Sh*t That Got Me High As a Kid

Even as children we are looking for something to do, something to excite us, something to stimulate us... something to get us high. As we had limited transport and funds Pokemon, PG-13 movies and the conquest to impress girls by stealing their sh*t and lighting it on fire all seemed like viable options to achieve said euphoria.

Pokemon was released in Japan in 1996 and then grabbed our American youth by their Poke Balls when the trading card game was released in the US in 1998, for my generation the grip loosened up on the approach to 2000. Though the trading cards and Nintendo games are still prevalent in our current youth population that first onslaught must have been what the mid-sixties felt like for San Francisco, as 9 & 10 year olds we got f*ckin high off that sh*t! I wouldn't feel the rush I got from buying an 11 card booster pack and not knowing what rare card (indicated by either a star or foil background) I was going to get until the discovery of certain illicit substances years after. I once traded my entire card collection, probably worth somewhere near the $150 mark, for a Charzard... a terrible mistake, my mother was, needless to say, absolutely f*cking furious, this got me high. I would also regret that decision about 5 minutes after the trade, but for that 5 minutes... f*ckin Buddah didn't have sh*t on me! Ewan McGregor should have just skipped Mother Superiors and gone straight to Wizards of the Coast.

I remember both my first horror movie and my first PG-13 flick. The first time I ever went to see a PG-13 movie was with my then childhood friend Anthony Vogt one of my childhood crew. Anthony's parents being French and slightly more lax than mine seemed to let us get away with way more sh*t than mine would out front of my house, including throwing smoke bombs into just about anything mail boxes, cars and off the overpass and onto the highway (this was in retrospect admittedly more dangerous than it was hilarious at the time, this also got us high). We went to go and see The Fast and The Furious... phenomenal. This movie is everything a man's movie should be... fast cars, hotter women and hot women driving fast cars, throw in a few guns and a fight scene or two and you're set. This was extremely exciting, I remember immediately after seeing that movie at the age of 11 deciding to modify cheap Japanese motors and steal sh*t for a living, this got us high.

The second movie I saw rated above my age grade was a terrifying flick, now a joke, Stephen King's werewolf movie Silver Bullet. Gary Busey featured in this flick before cracking his skull open in 88' riding his motorcycle. Accident or not I am pretty sure that mother f*cker has probably always been bat sh*t crazy. I watched this one with the third member of our ensemble Andrew O'Dwyer an Irish kid. The first time I met Prune (his nickname, why Prune? that is lost to the ages.) I was pretty convinced he was crazy... even for a 9 year old cruisin' around the neighborhood in full camouflage, with your face painted, wearing an eyepatch and brandishing a pocketknife is kind of suspect. We watched this late one night when his parents were out, we felt extremely badass repeating lines like "I'm gonna fill you full of lead mother f*cker!" the next day at school, this got us high. More than that there was an abandoned old church in our neighborhood, we would convince ourselves that the werewolf pastor from the movie was living in that church and ride our bike over there at night. The adrenaline rush you get as a 10 year old kid booking sh*t straight down the middle of the street after hearing a loud crash whilst you're exploring the grounds is sure to last weeks, this got us high. After that we found ourselves riding our bike in the dead center of the street every time we had to travel at night for fear the wolf might be in the bushes along the pathways.

For whatever reason growing up boys are generally convinced that the best way to get attention from girls is to be complete d*ck. Girls, understand we never did any of this intentionally we just weren't sure how to approach you without losing our sense of boyish masculinity. Andrew, Anthony and I spent years stealing backpacks and pulling chairs out from under girls in our class just as they were about to sit down in some desperate attempt to get some kind of recognition. After years of harassing the females in our grade and securing our reputation as trouble makers things finally came to a head at the end of 5th grade, we were finally getting the attention we had worked so hard for! Our middle school next year would host a series of "dances" at the City's recreation center where we got more than our fair share of our attention... that's right we had worked our way in. At this point the prospect of placing your hands on another girls hips and possibly in other places was a tantalizing thought, this got us high. This was to be short lived, 5 years of hard work was to be swept out from under me as my family relocated to Colorado when I was 11, Prune was sent to Catholic school and Anthony moved to Seattle. Needless to say I returned a year or so later and Prune and I got right back to stirring sh*t up, we immediately went out and purchased a couple zippo lighters, two BB guns and a stash of minor fireworks. If I recall correctly we'd had these items for about 5 hours when we went to one of our friend's parties from middle school when one of the girls caught a rogue flaming roll of Smarties to the face, possibly her eye and collapsed into tears by the pool. After which we quickly made our exit, this also got us high.

All this sh*t got us, or at least me, high when I was a kid. It was something to do, something to stimulate us and with our limited, actually nonexistent, game and no knowledge of illicit substances whatsoever this is what we came up with. I would still match the best days of my childhood with the best Albert Hoffman or Timothy Leary could cook up. And my best days as a kid would undoubtedly come out on top.

What got you high as a kid?