24
Mar
One Toke Over the Line
by Opal Peachey
0 Comments | Posted by thatgirl in 21st Century Bellist, Living Life
Ashley is a very fashionable girl, all honey colored layers and cinch waisted suitcoats. When I saw her last, I complimented her Steve Madden wedges. She shrugged. “I had to dress for court. Just a formality, my lawyer apologized for bringing me in.”
To my ears, her story plays out like an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The gang spends the 
night drinking as usual. Ashley and John break away long after last call, John insisting “I’ll be fine, it’s only two miles!” Ashley, having spent the last 4 hours drinking, passes out upon ignition. John manages to avert collision and catastrophe by chain smoking. (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!) Upon arriving, he promptly pukes in her parking spot. And here’s where things go a tad ‘over the top:’ After somehow finding the door, John realizes he doesn’t have his keys.
Are they in the car? Pants pockets? Dropped while ralphing?
The possibilities explode in drunken logic: John kicks in his own door and promptly freefalls onto their sofa. Alcohol wins another round, folks! Little does John know that the cat lady in 2B called the police when she came to the crazy conclusion that someone was breaking into his apartment. Instead of waking up to a hangover, he is jolted conscious by a billy club. John assures them – reality sinks in – yes he lives here. But since the police have been deprived of kicking in the door themselves, they decide to search the apartment. And what do they find? In a footlocker underneath the sweet couple’s bedside table but John’s pot stash. Comic double take! Those were JOINTS he was smoking!
Back in the real world, Ashley is found fast asleep in the car. She, too, is arrested for possession of marijuana.
The aftermath doesn’t isn’t so funny. Ashley loves her job as an assistant for a CPA, and said the hardest part was telling her conservative boss she had been arrested because her boyfriend kept drugs at their apartment. She was crying; sure she’d be fired. He handed her a tissue and cleared his throat “But…it was only marijuana?”
And that’s what makes my throat go tight. Half Baked, Pineapple Express and Weeds are part of our cultural wallpaper and the DARE shirt I was given in junior high has now achieved a vintage patina bordering on the ironic. Yet the bail set for Ashley’s boyfriend was the same as for his cellmate, a man arrested for stabbing someone. They were evicted from their apartment and are now living with friends. Ashley was not fired from her job.
If I were to whisper behind her back, I might question her decision to stick with him. “Stand By your Man” doesn’t belong on this playlist. Or does it? We’re both quick to demean his idiotic door-kicking. That’s the serious crime here. But despite the arrest, she loves him. With tears in her eyes she tells me how much. Ashley chooses to stay with him because, even though he was arrested for a certain crime, in today’s young adult landscape she just doesn’t believe that what he did was wrong.