Amp'd (6 page)

“According to this fortune, she does.” Mom pops half a fortune cookie in her mouth for punctuation.

Dad examines his fortune. “What the hell is this?”

“Let me see…” Mom takes it from him and reads:

chï (chee)—eat

“It's Chinese, the word for ‘eat.'
Chee
. See, fortune on one side, Chinese phrases on the other.”

I turn over my own fortune to read:

kuaàilè (kway-UR)—happy

“
Kway-UR.
‘Happy.'”

“Anyway, yes, your sister's coming. She wants to help.”

“How, exactly, can she help?”

“Just try to be nice.”

“I'll try to be
kway-UR.
” I snatch Mom's fortune and flip it.

“What are you doing now?”

“Learning Chinese.”

yïngéer (yin-UH)—baby

“See? I just learned a sentence:
Kway-UR yin-UH chee. Happy baby eat.
Or, it could be
Eat happy baby
. Yes, that's better! The next time I see a happy Chinese baby, I can tell his parents to eat him. Hey, if I have every meal here for the next ten years, I'll have a Chinese vocabulary of … nearly eleven thousand words. I could get a job at our embassy in Beijing or a tech company outsourcing child labor.”

Dad's already got his jacket on and is halfway to the door before I finish. When the waiter comes to pick up the check, I tell him, “That man has your pen.”

*   *   *

I make my way down the attic stairs the next morning, each descent a little better, although the possibility of falling and snapping one of my three remaining useful limbs is never far from my mind. I'm not surprised to find Mom and Dad having breakfast in the kitchen.

In the middle of the night I'd been awakened by a series of grunts and noises, the sounds of a struggle downstairs—a home invasion, maybe, and of course the assailants would have no way of knowing there was a one-armed man in the attic. While deciding whether to rush downstairs to be killed in the same bloodbath that was likely claiming my father, I recognized the sounds as less combative than collaborative and realized,
My parents are having sex.
It couldn't have been more disturbing if I were ten years old and walked in on them, and failed to comprehend why Daddy was thrusting himself into Mommy.

Mom pats Dad's hand at the breakfast table, a sweet habitual gesture that makes me wonder how Dad lost out to a firefighter, even one who represents February on a calendar wearing nothing but his helmet and a fake Abe Lincoln beard.

“I didn't know you stayed over.” I slump into a seat at the table.

“Yes, I ‘stayed over,'” Mom grins over her coffee cup. “I ‘stay over' with your father from time to time. You should find yourself a nice girl to ‘stay over' once in a while.”

“Okay, we can drop the awkward euphemism.”

“Sex was never the problem between your father and I.”

Dad stares deeply into his bowl of cereal as if hoping
it
might eat
him
.

“What does your fireman think of that?”

“They prefer ‘firefighter,'” Mom corrects me gently. “And we have an understanding.”

“Dad, you're okay with this?”

“What the hell do I care? We're not together anymore. Except when we are.”

“And when we are, there is no fireman.”

“They prefer ‘firefighter,'” I remind her.

Mom
stabs
a stack of sausage patties clean through with her fork, alerting me with a five-alarm glare that her buttons are still pushable, although I might wish not to do so.

“I'm going to feed Ali,” she says on her way out of the kitchen.

Dad slides the box of cereal in front of me. “Have some breakfast. We're out of Fleishmann's.”

I pour a bowl and we eat in near silence, except for the cooing and soft splashing from the bathtub at the top of the stairs.

“Mom says you had a pacemaker put in?”

“She did? Well, yes. No big deal,” Dad manages through a mouthful of bran flakes.

“She said that too.”

“What about you? Did you sleep okay?”

“Mostly,” I say, not really recalling how I slept at all.

“Sedation isn't sleep,” he swallows. “It's induced paralysis and memory loss. It's not a restful state. ‘Coming to' isn't the same as waking up.”

“Who says I was sedated?”

“Who are you kidding? I knew when you were stoned in high school. Glassy eyes, stupid grin. You thought you were an amusing fellow. Like last night, and you weren't.”

“I'm sorry. I was just playing.”

“You were being a stoned jerk. What are you taking—OxyContin? Vicodin? God help us, some pharmaceutical cocktail you made up on your own?”

“You want me to be brave and suck it up?” I square up at the table and slap my right hand on the surface. “Right now, I can feel
both
hands in front of me on the table. Only the one on the left is all hot needles.”

I pick up a knife and stab at my missing hand, the blade sticking in the table's surface. Dad stares at it.

“I was going to suggest medical marijuana,” he says softly. “Instead of that chemical crap. Weber uses it. Awful arthritis, pain, can't sleep.”

“You want me to smoke pot?”

“It would be preferable to whatever boozy combination of pills you're taking.”

“Sorry about the table,” I whisper.

“Pretty sure your old doctor's still in town. I can take you for a prescription.”

“Dr. Mittman's a pediatrician.”

Dad shrugs, a silent
so what?
as Mom returns from feeding their alligator. Without comment, she plucks the blade from the table with the practiced flair of a circus knife thrower, setting it in the sink.

 

PATIENTS

I'm easily the tallest patient in Dr. Mittman's waiting room and Dad the oldest parent by decades, extremes that in other cultures might elicit awe or respect but here in a pediatrician's office simply render us more freakish than usual to kids and parents alike. Thumbing one-handed through an issue of
Sports Illustrated Kids,
I have to admit I'm curious whether LeBron James could in fact outrun an ostrich, while Dad just found the wishbone in the greenhouse in his issue of
Highlights
. I have no doubt he'd have made more amazing discoveries, but we're invited inside.

Dr. Mittman was probably in his thirties when I last saw him, and here he is in his sixties, and I can't help but wonder what his life has been like in between, as he must be speculating what might have happened to my arm. So like any good pediatrician, he asks Dad.

“Car accident,” Dad replies, willing to admit to a third person what he hasn't yet acknowledged to me. “Awful. Bones too damaged, arteries crushed, couldn't save it.”

Dr. Mittman checks the pulse in my good hand. “How's the pain?”

“Bad, I think. He's taking Vicodin.”

“I'm right here,” I declare, and the doctor sticks a thermometer under my tongue.

“How long has he been on it? You have to be careful with that stuff. Just reclassified as a Schedule II drug because of its addictive properties.”

“We were hoping to switch him to medical marijuana. I've heard good things.”

“Can be,” Dr. Mittman muses, tugging down on the bags under my eyes. “But also tricky, especially figuring the dosages.” He removes the thermometer and checks it. “No temperature. That's good. We need to watch for signs of infection. Is he sleeping?”

Before I can answer he probes the inside of my mouth with a tongue depressor. “Aahh…”

“Aahhhhh…”

“Sleeps a lot, but at different times of the day.”

“That's sometimes an indication that he's not getting a full night's sleep.” He checks for swollen glands in my neck. “Medical marijuana might help there too.”

He finishes and hands me a lollipop.

“He can't be all doped up, though,” Dad cautions. “He needs to be alert when he goes back to school.” Before Dr. Mittman can ask,
What grade is he in?
, Dad explains, “He's a teacher.”

I stick the lollipop in my mouth and swing my feet while Dr. Mittman explains the virtues of medical marijuana to Dad, how it's available in many different strains, each genetically engineered for the individual purpose of alleviating pain, anxiety, nausea, sleeplessness, and other conditions; there are even varieties that maintain alertness. On our way back through the waiting room, I resist the urge to high-five the other kids as I pass them with my pot prescription tucked into my shirt pocket.

*   *   *

Dad drives me to The Hemp Collective (THC), conveniently located near the five corners where the Four Corners sits, so he can go have coffee with his pals while I step inside this wondrous emporium of reality-altering substances. The shabby, caged anteroom I have to pass through for security belies the wonder that awaits within.

Display cases and rows of shelves hold dozens of large glass jars fit for housing brains (one of them is even labeled “Abby Normal”), containing instead an array of pungent, colorful knots of marijuana buds. Along a far wall is another case set up like a miniature greenhouse where tiny pot plants just begin to sprout under LED grow lights; on the opposite wall is a case containing various “means by which to take the medication,” as described by the bearded bud tender, meaning pipes, bongs, and vaporizers. Behind the counter, employees dutifully roll joints while others carefully weigh and sort fat buds of pot. They're knowledgeable, eager, and polite, with a pharmacist's efficiency and sommelier's panache. I'm quickly brought up to speed on the sweet science of medical marijuana:

• There are two varieties of cannabis,
sativa
and
indica
(as well as hybrids of both):

•
Cannabis sativa
affects the brain and central nervous system, and is helpful in alleviating anxiety, depression, and chronic pain;

•
Cannabis indica
primarily affects the body and muscular system, and is best used for acute pain, sedation, nausea, and as a muscle relaxant.

• There are scores of different strains of medical marijuana, with names like Kush Hour, Marley's Ghost, Brainspotting, and the apparently fearless-of-litigation Skywalker
.

• You can smoke it straight, cool it in water, or vaporize it.

• It's available in edible form, from cookies to soft drinks, organic powder you can drink like cocoa to cheesy-delicious cannabis goldfish; there is marijuana butter you can spread on a sandwich, THC tincture you can pepper a steak with, infused olive oil for your salad.

• You can even apply it like lip gloss, or rub it on a sore neck in lotion form.

• Stores offer free gifts for first visits, will
beat any advertised price,
have a “Happy Hour” (M–F 2–4P 10% Off), and
Wheel of Fortune
spin-giveaways with every “donation” (since they can't legally give away a controlled substance).

• There is all manner of cannabis merchandise and apparel to be purchased, for personal use or as gifts, from T-shirts, hoodies, and hats to mugs, mouse pads, and license-plate holders. (I can only imagine that the latter might invite closer inspection, and how a traffic cop might react to a pulled-over motorist wearing a cannabis hat and hoodie and drinking from a cannabis mug.)

On the drive home, I clutch the hemp bag containing my new bong, glass pipe, portable vaporizer, butane torch, rolled joints, and an assortment of fat golden buds to my chest like a boy who just got everything he wanted for Christmas.

“Promise you're not going to make me regret this.”

“You can't regret the things you do, only the things you
don't
do,” I enlighten Dad, immediately regretting that I didn't phrase it like Yoda.

“Semantics,” Dad grumbles. “You can flip any decision into a negative—
I regret having children
could just as easily be
I regret not remaining childless.
”

“I got this for you,” I say, slipping a trucker's cap bearing a giant pot leaf insignia onto his head. “Wait—you regret having children?”

“Only. Right. Now.”

 

THINGS YOU CAN'T DO STONED WITH ONE ARM

Roll a joint

Hold a bong and light it

Clean seeds on an album cover

Hang more black-light posters

Remove a large pan of brownies from the oven

Eat frozen ice cream

Make a peanut butter sandwich

Open a can of tuna

Uncork a bottle of wine

Shotgun a beer

Pass a sobriety test by touching your nose with both hands

Masturbate while holding a magazine

Hold an alligator's jaws shut
*

*
I'm not sure why I attempted this, but it nearly cost me my good hand. The dim mental state and lack of coordination that accompany the condition of being stoned renders impossible already difficult multitasking. Not to mention decision making. On the plus side, you don't care as much.

 

JACKIE

With nothing but time on my hand, I spend much of the next several days smoking different strains of medical marijuana and evaluating each one's efficacy against the scientific standard of Jackie's retro black-light poster, with its six gradually melting “Stoned Agin” faces. The “body high” of the
indica
generally keeps me in the general range of face #2, just beginning to wilt … while the
sativa
—which generates more of a “head high”—takes me further. Currently, I'm significantly less stoned than the face in the final panel but dangerously close to face #5, beginning to pool. The goal I've set myself is to hover consistently between face #3 or #4—
really
stoned, but short of face #6, with eyes melted into a puddle staring up at a head caved in on itself. (I'm able to quickly surpass the pleasant buzz of face #1 like a man hopping an inconvenient puddle.)