The Time I Took Mushrooms Before School

My boyfriend in high school was a complete and total mess.  He was hilarious, debonair, charming, and had an amazing gap in his teeth.  I first spotted him eating lunch with another girl, segregating themselves from the rest of the school population.  They were both older than I was, merely by a year, but I looked up to them like they were gods.  I even referred to them as "Beth and Eddie", an homage to my favorite alternative band couple at the time, Eddie Vedder and Beth Liebling.

Somehow, someway, we became friends.  I was closer with "Beth" at first, she became a regular fixture at my house during weekends.  All I can remember is one time she accidentally spilled syrup on my parents' kitchen floor, and that was the end of her coming over.  She also drove a truck that ran on propane instead of gas, and had a sister whose boyfriend was about as gay as they came.  I wasn't sure whether or not I should I should say something to her sister...but the fact that the guy had blue contacts and didn't care for having sex with her, might have been a couple of hints she had missed.

Regardless, Beth was still hung up on Eddie, after their "tragic" breakup.  She would drag me with her to hear his band practice: Peal.  Peal was a blend of Weezer, Superdrag and my slowly melting high school panties.  I became a regular fixture during rehearsals, and eventually Cara moved onto the drummer.  Since they (Beth and Eddie) had since long been broken up, and she often joked that we would make a cute couple.  I could not help but agree.

Eventually, we started to date.  We were a match made in heaven because neither one of us seemed to care about anything.  I was such a good student, and he such a charmer, we were able to just wander about school, or just take off and do our own thing.  Any of my "unexcused" absences were promptly taken care of by my French teacher, Mrs. Arino.  She knew the way my mother treated me, and she did not want to see me in trouble.  She was the best kind of human being and TRULY cared about me.  If only she knew what I was doing in my free time.

So Eddie decided that one day on the way to school, zooming the streets of Rocklin in his Mazda 323, that we needed to split a bag of mushrooms that he had bought from a friend.  Eddie had introduced me to every drug I ever tried: from pot to heroin, and because I am such a dumb ass I tried them all.  I highly recommend trying most drugs once, but any form of hallucinogen is just not right for me.

I have a lot of let's say...issues.  I like to keep these issues in a place in my brain that is never accessed, and usually will take a viewing of The Joy Luck Club or No Country for Old Men to get some of this crap out of me.  Instead of talking about things, I like to bottle them up inside (super healthy, I know) and then slip into a rage a-la Good Will Hunting, with Baker Street blaring in the background, beating the holy hell out of someone, or perhaps just harming myself!  Needless, to say. magnifying your feelings, the way mushrooms do, is probably not the best idea for someone like me.

SO HELL YEAH I'LL TAKE THEM BEFORE SCHOOL!  I had no idea what I was in for, but if Eddie wanted me to do it, I was in.  I chewed them, and almost spewed several times before I had the breath of a dinosaur, and the mindset of a paranoid chihuahua.  We went our separate ways for classes, and I was pretty much laughing at these "mushrooms", since nothing seemed to be happening to me at all.

My first class was Dance II, so I waltzed right into the cafeteria and took my usual seat.  Today we would be working on a Carmen Miranda number.  As soon as my teacher said "FRUIT" I was tripping balls.  She started talking about a fruit basket headpiece, and I could not stop cracking up.  My good friend Joe was staring at me, probably because I looked like an idiot.  When Mrs. G started showing us steps, I realized quickly that I would not make it through this school day.  I grabbed my bag, and I shimmied my way right the hell out of there.

You have to understand, no one thought I could do any wrong in school, so I could slip rather nonchalantly in and out of classes, be they mine or someone else's, rather easily.  I got straight As and barely went to school.  My teachers knew I was beyond it all.  I felt privileged and cursed at the same time. 

So it really starts to get intense as I approach the Music Building to find Eddie.  This became a personal quest for me, since he was my only ticket out of there.  I was not surprised to find him outside either, pupils as big as saucers, and sweating profusely.  Simultaneously we said, "We gotta go." 

I think it was the rather confident way we strolled towards the 323, started that bitch, and slowly drove away.  We were not as "guarded" as schools are now, although our Security Guard waved us out.  Pretty fucking bizarre, but then again, maybe it was just a tree with a polo shirt on and a walkie-talkie, who knows?

As we drove away, we both turned around and noticed our friend Brooke was in the backseat.  Neither of us remember inviting her, her joining us, or even having seen her.  She scared the SHIT out of me, and both Eddie and I jumped.

"What the hell are you doing here?"  We asked, in unison. 

"Let's go to Auburn!" was her reply.  Okay, that makes sense, let's go.  So we drove to Auburn, spent the better part of the day staring at leaves and drinking white mochas (it was the nineties, lay off), and then, of course...I had to go home.

I had to be home at the "usual" time, or the cops (a.k.a parents) would put out an APB for me and perhaps another six months of being grounded would be added to my already growing sentence.  Good thing was, my Dad wanted me to vacuum.

So I ran the vacuum over the same spot about twenty times.  The he asked if something was wrong.  I tried to snap out of it, and started to laugh.  He just rolled his eyes.

I spent the greater part of that evening looking at my comforter, which was painstakingly sewn, it seemed, from hundreds of lizards.  Also, the "cottage cheese" ceiling, as they say, was dripping that sweet goodness down my walls all night.  I don't think I closed my eyes once, and if I did, all I could see were Spirograph style images taking over my brain.  Eddie must have called me sixty times to tell me various fascinating stories about watermelon, and the water cycle and so on...

I vowed I would never do them again, as soon as I felt like a human being again the next day.  I think it was about a week before I was snacking on them again, this time with Eddie behind the wheel, calling me someone else's name (a girl I was always jealous of, so it REALLY pissed me off), parked in a Park and Ride, with me crying and telling him I was going to choke him with a straw.

Don't do drugs kids.