Sitting around the table eating a nice Christmas dinner with my three grown up kids and a couple of close friends. Somehow we got onto the subject of drug bloopers. "When bad things happen on good drugs." Zoe kept wanting me to tell a certain story about a little mishap that wasn't all that long ago, fondly known in the family as "Mom's Porta-Party." I was able to divert eveyone's attention with a tale from days of yore. But it was a whopper...
My story involved some purple dot acid (among other things) at a Grateful Dead show at Winterland, New Year's Eve 1977. It was my first of three Dead shows in short succession. To make a long story short, I ended up on New Year's Day 1978 with some strange guys in a van in a rest stop outside Santa Cruz wearing nothing but a leotard, having left all my belongings somewhere along the way. Including my shoes, which were silver spray-painted rainboots. As the sun came up I got out of the van and gingerly walked out and sat at the end of the jetty, shivered and cried my heart out. Then had to "borrow" some oversized jeans and Converse high tops and hitchhike back to Berkeley.
Thus inspired by my story, others shared tales of drug bloopers so outrageous that my story sounded like child's play, which it was. Things a mom can't know about until the Five Year Rule has passed. (If you and everyone involved are still alive to tell the tale after five years, any story is fair game.) Peyote trips, and the time my son and his friend "accidentally" ate some chocolate mushrooms and I had to tell the friend's mom. Somehow my kids all survived their childhoods and teen years. Just as Joe and I did. Miracles, really, when you hear what we all went through to get here.
We played a wholesome and rousing game of Dictionary to counteract the unwholesomeness. After that, Zoe suggested an appreciation circle. By then it was just our family, including Zoe's awesome boyfriend T. It was so moving to hear what we recognize about each other. Things that we all felt but maybe have never said to each other or heard each other say.
My story involved some purple dot acid (among other things) at a Grateful Dead show at Winterland, New Year's Eve 1977. It was my first of three Dead shows in short succession. To make a long story short, I ended up on New Year's Day 1978 with some strange guys in a van in a rest stop outside Santa Cruz wearing nothing but a leotard, having left all my belongings somewhere along the way. Including my shoes, which were silver spray-painted rainboots. As the sun came up I got out of the van and gingerly walked out and sat at the end of the jetty, shivered and cried my heart out. Then had to "borrow" some oversized jeans and Converse high tops and hitchhike back to Berkeley.
Thus inspired by my story, others shared tales of drug bloopers so outrageous that my story sounded like child's play, which it was. Things a mom can't know about until the Five Year Rule has passed. (If you and everyone involved are still alive to tell the tale after five years, any story is fair game.) Peyote trips, and the time my son and his friend "accidentally" ate some chocolate mushrooms and I had to tell the friend's mom. Somehow my kids all survived their childhoods and teen years. Just as Joe and I did. Miracles, really, when you hear what we all went through to get here.
We played a wholesome and rousing game of Dictionary to counteract the unwholesomeness. After that, Zoe suggested an appreciation circle. By then it was just our family, including Zoe's awesome boyfriend T. It was so moving to hear what we recognize about each other. Things that we all felt but maybe have never said to each other or heard each other say.
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