No child should have to hear her parent say, “Yo, bring me my bong.”
Last night Drama Queen and I were in the car with my neighbor. We we’re heading towards home around 8:15 when the neighbor suddenly blurted, “Let’s stop at Johnny’s on the way home and get a couple of slices.”
I paused for a second and said, “Uh…OK. I guess if you want to.” There are several great pizza places around my house and Johnny’s isn’t one of them. Their pizza sucks. Maybe in another part of the country they would be pretty good, but not around Buffalo. There are too many awesome pizza joints for me to waste my time on Johnny’s.
“OK,” she said. “Hey! There’s this place right up the street from here that I’ve been dying to try. Let’s stop there.” I asked if she meant Muscarella’s and she said yes. I’ve lived here almost 18 months and I’ve never tried it, but have heard good things. I was totally down with stopping there.
They were out of slices for the night, so we decided to order a small pizza and have them throw it in two separate boxes so we could eat at our respective places of residence. We sat down at a table to BS while we waited for the pizza. What I heard at that table absolutely blew my mind.
My neighbor teaches adult education (GED classes) in Buffalo and, as you can imagine, she has some pretty interesting students. She told us of a conversation she had this afternoon with one of her students. I know I shouldn’t be shocked by this, but for some reason I kinda am.
This particular student came into the room and my neighbor said, “Hey…how you doing?” The reply is classic. “Better now. I just smoked a blunt in the parking lot.”
Yeah. She said she was doing OK because she just toked up a fattie in the school parking lot. Nice.
The two started conversing about her marijuana use and somehow it came up that not only does she smoke in front of her 11, 13 and 15 year old girls, but she also smokes WITH her 13 and 15 year olds.
Where do I start? How about we start with the 11-year-old. No child should have to hear her parent say, “Yo, bring me my bong. No. Not that one. Bring me the tall one. Yep. Thanks. Got a lighter?”
A lot of parents won’t buy cell phones for their kids until they’re 15, yet this mom rolls blunts with her 13-year-old. I sense a very different parenting style here. Very, very different.
What kind of a Sweet 16 party does a mom like this throw? Maybe at 16 the daughter gets a meth pipe. “Time to graduate, baby.” Mom probably goes so far as to introduce her daughter to Tommy, a local meth dealer who’s giving her the first hit for free. As a birthday gift.
What criteria does she use for determining when her children are ready for their first puff? Do their grades have to slip enough that mom feels they’re well on their way to being a full time slacker or is it strictly an age thing? I’m really not sure.
With a mom like this, there’s no telling how these girls will turn out. There’s a high probability that they will be all kinds of messed up. I hope not. Fingers crossed.
This might be a good time to mention that the students my neighbor teaches are all placed in her class by social services. These people are all receiving public assistance of some kind and since they don’t have a high school diploma, they attend school instead of job hunting.
That means the weed was paid for by the people of New York. With our tax dollars. I helped buy that chick and her daughters weed. No one invited me to the party. I wouldn’t attend, but if I helped pay for it, an invite would be nice.
Former New York Governor David Patterson used to get his joint smoked. Maybe this mom figured that smoking a joint was the right thing to do. Blame the drug problem on the politicians, right?
I’m totally shaking my head right now. I can’t believe this is a true story. But it is. Every time I wonder if I’m being a good parent, I hear stories like this that tell me I’m doing OK.
J.R.
P.S. For the record, the pizza was pretty damn awesome.
About J.R. Reed
Sadly it is not just parents of teenagers who feel that it’s ‘not that big of a deal’. Even on our local news there was a story about a parent who was arrested for having pictures of his toddler helping him sort his stash, complete with all sorts of types of paraphernalia.
But why stop at just marijuana? The same can be said about alcohol & cigarettes – parents are constantly providing their children with these substances as well. Ask any random smoker when they started smoking, chances are great that they started prior to the legal age of 18 and they obtained the cigarettes from either their parents or their friends’ parents. My ex-husband started smoking when he was 7 years old, started drinking before he was 10, and addicted to drugs…and marijuana would be labeled a ‘light’ drug in this case…before he was 12. He’d been through a number of treatment programs, that I later found out about (I met him when he was 28) while he was a teenager, which mainly only helped him learned how to hide his habits. I was a naive 19year old when I met him, who had zero experience with any of it… In some ways I wish my parents would have helped educate me about what different things look like, smell like, and the effects they have on a person’s life, personality, and behaviors; I might have skipped a lot of heartache finding out the ‘hardway’ through the experience of being married to him. Looking back now there were obvious clues about his habits, but because I knew nothing of it I had no idea.
I know I strayed from the topic at hand a bit, but the problem is not just with marijuana.
Stephi,
That is an incredible story. Sadly incredible.
It’s incredible, but yeah, not altogether surprising. I guess I’m woefully old-fashioned. I can’t even bring myself to ask my kids to bring me a beer from the frig.
Was your neighbor obligated to report this Mother on the Year candidate to the authorities for providing her kids with illegal drugs? In my opinion, these kids should not be left in her care.
Thanks Tara. I have Drama Queen get me a beer from the fridge, but not much more than that. My neighbor is checking into what her obligations are.
Its sad to say, but I have an aunt who was like this. Her “reasoning” was that she got high and they liked to get high too….why not do it together…it’s safer..right?!? Needless to say my aunt still walks this earth, but her two youngests sons no longer do. One a victim of a hit in run…we think that it was because she owed someone money…and her son was a way to prove a point. The other shot by a fellow gang member, there are multiple stoires on how this one went down….his buddy had be jumped, so he aquired a gun and my cousin sneaked up on him to scare him as a joke…said buddy shot him…another version was he was being “blessed” out of the gang…either way he’s gone. Lovely family history, isn’t it?
Kinda make you wonder why you don’t need a license to have kids…..sorry mam you’re to f-ing stupid to raise a child (let alone 4) can’t let you do it. You need a license to drive a car…you need a license to be a doctor, nurse, and hell you need a f-ing license to cut hair! just saying….ok end of my rant!
Holy shit, Amanda. I’ve read this comment four times and the only thing that comes to mind is, “holy shit”. I’m sorry for your loss. I really am.
Your right that is just sad. I agree that hearing shit like this makes me feel like a rockstart kinda mom.
Thanks for reminding me that I shouldnt be so hard on myself.
Stories like this make me feel like an awesome parent. It’s sad, huh?
i wonder if the mother and daughter share more than that………
From my blog:
“…My mom, that sheltered Baptist girl, started smoking pot every day. One day, when I came in from playing, a friend of Larry’s was sitting at our dining room table- rolling joints. I sat down and watched her. She asked me if I would like to learn to roll a cigarette.
Very patiently, she showed me how to pick out the seeds and stems from the pot. She taught me how to hold the rolling paper so that it had a slight crease and to evenly spread the pot inside. She showed me how to roll it all up and twist the ends. After 2 joints, I had it down pat. We sat there, her and I, rolling joints and chatting until all the pot was gone and a neat little pile of joints sat on the tray in its place.
Larry came in and saw how well I had learned. He ruffled my hair and told me that I had done such a great job- that I could roll them for him from there on out. I was proud that I had made him happy. From that day on, when he came back from being out on the road, he would hand me a bag of pot to roll. I kept my supplies, rolling papers and the Holly Hobbie tray I worked on, in a cabinet in the kitchen. I always set to work right away and had the job finished in a couple of hours. I was 6 years old…”
Holy fuck Beth. I’m not sure what else to say, except “Holy fuck!!!”
I could rant about this for a while, because my husband is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Anyway, I knew going in he smoked it. I don’t care for it, but it wasn’t every day, so I didn’t think much of it. I figured when we had a kid he would be more careful. Not so. He didn’t smoke it around the kids, but in the house (our bathroom, bedroom) so it was in the air and you could smell it. My mom called after a visit one day and was like you really need to be careful about inviting people over–it’s very obvious when you walk in. Yikes!
Our oldest had breathing problems and I went to the doc and was like “Please don’t take my kids away if I tell you this, but I’m trying to convince my husband to quit smoking pot in the house–he’s says the smoke is not harmful like cigarettes.” Doc was like whuck? Her harsh words didn’t help either.
Towards the end of our marriage he got more careless and began rolling them anywhere and every where and was smoking it like cigarettes. He left his stuff out on the counter one day and maintenance came in to fix something and saw it. So we got kicked out while I was 8 months prego with our 2nd. He blamed me for that–I should have known better. I spent a huge part of my life covering for him and was anxious all the time that we’d have the boys taken, etc. That incident was really the last straw for me. I told him I didn’t want to be married anymore shortly after I had the baby.
*this also coincided with me finishing school and getting a job, aka I could support myself, which was the only thing stopping me from doing it sooner.*
He’s on probation now and gets tested so he’s clean now, but I worry about the future with the kids. He just thinks it’s totally okay to smoke it and it should be legalized. Okay fine, but it’s not legal yet–and it’s gotten us kicked out of our home, lost you jobs, and your license, so it doesn’t seem to be working for him.
I just I did just rant for a while. :-/
Thanks for ranting! *big hug*
Crap, wish I could edit. Typing too fast. I say “husband” in the first sentence. He is officially ex now for a little over a year.
I guess it’s more addictive than people admit, and so they spin all sorts of stories in their heads to make it sound okay. REally, they’re just having to do it to get a fix, to function.
I wrote a post kinda on this subject here.
http://marketingtomilk.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/a-parent-or-a-friend/
I’m most definitely with you on this one.
M2M
I do fear for the well-being of that kid.
Yes, I admit it. I long for the good old days of parenting when folks could kick their kids outside all day long, have them mix them their martinis and light their cigarettes. I think of those days with great envy. But….it’s not our world and I have to fetch my own sloe gin fiz. Or weed.
I know, huh? These days kids have the number for CPS programmed into their cell phones. Although, by age 4 Drama Queen did know the difference between a Corona bottle and Molson Canadian.