Sorry, try again

Here’s an old, but timeless, anecdote, because otherwise I’d post something syrupy and rambling about wondering where all my scholastic enthusiasm has gone to lately and if I should just go to Mongolia instead. You probably don’t want to hear that. Or maybe you do, but I don’t want to write it, because it still feels nebulous and silly and I can’t write a proper angsty rant until I’ve gotten all worked up about something.

Anyway. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the hot tub* when this scraggly young man walks into the courtyard and asks if I’ve got any weed. I tell him something smelled kinda funky in the hall over yonder, maybe he should ask there, so he leaves which is all to the good. He didn’t seem like much of a conversationalist.

But then he comes back, looking pissed off, and as he passes the hot tub on his way out he mutters something along the lines of “man, I thought this was supposed to be the drug house!” – kind of halfway directed at me. And my dorm does have a bit of a reputation in this regard; this sort of thing happens often enough. But I’m still astonished by that naive optimism – do people really think they can just saunter up to some stranger in a hippie bath, demand illegal substances, and actually get them? It’s the sort of thing you imagine in some dreamland 2020s San Fransisco, but never in real life.

Perhaps it’s unique to the DARE generation, those of us who’ve been told countless times that drug dealers are lurking on every street corner, waiting for your one moment of weakness to pour gallons and gallons of high-grade heroin into your veins. Combine this with a little healthy intolerance for delayed gratification, and it’s perfectly understandable that someone would be angry at me for not producing a joint from the magical hot tub fairyland stash. I’m almost angry at myself, now that I think back on it. How inhospitable of me. Hmph.

*’Yes, there’s a hot tub in my dorm, and yes, clothes are optional. But there hasn’t been a public sex scandal around here for nigh 15 years.