Try to make me go to rehab…I say…smash a mailbox

Given my country bumpkin up bringing, you’d never guess I expanded my musical knowledge beyond Billy Ray Cyrus. However, I’d like to thank my mom for that first Michael Jackson album and her love of the Beatles, which by the way border lined obsession.

So, as I was watching the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, of course in eager anticipation of the live performances and long-winded acceptance speeches, I caught a glimpse of one Ms. Amy Winehouse. Her voice and music were surprisingly good, but it was her mannerisms and awkwardness that got me thinking…my god she’s fucked up. I’ll spare you my psycho-analysis (as you can open any magazine and find some editorial on the girl and her rather impressive addiction).

So what’s the point?

Damn you people are impatient.

This is a blog, I don’t have to have a point (yes, it appears I’m now blogging to myself)

In small town USA I was never afforded the temptation of hard core drugs. Not to say that I wouldn’t have done it, it just wasn’t readily available. Number one, drugs take money and a pretty damn good distribution channel. Probably why I leaned more towards the other wonderful elixir of alcohol…thanks beer distributors and backwoods liquor stores! As for the price, it doesn’t cost a lot for molson ice (to get nice and sloshed, I would prescribe one funnel and six of those).

But I digress.

I grew up in a totally different world than the sons and daughters living in lawyerdoctorCEOville. I didn’t have the after school special at my house where all of my private school friends would show up at the door, book bags in tow (the messenger kind, not the back pack obviously), filled to the brim with prescription medications and other paraphernalia so far beyond my comprehension. I didn’t take an elevator up to Bryce’s house (apartment) on the 35th floor, overlooking the park. I didn’t hide needles and bent spoons with tarnished undersides from open flames in a cutout hardback edition of Alice in Wonderland. I also didn’t slide the mahogany ladder in the library in order to retrieve the aforementioned book from the upper shelves.

Nope, that wasn’t me.

My drug was slightly different. Take one 1991 Ford pickup truck, sprinkle with teenage angst and boredom, mix well with booze (re: “molson ice”), and garnish with one Louisville slugger. Sound a little “varsity blues”…yeah, you’re right. But son of a bitch it was cathartic. Oh, you’re wondering what we did. Well, it was all innocent enough, at least to us, maybe not to the USPS or the owner of that ever so delicately constructed 3 story monstrosity barely supported by the 4x4 piece of lumber upon which it stood. Yes, that euphoric feeling was reached by smashing mailboxes on a farm road in the middle of nowhere. It was an amazing high. The excitement, the chase (on some occasions), the Monday morning hallway chatter, it was all very wonderful. You’re breaking the law (albeit a federal offense), you’re doing what you’re not supposed to…you’re escaping from the reality of life if only for a moment.

So I ask myself, “self, what’s the difference between your high and the drug induced high of Bryce?” On the surface, there probably isn’t. But then I think, maybe there is. Though I never got caught, I realized that what I did in my moments of teenage insanity impacted those people. I never saw it with my own eyes, but I could envision the disappointment on Old Man Johnson’s face (pretty sure his first name was legally Old, middle name Man). I learned something from those experiences…pretty sure Bryce didn’t learn a goddamn thing from Alice in Wonderland.


Oh, I forgot to tell you, some asshole totally egged my car last night while it was parked on the street…fuckin’ kids.