When I was a youth, back in the Mesozoic Era (or as we used to say, "back in the Zoeys"), I was a card-carrying member of a small band of miscreants. We referred to ourselves as the "Original Cast." There were five of us: myself, Jake, Al, Harry, and Brian. Our interests included: smoking cigarettes, driving around in cars while smoking cigarettes, riding around in cars while smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes at a franchise diner in our neighborhood called Country Kitchen, stealing sundry youth-oriented groceries from the Shell gas station that Al worked at (mainly beef jerky, batteries, and cigarettes) and smoking cigarettes in one of several moist, cold basements or hot, dry attics.

One day, one of us — no one remembers exactly who, although I can tell you for damn sure it wasn't me — discovered girls. That miscreant told the other miscreants, and we spent the remainder of our youth faithfully and often tragically looking for ones that would let us stick parts of us into parts of them. We admitted a few dishy gals into our ranks. Clearly, they were batshit insane to hang out with us. We were ugly and smelly, with a penchant for flannel and an aversion to personal hygiene. Still, they saw enough redeeming qualities within us to offset those two boondoggles to our sexual exploits. We were grateful. And lucky.

One of those silly, silly girls was Jaime. Brian, being the most devastatingly handsome of all of us, wooed Jaime in short order. Expressed in AD&D terms, Brian had an 18 Charisma, a Flannel Jacket of Charming, and a Velvety Voice of Persuasion +5. No girl could make the saving throw necessary to resist him. He also had a car. To the teenage female of the species, in much the same way that strong birthing hips on a woman indicate fertility to the male, the car intimated that Brian could take her down the street to get cigarettes to get her through the long winter.

In any case, while Jaime and Brian were still in the beginning stages of their ballet of courtship, Jaime and I got high.

It's not what you think. A little healthy underage binge drinking was the extent of our mood or mild-altering substance use back in those days. Cheap beer and cigarettes were our poisons. No weed, no X, no crack rock. We were just old fashioned, I guess. Nope, it wasn't that at all. Jaime had heard, from a source that I don't think that either one of us can pinpoint today, that you could get high from nutmeg.