The first joint I smoked was with my babysitter, Angie.
I was ten.
Angie, a long time friend of my mother’s, sat at the kitchen table.
She carefully crumbled the marijuana, picked out the seeds, spread it evenly across the e-z wider, and rolled it.
She licked the end, then lit it.
She saw me watching.
"Do you want to try it?"
"Yes," I said.
I sat beside her.
Once, earlier, I tried to smoke a cigarette.
Home alone, looking through my mother’s dresser, I found a cigarette.
I put it in my mouth and lit it.
I inhaled.
I coughed; uncontrollably.
I put out the cigarette.
It was the last cigarette I ever smoked.
"Inhale slowly," Angie instructed.
I breathed in, slowly.
Then out.
Without coughing.
Tags