PERRY: Living the Colorado pot pipe dreams in the garden of weedin’

One of the perks of living in Colorado is not having to be ashamed like the rest of the world.

It’s not, however, a perk of being a dad.

Here in the mile high, boys openly date boys. We freely drink an endless variety of beer, sometimes for lunch. We blow our rent and grocery money on ski passes. Sunday religious services are held unapologetically in front of a Broncos game. We buy dope from one of 600 pot shops across the state, and we smoke it. Or eat it. Or vape it. Or whatever.

As a newspaper guy, hardly a day goes by when other-staters or foreigners marvel at what life must be like in a place where you can buy marijuana like you’re buying gourmet coffee and smoke your way to liberal nirvana. I hear it a lot, and I immediately launch into my spiel about this being a very polarized state. The tighty righties are not going willingly. There are plenty of people who freak out when they see pictures in the papers of guys kissing guys and a community racing toward the normalization of homosexuality. They don’t like it that Colorado has become the craft brewski center of the universe, making beer seem so damned wholesome. And they’re aghast there are far more pot shops than coffee shops in the state. I point out that Colorado is also the home of Focus on the Family, something that I, personally, am deeply ashamed of.

None of this is really new. For as long as I can remember back into the early 1960s, Colorado has always been a state filled with ski bums, pot smokers, gays, beer guzzlers and Broncomaniacs. The distant and the curious are often disappointed to find out that we really don’t get high or drunk, tickets to the big game or hooked up with the same sex any more than anyone else. We simply no longer have to hide it.

I’m lucky because I hail from a generation, a state and a profession that surprises no one that we partied like it was 1999 for decades, and nobody very much cares, because they probably did, too. I smoked pot, wore a suede fringe vest, hitchhiked with skis, got good grades, a college degree, brushed my teeth and kept a job. Sometimes all at the same time. I settled down and actually became a father, a condition that other sufferers know deprives you of parties, dope, sleep, skis and suede fringe vests.

After almost 21 years of being infected with acute fatherhood, my kid is coming close to finishing her career in college and holding sway over my finances and my Saturday nights.

So nearly two years after Colorado waved the green flag on purple haze, last week was the first time I actually bought some. Sure, I’ve occasionally dabbled in weed over the years, thanks to my childless friends. A Red Rocks concert without it really isn’t the same. Really.

I had my wife meet me at Aurora’s Medicine Man on Havana last week on Tax Free Pot Day. I say things like that loudly and with a smile because even this far into the recreational pot thing I still can’t believe it’s true. Melody, my wife, has never gotten high, and doesn’t share my glee in things like Tax Free Pot Day. Honest. I smoked her share in and after college, though.

We sheepishly walked in around 11 a.m. They have a happy hour until noon — I know, it’s just too cool — expecting to stand in line with a bunch of kids who were either playing hooky from something or had nothing to play hooky from. At 56, I was probably the youngest customer there. Business was brisk as tight-walleted folks like me came in for the bargains. It could easily have been the line at the Department of Motor Vehicles or the returns after Christmas at Macy’s. One soccer-momish lady read her historical romance novel in line. Another dude who looked like my doctor filed through emails on his phone. It was unlike the DMV because the hired help and the customers were far more pleasant and professional. Everybody there wore sensible shoes. Frank Sinatra was crooning from the Muzak in the background.

“How’s it going today?” my budtender asked as we stepped up to the counter. I was disappointed he didn’t say, “Hi,” so I could say, “no, not yet.”

Going to a budtender at a pot shop, I learned, is a lot like going to see the Wizard of Oz. Everyone in front of me was asking for something. A buzz, some sleep, some laughs, less pain, romance, inspiration, whatever.

“I have a big vegetable garden infested with weeds,” I explained. “I want a strain of pot that gets me out there to weed that mess and have the best time I’ve ever had in my life — and I’d like to be taller, or at least think I am.”

He had just the thing, he said. C6. It was bright green buds, kind of like fuzzy pearls. It smelled like 1979. Rich and funky and a little bit like High Karate.

The strain is proprietary he explained. A contrived mixture of power-diesel sativa and unusual cannabinoids resulting in a high-energy buzz that can keep you pleasantly focused. No mention of my height thing. His other suggestion was the buzzy and popular “girl scout cookies.”

I realized I felt the same way buying fireworks. Exotic names and wild promises of life-altering visuals, sounds and sensations. Marginally risky and illegal, it’s juvenile delinquency on tap. I asked for a dime bag. I didn’t know. I think I got a gram of pea-sized buds for $14.

As Melody and I sauntered to the car — like that’s what we do here in Colorado, buy dope and then go to lunch and drink beer and maybe sneak up for some turns — she asked how I was going to smoke it. I hadn’t thought of that. My trusty Toker II and I parted ways several moves ago, I think.

“I guess I can cut a hole in a toilet paper roll or make a potato pipe,” I said. Going to a head shop to get a pipe so I could smoke a bowl just seemed more than I was ready for. I’d figure it out later.

My kid was appalled about the whole thing, and especially that I told the world. She’s a criminal justice major at University of Colorado Denver and has never had much patience for my eccentricities, which I blame on Melody’s genes and temperament.

“If I don’t get into Quantico because my dad’s a publicly published doper, I’m living at home forever,” she warned. Message received. I opened my backpack, another juvenile delinquent habit I can’t give up, which now smelled like an Amsterdam coffee shop. Mmmmm. I popped my puny purchase into a medicine bottle and tucked it away like it was 1979. Old habits die hard I guess.

So now the garden weeds are even worse. Isabella’s talking about an internship with the Denver Police, and Melody has marked the bag of Tostitos knowing what’s coming if I reach for Vitamin C6. Gone are the days of sneaking bong hits in my parent’s basement. Instead, I’ll be asking for a strain that improves my night vision so I can sneak it in the vegetable garden in the dark while Isabella sleeps. Not that I’m ashamed.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com