KOM gets a new pipe

Indulge me one more "pot post". I don't promise that it will be the last, and after 10 years of starting every story with "Ok, we were sooo baked...", it's a hard habit to break. But I'll try.

My friends and I used to drive to Berkeley nearly every weekend. We'd get high, shop for deals in the LP bargain bins, check out the head shops and then dine at Spanger's. It was something to do.

My girlfriend and I had purchased a pipe at one of the head shops. It was really, really cool. It was one of those pipes covered in that playdough-like material that bakes on hard. It was covered in a mushroom dominated happy valley scene.

The happy valley soon disintegrated - literally. The clay cracked and broke off after just a week or two of use. I was infuriated. Which at the time meant something like "Man, I should, like, say something or something. I mean, I should talk to them, man."

So the next time we went down to Berkeley, I carried the faulty purchase in my pocket and planned to give the Man a piece of my mind. First, of course, I had to gird my loins, so to speak, at Fat Slice. Is this good pizza, you ask? I couldn't tell you. I don't think I've ever eaten it.. ah.. not ravenous. Does good pizza give you the runs? Then it is the best!

Said loins girded and greased, I walked the few blocks down Telegraph to the head shop where the defective pipe had been purchased. I walked in, full of indignity, and said "This pipe's busted, man!"

The poor proprietor took the pipe in his hand, looked at it for half a second and then turned ghost white. "You have to get this out of here! Now!"

"Not until I get a refund, man!" I retorted.

"No, you don't understand. This has marijuana resin in it. I could be shut down! Get it out of here!"

"Uh. Uh, okay. Can I have a pen cap?"

"Wh-what?"

"To clean it, man. Sorry to stress you, man!"

The proprietor gave me the pointy pen cap off of a nearby bic and nearly kicked me out of the store.

I sat down on the sidewalk, reclining against the storefront. I had just started to pull the pipe apart when one of my friends found me. He was hanging out with a sketchy-looking guy in a green sweatshirt. "Dude, you got two bucks?" he asked me.

"Why?"

"Because Dirtnap here has two joints to sell me, if I can come up with a couple more dollars."

I squinted up into the sun, then lazily cast my gaze on 'Dirtnap'. "Cool sweatshirt, man. Yeah, I got a couple of bucks."

Dirtnap, friend and I smoked the first joint right there on the sidewalk, backs against the jittery proprietors store. Our new friend was telling us how the cops in Berkeley are cool, just when a cop turned the corner across the street. That dude could run fast, man!

The cop didn't pay us any mind, so friend and I finished the joint. I pulled a Zig-zag out of my pocket and scraped all of the resin that I could from the pipe, depositing the tarry goodness on the paper for later use. "Does this look clean to you, man?" I asked.

Friend was gone. He may have been gone for some time. I still picture myself, tongue sticking out at an angle, busily scraping and completely ignorant of the hundreds of people that passed me on that narrow sidewalk.

Finally satisfied, and with a pretty good haul of resin to boot, I walked back into the store. I again offered the pipe to the proprietor and stated "This pipe's busted, man!"

The poor man again looked at the pipe, and noticed that it was still covered in resin. "I can't have you in here!"

"But the pipe's defective, man!"

"Listen, take any replacement you want. Now. And get the fuck out of here and never come back."

"Wow! Cool, man. I like that one," (pointing). He grabbed it and threw it out the open door. "Get out!"

That night we dined on fresh seafood. I couldn't believe how lucky I was that the proprietor didn't even want the defective pipe in exchange! "It's not like it doesn't work or anything," I confided to my friend.