Flotsam

The Nearly and I are capable of arguing about all sorts of irrelevant things—whether or not we should have carpet in our (nonexistent) house, whether we should go into debt to pay for our (nonexistent) children’s college education, and what we should tell said nonexistent children about my youthful indiscretions with controlled substances. The one thing we agree upon about this last topic is that drug education should not be left to schools.
The drug education program at Falcon Heights Elementary consisted of a burly police officer telling us fascinating anecdotes about drunks and junkies he had come across in his line of work, and then asking us to sign a contract stating that we would never, ever use drugs. Lawyer’s daughter that I was, I raised my hand right away.

“I can’t sign this. I need to have my mother look at it first.”
“Is there something you don’t understand, sugar?”
“No, but she’s a lawyer, my mom, and I can’t sign anything before she reads it.” I skimmed the contract. “Also, does this include alcohol?”
Officer Just-Say-No looked stern. “Of course it does—don’t you remember the story about the naked man, and the urine, and the gun going off?”
“Yes, but isn’t alcohol legal when you’re over 21? Couldn’t I have some Sham-Pain, or whatever, when I’m old enough?”
Officer Speed Kills’ nostrils flared.
“Yes, fine, you can consume a responsible amount of alcohol when you are legally of age.”
“But it doesn’t say that on the contract.”
“I’m telling you, ok? You have my permission.”
“I’m still not signing anything.”

And I didn’t. Which is probably a good thing, as I would otherwise have spent the bulk of my teen years in civil court defending myself against breach-of-contract suits.

Next in line in the curricula regarding drug abuse was an assembly during junior high school—a skit performed by members of a teen-aged acting troupe.
I don’t remember the first part very well, but the gist is that some boy (we’ll call him Todd) has a girlfriend (we’ll call her Jennifer) who gets pretty heavily into drugs. He breaks up with her–and I can’t blame him, as the primary effect of whatever she is taking is apparently to cause her to spin around with her arms in the air shouting “Wooo! Wooo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Anyway, Jennifer eventually gets her shit together, and she and Todd start hanging out again, attempting to salvage something from the ashes of their love for each other, in time for prom.
Here is where my memory picks up…

{Jennifer is on the stage, alone.}
TODD, VIA VOICEOVER: “…And then, one night, Jennifer got together with some old friends…”
{The plaintive introductory piano notes of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” wend their way from a tape deck at the side of the stage.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around…”
{An actor wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the word “HEROIN” in white capital letters enters from stage right, and is embraced, fondly, by Jennifer.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around…”
{Enter COCAINE and SPEED. More hugging.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around!”
{Enter LSD, PCP, and MARIJUANA (where’s HYPERBOLE? I wonder snidely from my spot in the audience)}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around, Bright Eyes!”
{The drugs have started moving in a circle around Jennifer, holding hands. Jennifer is smiling, reaching out to tenderly touch PCP’s twitchy cheek.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around, Bright Eyes!”
{Jennifer’s smile falters, and she makes a move to leave the circle of drugs.}
TAPEDECK: “Turn around, Bri-ight Eyes!”
{But she cannot escape!}
TAPEDECK: “Every now and then I fall APART!” (Cymbal crash)
{Enter Todd, stage left! He tries to push his way through the circle to Jennifer, she tries to force her way out. They play an excessively dramatic version of “Red Rover” as the music crashes and swells around them and Bonnie Tyler begins to sound increasingly unhinged.}
TAPEDECK: “FOREVER’S GONNA START TONIGHT! FOREVER’S GONNA START TONIGHT!!!”
{HEROIN, COCAINE, SPEED, PCP, LSD, and MARIJUANA close the circle around Jennifer. The stage goes black.}
TAPEDECK: “Once upon a time I was falling in love—now I’m only falling apart.”
{A single spotlight illuminates Jennifer’s crumpled form, alone on the floor in the middle of the stage.}
TAPEDECK: “Nothing I can do. A Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
{Todd cradles Jennifer’s lifeless body, sobbing, as the piano plays a few more spare, mournful bars, and Bonnie Tyler tells us brokenly that once upon a time there was light in her life, but now there’s only love in the dark. A seventh grader sitting next to me bursts into tears.}
The End.
Afterwards we all went back to class, not to hear another word about drugs until the junior year of high school.

Public schools have many fine points, but in my experience drug education is not one of them. The Nearly and I will handle this ourselves. We will not take be sending anyone to bootcamp, or performing covert drug tests and random locker searches. Neither will we take the approach my own father did, which was to tell me one evening when he was stoned and I was 17 to “Stay away from powders.” I had just done a line in the bathroom, so I spent a few minutes in a paranoid frenzy before slipping outside to run around the block a few times.
But I will think of some way to illustrate the dangers of drugs to our children—with eggs maybe. Or perhaps we could show them pictures of Mickey Rourke. Or make them watch that MTV Music Awards where Macy Gray…Well, make them watch the MTV Music Awards.

I guess I should start brushing up on contract law.