The pungent wafting odour was unmistakable. Whether you follow the Americans and spell it with a "J" or correctly using a "H"; whether you like to appear hip and therefore call it herb, kush, tree, or Miley Cyrus; or whether you knew it intimately way back, when it was so much less potent and to have a "nickle" meant it was five bucks worth that fit into a match box; cannabis marihuana will always smell like cannabis marihuana.
As a young narcotics officer one of the first lessons taught to me by my grizzled colleges was the correct reply when asked what marihuana smells like? It's not kind of like pipe tobacco, cigars, nor dirty wet socks. Wouldn't defence attorneys have a field day with a rookie Constable Nixon with those responses! The correct answer, and the only correct answer, is that cannabis marihuana smells exactly like cannabis marihuana.
If you've lived in our western society, ever ventured out in public, and breathe to survive then I have no doubt that you are, at the very least, an experienced secondhand smoker of marihuana. You don't need to be a trained police officer to recognize when "Miley Cyrus" is in the hood. Life experience is the best teacher. Heck, I have never ever even experimented with any form of cannabis but it seemed to be everywhere once I became a teenager and got out in the world. Yes.....you read that correctly....not even a puff, draw, toke, or pull. Lots of secondhand experience but no firsthand. Would I lie to you?
So, yesterday, I'm out in the woods...I smell marihuana being smoked. In the distance, through the trees, I see my soon-to-be 16 year old daughter, Kendall, and two of her friends huddling together. We are at the beautiful and surreal waterfalls in La Manche Park. It is one of Kendall's favourite places to swim as the water is deep and clear, plus their are high ledges from which to jump. It has been an annual excursion for my two kids and me for several years. The falls have always proven to be popular with the teenage and young adult crowd, most of whom just happen to find it a great opportunity to light up a joint or two, or ten of marihuana.
When my kids (Avery is 2 years younger than Kendall) and their friends were younger, I would get a great kick from their reactions to smelling the burning intoxicant as it funneled down the canyon walls to find their innocence wading in the whirling waters. Most would submerge to escape the "stink" but a well rolled joint can be held longer than the breath of a 10 year old. As knowledge is true power and the truth sets you free, I made sure my kids and friends knew exactly what they had experienced.
I don't recall there ever being an occasion that marihuana smoking wasn't taking place during our visits to the falls. Well, perhaps not on that ocassion when our annual trek didn't take place until mid September. I tried to talk Kendall out of going but she wouldn't be dissuaded. I think she is addicted to the place. As I suspected, the water was much too cold for a forty-something but not for the younger generation. I understand that with aging comes shrinkage and frailness but jumping into frigid water is no way to prove my manhood (nor to improve on it).
I smell weed. Kendall and her friends are huddled together and I see that something is being passed between them. Oh oh, a possible pivotal parenting moment! What to do? They haven't seen me so maybe I should just keep walking and pretend it never happened. Nah, that ain't me. Maybe I should burst out of the trees, yelling at how disappointed I am and maybe scare them back to the straight and narrow. Nah, despite being a cop, I was never the heavy handed sort. I decided that I would just watch for a bit and maybe the best way to handle this would eventually come to me. So, this is what being a dad had come to. I was resorting to voyeurism while I grappled with the idea that my little girl was diving headlong into the world of illicit narcotics.
I circled around to the top of the falls. Trying to play it cool and look like any normal fifty-something year old man who is alone in the woods and just happens to be watching bikini clad teenage girls. Creepy. Thankfully, Kendall and friends showed their hands before I had to do a citizen's arrest on myself. Miley Cyrus wasn't there after all. There was no bud, Keyshia, chronic, nor was there sticky icky or Cheech and Chong. The three amigos were passing around an iPhone 6s and selfies were the order of the day. They saw me on top of the falls and waved excitedly. Over the roar of the cascading water Kendall was asking me to take a picture of them from my vantage point. I signaled with my hands that I didn't have my phone. She shrugged and dove headlong into the water, continuing her love affair with one of her favourite spots on earth.
At that moment I felt a little bit of guilt for having doubted her but, even more so, I was extremely proud to be her father. It was such a joyful and intoxicating feeling that it was if I had just smoked a bale of weed. At least that's what I assume it would feel like. There's no sense asking Kendall if that's how it would feel. Perhaps Avery will know? :-)
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
Teen Faces Off Parents
It is Tuesday, right? I doubled checked on my smartphone and it definitely is Tuesday. In my house this morning it sure seemed more like a Monday. Perhaps this being a leap year and having a 29th day of February yesterday has thrown things out of kilter. In any event, the kids were in fine Monday morning form on a Tuesday. Kendall, 15, is hung over and Avery, 13, forgot to take her lunch for the umpteenth time this school year.
Avery and her lunch are a puzzle, one of those 2000 piece puzzles to be exact. You know the ones where every piece looks to be the same shape and colour and it is next to impossible to put together. That's Avery and her lunch bag. I heard Lynda tell Avery that her lunch was packed and I even watched as Avery peered inside to see what wonders her mom had buried in the bag today. Somehow, within the 30 seconds that followed, Avery walked out the door without her lunch! Somehow the 13 year old brain has a disconnect between what it is supposed to do and what it actually does.
Avery is a great kid and an equally great student. She has never been sent to the principal's office for bad behaviour but she does visit there often to retrieve her lunch bag after it gets dropped off by Lynda or me. Come to think of it, there have been a few occasions when Avery has also gotten out of my car at school and left her schoolbag on the backseat. Despite the forgetfulness I am not too worried about it being a medical condition or anything other than a teenage phase that she will eventually outgrow. At this stage in her life it is all a matter of priorities: forgetting a book bag - she's smart enough to get by without it for a day or buddy up with a classmate; forgetting her lunch bag - mom or dad always deliver anyhow; forgetting her cellphone - never ever has happened and probably never will. After all, she is 13 not 50 (like her old man).
Now let's explore this morning's exploits of Avery's older sister. The hangover Kendall is experiencing is from five days of a swim binge in Halifax. Being careful to eat healthily, sleeping the appropriate number of hours each night, and resting between the twice daily racing sessions would throw even the most seasoned Newfie binger off her game. It can't be natural to be so good. She certainly didn't get it from me.
Kendall seemed fine when she arrived home yesterday afternoon. She was happy and joking around with the rest of the family. As an aside I have to show you what wonders can be done by a smartphone in the hands of a skilled teenage operator. Yesterday, Kendall took a photo of her mom and dad and did this (somehow). Creepy but cool. I like to call it:
Avery and her lunch are a puzzle, one of those 2000 piece puzzles to be exact. You know the ones where every piece looks to be the same shape and colour and it is next to impossible to put together. That's Avery and her lunch bag. I heard Lynda tell Avery that her lunch was packed and I even watched as Avery peered inside to see what wonders her mom had buried in the bag today. Somehow, within the 30 seconds that followed, Avery walked out the door without her lunch! Somehow the 13 year old brain has a disconnect between what it is supposed to do and what it actually does.
Avery is a great kid and an equally great student. She has never been sent to the principal's office for bad behaviour but she does visit there often to retrieve her lunch bag after it gets dropped off by Lynda or me. Come to think of it, there have been a few occasions when Avery has also gotten out of my car at school and left her schoolbag on the backseat. Despite the forgetfulness I am not too worried about it being a medical condition or anything other than a teenage phase that she will eventually outgrow. At this stage in her life it is all a matter of priorities: forgetting a book bag - she's smart enough to get by without it for a day or buddy up with a classmate; forgetting her lunch bag - mom or dad always deliver anyhow; forgetting her cellphone - never ever has happened and probably never will. After all, she is 13 not 50 (like her old man).
Now let's explore this morning's exploits of Avery's older sister. The hangover Kendall is experiencing is from five days of a swim binge in Halifax. Being careful to eat healthily, sleeping the appropriate number of hours each night, and resting between the twice daily racing sessions would throw even the most seasoned Newfie binger off her game. It can't be natural to be so good. She certainly didn't get it from me.
Kendall seemed fine when she arrived home yesterday afternoon. She was happy and joking around with the rest of the family. As an aside I have to show you what wonders can be done by a smartphone in the hands of a skilled teenage operator. Yesterday, Kendall took a photo of her mom and dad and did this (somehow). Creepy but cool. I like to call it:
Jynda & Lim
A different girl showed up this morning. Kendall decided to ditch early morning swim practice and she only gave us a pillow muffled moan when we tried to get her up so she could get ready for school. Overnight she seemed to lose the ability to use the English language and also became body-glued to her mattress. She did manage to mumble something about not feeling well. Lynda and I have seen this before, the day following the last couple of travel meets she has been on, so we knew exactly what to do. Lynda would hound her to get up and inform her that there would be no more travel meets if she missed school upon her return.
Stuff like that is better left to the unique relationship between mother and daughter. Being in the middle of a battle of wits between mother and teenage daughter is no place for me. I like to avoid confrontation, even when it employs the gentle kind of tactics that Lynda would be using to get Kendall to school this very day. So what did I do? I grabbed Avery and hustled here out the door to the car. She was lucky she already had her coat on and schoolbag in hand as a hasty exit was my main goal. Going back for her forgotten lunch bag just wasn't an option. Come to think of it, perhaps I was a little too rough on Avery in the earlier part of today's story. Maybe it wasn't entirely her fault that she was off to school today without her lunch. That explains today but not the umpteen other times the lunch was left at home. Today is my fault, I admit it.
Lynda just texted me to advise Kendall made it to school. I am now wondering if it was really such a good idea to have sent her today. I am worried that we may be getting a call from the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. After all, we did send one kid to school today who was hungover and the other with no food. I ain't taking the fall for any of this. If they ask me I will just tell them that Jynda and Lim did it.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Spelling is Just a Theory
"Spelling doesn't matter." Those words were spoken to me by my daughter, Kendall, a grade 10 honours student, I was driving her to school, where, on that particular morning, she would be challenging one of the several midterm exams stemming from the mind blowing courses she had chosen. Based on her statement one would think that she was mentally preparing to recite the periodic table for chemistry or maybe the Pythagorean Theorem for geometry.
You remember Pythagorean, right? It's that simple concept we all learned in high school that the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. "Oh yeah, how could I have forgotten?" is likely what you are saying to yourself. Or not.
You see, this blog is not just a hilarious free read that recounts the adventures and misadventures of daily life, as seen through my eyes, This blog attempts, sometimes not very well, to teach you something useful. The real lesson of today's story, as you unglaze your Pythagorean weary eyes, is: Spelling Doesn't Matter - the Kendall Theorem.
I am no genius, so I took to Google to learn what exactly a theorem may be. It turns out that a theorem is a rule or law, especially one expressed by an equation or formula. Therefore, in order for the Kendall Theorem to have merit she would have to produce actual proof that "spelling doesn't matter". I, at first, doubted my elder daughter's latent genius. Genetics were against her and her assertion. Her grandmother, great aunt, aunt, and aunt-in-law are all teachers and devoted preachers of the religion of grammar and syntax. Her mother, a natural "knower" of all, has recently taken to writing down any new words that she comes upon and then learning all about their meaning and origin. Of late, I hardly understand half of what she is saying to me and that is only the half that I happen to hear.
I may be Kendall's saving grace. Not only has Mother Nature both blessed and cursed me with being follically-challenged, she has gifted me with being grammatically-challenged as well. (I looked follically up in the dictionary and I still don't know if I spelled it correctly! Is it even a word?) I've made a few spelling boo boos over the years and my loving wife is always more than willing to remind me, and everyone else, just what they were. So the package of goodies one gets for attending a kid's birthday party is a loot bag and not a loop bag. Big deal! So artwork painted on a wall is a mural and not a muriel. My apologies to all of ladies named Muriel but they do sound very similar.
It seems Urban dictionaries can justify just about any variation of a word's spelling. I feel for my friends, the Zhang's, who recently moved to Newfoundland from China. What am I supposed to tell Yuhua when he asks me to explain when to use and how to spell a word such as: sight/site/cite? Here's what I will say: "It's easy Yuhua, just apply the Kendall Theorem."
I am not sure her theorem can be disproved. I doubt that even Einstein, who had great follicles by the way, would dare challenge the Kendall Theorem. The evidence is irrefutable.
Fact #1: Kendall's grade for the midterm she wrote just prior to uttering the now famous "spelling doesn't matter"? It was a 93.
Fact #2: The course for which Kendall wrote her midterm that morning? You guessed it - Englsih. ;-)
As her father I can sincerely declare that I am very proud of Kendall. There aren't too many teenagers who can say that they have a theorem named after them. In addition to being brilliant, I can rest easy knowing that Kendall will also become fabuously rich. She will make her fortune from royalties after the Kendall Theorem adorns millions of loop bags and muriels.
You remember Pythagorean, right? It's that simple concept we all learned in high school that the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. "Oh yeah, how could I have forgotten?" is likely what you are saying to yourself. Or not.
You see, this blog is not just a hilarious free read that recounts the adventures and misadventures of daily life, as seen through my eyes, This blog attempts, sometimes not very well, to teach you something useful. The real lesson of today's story, as you unglaze your Pythagorean weary eyes, is: Spelling Doesn't Matter - the Kendall Theorem.
I am no genius, so I took to Google to learn what exactly a theorem may be. It turns out that a theorem is a rule or law, especially one expressed by an equation or formula. Therefore, in order for the Kendall Theorem to have merit she would have to produce actual proof that "spelling doesn't matter". I, at first, doubted my elder daughter's latent genius. Genetics were against her and her assertion. Her grandmother, great aunt, aunt, and aunt-in-law are all teachers and devoted preachers of the religion of grammar and syntax. Her mother, a natural "knower" of all, has recently taken to writing down any new words that she comes upon and then learning all about their meaning and origin. Of late, I hardly understand half of what she is saying to me and that is only the half that I happen to hear.
I may be Kendall's saving grace. Not only has Mother Nature both blessed and cursed me with being follically-challenged, she has gifted me with being grammatically-challenged as well. (I looked follically up in the dictionary and I still don't know if I spelled it correctly! Is it even a word?) I've made a few spelling boo boos over the years and my loving wife is always more than willing to remind me, and everyone else, just what they were. So the package of goodies one gets for attending a kid's birthday party is a loot bag and not a loop bag. Big deal! So artwork painted on a wall is a mural and not a muriel. My apologies to all of ladies named Muriel but they do sound very similar.
It seems Urban dictionaries can justify just about any variation of a word's spelling. I feel for my friends, the Zhang's, who recently moved to Newfoundland from China. What am I supposed to tell Yuhua when he asks me to explain when to use and how to spell a word such as: sight/site/cite? Here's what I will say: "It's easy Yuhua, just apply the Kendall Theorem."
I am not sure her theorem can be disproved. I doubt that even Einstein, who had great follicles by the way, would dare challenge the Kendall Theorem. The evidence is irrefutable.
Fact #1: Kendall's grade for the midterm she wrote just prior to uttering the now famous "spelling doesn't matter"? It was a 93.
Fact #2: The course for which Kendall wrote her midterm that morning? You guessed it - Englsih. ;-)
As her father I can sincerely declare that I am very proud of Kendall. There aren't too many teenagers who can say that they have a theorem named after them. In addition to being brilliant, I can rest easy knowing that Kendall will also become fabuously rich. She will make her fortune from royalties after the Kendall Theorem adorns millions of loop bags and muriels.
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