The Drug Connection

A friend of mine recently jokingly referred to me as her connection to my mother.  She smiled very politely, and then flipped out as soon as my friend left, and asked me to explain, because as clean cut and chemically intolerant as I am, my friend obviously couldn’t be referring to what any reasonable person upon hearing that would think she was referring to.  No, I said, it was an inside joke.

Way back when I actually was a high school student and not just occasionally mistaken for one online, I made the mistake of going to homecoming.  I got myself (or my mother got me) all dolled up and my then blue hair was curled, coifed, otherwise and ruthlessly bullied into shape and my mother drove me to the dance.  I smiled as she drove away, and she left me there in happy confidence that there was an entire teaching staff full of chaperones.  Of course, as soon as I entered the dance hall, I realized my mistake.

No one was dancing.  Everyone was crowded around the walls, their fingers in their ears because the music as so loud that even teenagers used to poundingly loud radios were huddled as far from the speakers as they could.  The students lucky enough to have cars abandoned the dance for them.  The rest of us found ourselves trapped by the rings of chaperones at every door.

I, being particularly prone to headaches, had ibuprofen in my dainty clutch purse.  As I popped one into my mouth, a mass of beautifully made up wall flowers stampeded towards me, and I ended up running out of medicine.

A week later, a few friends of mine were teasing me about being the school’s drug connection, and unfortunately, one of the school’s two cops overheard them.  Thus began a string of confrontations between me and this particular police officer that entertained everyone except the two of us.

I had a tendency to sneak out of our overcrowded one building school and sit out on the sidewalk next to a door, my backpack propping the door open.  It was school policy for all of the teachers who found such propped open doors to kick the backpacks out of the way, forcing students to go through the front doors and receive their detentions if they wanted to get back to class.  My contention, that no student would leave their backpack, full of valuable calculators, notes, cell phones, and other personal possessions while they left campus for rowdy deviant fun, was roundly ignored.  We weren’t allowed out of the cafeteria, and that was final.  One day, the same lady cop who already thought I was a drug dealer was going through her usual rounds of backpack kicking, and when she kicked my backpack, I stopped her, propping the door open with my foot and a wide grin.

Lady Cop: You!  What are you doing out here?  Come to smoke your grass?  Score your dope?
Fish: eh?
Lady Cop: Your criminal behavior will not be tolerated!
Fish: I’m just out here to get some vitamin D!
Lady Cop: Is that the new gateway drug?

It should be duly noted that my grandmother is convinced that I will get MS because I have autoimmune problems, my bedroom is the black hole of Calcutta, and I never see the sun, at least according to her.  The need for sunlight really was my primary motivation for breaking school rules, thank you.

The other campus cop, who thought his colleague was delusional, thought this was all endlessly amusing.

Gentleman Cop: Vitamin D causes cancer, you know.
Fish: Stop grinning like that.  You shouldn’t be grinning like that.

This lady cop always found some way to find drugging behavior in my everyday teenage awkwardness.

Cat: Stop running around like a crazy person.  You’re always running around like a crazy person.
Fish: I’m on a sugar high!
Lady Cop: Are you on meth or LSD?
Fish: Dextrose!
Cat: Does she look like she’s high on Meth or LSD?

But even when I didn’t say anything at all, she managed to find something drug related in my every action.

Fish: *sniffling because of allergies when blood dribbles from my nose* awww, damn
Lady Cop: *pouncing* have you now graduated to snoring cocaine, you wastrel teen?
Fish: Gah?

The closest I’ve ever come to drug use is after surgery when I found out that opiates make me hallucinate blue tigers trying to eat me.  This hasn’t stopped my neighbors from thinking I was shooting up when I gave myself my allergy shots at midnight, because I forgot about them until then.  Really, they shouldn’t have been looking though my bedroom window anyway.