Smoke Signals: Memories Of A High School Overachiever Turned Burnout

Memories of a High School Overachiever Turned Burn Out

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I was a DARE kid from grade one.  In highschool I used to recite the negative physical and psychological side effects of marijuana while my friends passed dutches around and ate their allowances in Taco bell.  

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I guess they're right when they call weed the gateway drug.  I remember the first time I smoked.  All through high school I had said no, regurgitating myriad factoids and slogans I'd learned in health class about scorched cilia or diminished lung capacity.  I'd always had breathing issues, so I reasoned it was not smart to give my "reactive airways syndromatic" lungs the ole Mary Jane incense infusion.  The drug war propagandists had long ago claimed my mind for their team and I wasn't going to let my deadbeat, general-ed friends pressure me to get high when I was content cracking jokes and masturbating to straight porn with straight boys.  

I had older sisters who drank way too much in high school, and with them marking with neon caution tape what NOT to do, I made my way carefully and cleanly through 9th and 10th grade restricting my adventures to small doses of caffeine and the occasional wine color or Mike's Hard Lemonade.  It was enough hard work masquerading like I was interested in girls to try and otherwise dabble with drugs.  Plus working at a place called Beer City - and the ease with which I could borrow a six pack to share with my stable of fag hags made for a lot less hassle than trying to coordinate a weed run. My student-of-the-month ass was certainly not about to be engaging with the deadbeats and druggies who smoked cigarettes outside the North Gym for what seemed like most of the day - I had yearbook!  

Looking back, it's mind blowing to think that this course I'm on, this runaway train of self destruction and psychological obsession could have all stemmed from a second period seating chart that placed me directly in front of THE Chandra Cameron: AP student, top ten in our class, stunningly beautiful, brilliant, effortlessly cool and dating a senior... and oh yeah -a bowl tokin', joint smokin' bonafide, card carrying, pot head.  Pot Ambassador, really.

Chandra didn't fit into my straight-edge mental ven-diagram.  How did she do it?  Pot heads were supposed to be burn outs, not honor roll. Potheads got D's in Earth Science and F's in English, not first chair in orchestra and 4's on the AP European History Test... Potheads played video games, not Varsity soccer.  They smelled and had names like Cheech or Kenny...

But Chandra smelled amazing.

And while her parents probably were high when they named her Chandra, to me - the name Chandra, (which I'm pretty sure means badass in Sanskrit), and everything else about her, was the furthest thing imaginable from textbook teenage drug user.  

She wasn't a stoner, she was enlightened.  She floated with a cool confidence that in itself was convincing.  Even teachers seemed to admire her.  It wouldn't surprise me then to learn years later that Ms. Sheperd, our well meaning, but walked-all-over AP Government teacher, was similarly seduced by Chandra's wise-beyond-her-years oneness, her " damn that girls got it together" kinda mojo:

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With a week before the AP Government Test, fully aware her entire flock would likely fail (despite her jumping up and down with her hair on fire for weeks), Ms. Sheperd was a ball of emotion. She raised her dull, chalky forehead from the vinyl steering wheel of her car that was branding her forehead with a braidlike ring replaying the school year in her head. 

She was stressed out, fried, frazzled... Pissed she cared more about her students than they cared about themselves and even more pissed that she didn't consider herself worthy of the same level of concern - a sentiment shared by most of her students, the rest of the Social Studies Dept and pretty much every other teacher who knew her at North Belmont High School.