I’m not high.
Now I know that a lot of my “fans” think that I eat crack for breakfast every day, or least those days that I sit in front a keyboard for this regular missive. But my usual drug is espresso and Cuban bachata. No, that’s not a powder. It’s music. Sorta.
But because I have Colorado tags on my car, I am guilty by association with a state that is now famous for what most of us don’t actually get time to enjoy very much: wacky weed.
In a chairlift at Loveland Basin last weekend, a place where mostly obsessed skiers and families hide from corporate ski-mania, I was asked three times if I either was high, got high or had any on me as soon as my chair-mates discovered I was the rare and current Colorado native.
One couple I shared the chair with were Chinese, visiting Loveland from their jobs in Dallas.
“Hell, yeah I’m high. This is Loveland. We’re at 11,000 feet right now.”
Elevation/marijuana jokes must be sort of idiomatic to the Chinese, because I got no laughs. Instead, I got questioned about where to get it, how much it costs and what it feels like to smoke dope.
Welcome to Colorado.
Another guy told me he was from Utah and figured that since I was a skier and since I didn’t wear a helmet and I was smiling and was from Denver, it didn’t hurt to ask. “I hope I didn’t offend you,” he said talking faster than I thought people from Utah even could. They’re so polite when they’re looking to be scofflaws. He was really disappointed when I told him he had to wait until Jan. 1 to legally score kush, and, no, I just smile like this all the time when I ski. It’s congenital. Sorry. But if you stand still in those trees over there for any time at all, you’ll draw a crowd. Got a lighter?
A third guy from Kansas I rode up with wasted no time. “You from here? Can you get me high?” I offered an uplifting story about the likelihood of a long winter, but he wasn’t impressed. I pointed him to the spot in the trees.
It’s not just the slopes where folks are driven to pop the question. My pals across the country, through all the usual digital devices, somehow seem to be interested in my sinsemilla humor.
I don’t hide the fact that when I was younger, and sans child, I had a great time dabbling in drugs. I not only inhaled, I chopped, snorted, chewed and drank my way through the hellacious 70s and 80s. For a reason I really don’t understand, I lost interest in it all about the same time I had to get a real job and a car that started. Coincidentally, so did most of my friends.
I’m interested all over again now. Not that I’m just dying to return to the days of fashioning pot pipes out of potatoes and toilet paper rolls. But clearly, everybody, and I mean everybody, is keenly interested in what we’re about to do here in Colorado, and I want to cash in.
Now the easiest thing to do would be to just sell joints for like $20 each on the chairlift. Please don’t call. I know it’s illegal.
My plan is much more Machiavellian than that. There’s no doubt that Colorado is going to light up like a squirrel on a transformer come Jan. 1, when pot shops across the state open their doors to you and yours.
Me? I’m gonna be the guy with a backpack full of Taco Bell Burrito Supremes on Lift 8. Ten bucks, dude. Fifteen if you want extra sour cream. No? Not your thing? I got Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, the minis. Five bucks each. How about some Little Debbies, pal? The tiny pecan pies? Ten clams each.
Same thing in my own neighborhood, where the mild middle class is just itching to fire up the ol’ Toker II after all these years.
Knock. Knock.
“Who’s there?”
Duhbessed Dude.
“Duhbessed Dude?”
Duhbessed bacon-fried-chicken-cream cheese pizza you ever ate in your entire life, dude, hot and waiting for you right here on your front porch. Only $75, and I take Visa. Open the door and your squinty red eyes, ‘cause I got original formula Coke for only $10 a can.
Fire ‘em up, Colorado. Unlike those who never partook or forgot what it’s like, I know there’s no worry about tokin’ and driving after New Years Day, because you won’t be leaving your house or even the chairlift. And if you’d like to sink your teeth into this slightly warmed extra-large Snickers Bar, text me. For $40, I’ll be right there.
Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com