day, came to school the next day with most of his face bandaged. He apologized profusely. But, like Jim and I, John and I were genuinely friends. Even after he got a girlfriend, the girl with the biggest boobs in our class, which was important back then and at that age, he didn't abandon me. I was supposed to watch out for his girl when he wasn't around, and most of the time, I was the third wheel. I didn't mind. It made me cool.
By the summer of 1969, I was hanging out with my crowd occasionally during the school vacation as well. On August 16th, someone told us about a music festival at a place called Woodstock. All of the dirty, degenerate hippies we admired were going to be there. We got the brilliant idea that we were going to go. Mind you, the oldest kid in our crew was 15. We had no idea how far away it was. Someone said it was in New York. We were in Colorado. That meant it was too far to walk to and you can't shoplift bus tickets. That 15 year old got the brilliant idea to steal a car. He told us to wait for him on a certain street corner. We did, and shortly after that, he pulled up in a big station wagon. We were ready to go. But, it wasn't to be. A woman in a Jeep suddenly pulled up behind the station wagon and jumped out. I can still hear her voice. "That's my car!" Most of the crew scattered. John Green and I were so cocksure, we stood our ground and watched. Our friend must have gotten hit by the inspiration fairy because he told the woman that his grandmother in Pueblo was very sick and he was just trying to get there. He apparently also had great karma, because the woman bought his story. She even offered to drive him to Pueblo.
The boy's dean at my school was an old Army buddy of my father's. Since everyone at the school knew I was a member of the inner circle of the bad kids, I'm pretty confident that the information made its way to him and then on to my father. The only thing my father ever said to me about it was that if he ever caught me smoking, he would throw me out of the house. I'm pretty sure he knew just about everything else I was up to. I'm also pretty sure he was the reason that I didn't end up in juvenile detention when I got caught stealing once. He was a deputy in the sheriff's department. I honestly don't think my mother had a clue what was going on with me. Or if she did, she had no idea what to do about it. During that time, they got divorced, and my mother either got wise or got the nerve up to pull me out of that situation. She got me transferred to a different school, and that was the end of my budding career as a criminal and future guest of the state.
Pardon the random brain dump, but that's what this blog is about. Maybe I'll say more later.
