If anybody out there is looking for a commencement speaker, it’s not too late to hire Smart Ass Cripple. Perhaps you got stiffed at the last minute by Condoleezza Rice. Don’t worry! Smart ass Cripple is ready, willing and able to step right in!
Smart Ass Cripple delivers an inspirational message that resonates especially well with young adolescents, those who are at the age where they might be considering smoking marijuana for the very first time. Smart Ass Cripple has been there and can speak to them with sobering frankness about the pitfalls of the cavalier use of marijuana. Before they decide to take their first hit, I would implore them not to do something they’ll live to regret. Don’t make the same mistake that I did. DO NOT get stoned for the first time at Jerry Lewis summer camp.
I was 14 years old. I was a camper at Jerry Lewis summer camp. My 24/7 attendant assigned to me for my week at camp was a hitchhiking hippie. He offered me my first joint. So we slipped away in the dark of evening down to the secluded camp parking lot. And there we got stoned. And oh sweet Jesus, that pot was some wicked psychotic shit, or so it seemed to a 14 year old.
I was instantly paranoid. I imagined I saw men wearing bright orange vests, like highway construction workers, up in the trees and they were coming down to arrest me. I should’ve known that being at Jerry Lewis summer camp would be a big time buzzkill. It was way too uptight of an environment to be an appropriate setting for anyone’s first hit. We were a bunch of frail cripples out in the woods and the Muscular Dystrophy Association people who ran the camp were always terrified we might die if a butterfly landed on our noses or something. So to ensure our safety, they practically wrapped us in bubble wrap and followed us around with defibrillators. Curfews we strict.
I told my attendant I wanted to flee the parking lot and head for the Fun Lodge. The Fun Lodge was the lodge where we were sent when it was time to have fun, according to the schedule. There were board games in the Fun Lodge, art supplies like Elmer’s glue and glitter. But the lights inside the Fun Lodge were blindingly bright when I was stoned. They never seemed that bright to me before. And everybody in the Fun Lodge was looking at me! I just knew they were! They all could tell I was stoned!
I told my attendant I wanted to flee back to the cabin. Then I told him to put me in bed and I laid there hiding with the covers over my head until morning.
As you can see, my first time was a huge downer. It’s a miracle that I ever smoked pot again.
And so I offer myself as a living example of the sad consequences of willy nilly pot smoking. Before you get stoned, especially for the first time, you should take a much more deliberate approach than I did and consider the finer details, such as where you are and whom you’re with. Place yourself in a situation that minimizes your potential for feeling paranoid and guilty. This is especially important to do if you, like me, were raised a Catholic.
Because if you’re not going to enjoy getting stoned, then what’s the point?