Pot's Still Illegal

The season of advent is upon us. It's a season of expectation and preparation. And not a day goes by now when I do not wait anxiously for the coming of finals. This time of the year, apparently, has taken quite a toll on me. If I hear one more person tell me that my voice sounds stressed, that I should go get some more sleep, and that I look like I've had a rough week, heads will roll. On the floor. Around and around.

To provide a brief reprieve from all of my studying and apparent stresses, let us look back on my days of youth and merriment and fondly recall the day I turned 21. I was so young then, and the morning so young too, sitting in front of the computer as the clock turned to midnight, cranking ou the Band Man's 20-page term paper. (Yes, the Band Man, you shall recall that I had missed the surprise birthday party last year studying for his final. He hates that I live on, year after year.) Fast forward many more hours of typing and too few hours of sleep and daylight came as a blur of a time of frosted donuts! letter from Kenya! visa! ping pong! tote bag! Rege's birthday! before I knew it, we had come upon the evening of my first 21st (I know the !'s are jarring and hard to read and hurt the eye, but that's how it felt as I went through the day, too). They refused to throw me another surprise party, citing past incooperation, so we got together for dessert. It was then that time decompressed and slowly stretched out and life became comprehensible again. There were good friends and fancy pants restaurant and a patronizing wait staff and maybe a little bit of a flush. Joe didn't trust the restaurant because the menu offered no pictures. And my wallet kept getting stolen when it came time for the check. Afterwards, when time was supposed to blur again as I drowned myself in now-legal booze, I went to BCF instead. Time dragged out slowly, staying up with me late into the night as I once again sat in front of the monitor, painfully pounding out a lab final and presentation, and once again getting too little sleep. Such was the recklessness I displayed on my twenty-first, so naive, so young, so fearless- going to classes, turning assignments in, doing homework, going to work, going to fellowship, and feeling ok about it because my friends were there every step of the way. Well, mostly I was just too tired to feel differently.