Are You On The Pot?

Amber, Kayla and Greg's apartment complex backs right up to the high school campus property line. All the apartments share a laundromat in a small building that is at the back of the apartment's parking lot adjacent to the school. This is precisely the reason my daughters come to my house to wash and dry their clothes. They both say it "weirds them out" to put their laundry in the same machine someone else's underwear has been tumbling around in, not to mention there might be a panties predator lurking about. I believe the real reason is, my washer and dryer failed to come with slots to insert money to make them run. So it is quite convenient to haul basket upon basket fulls of laundry all the way across town to use my personal laundromat. Not that I mind or anything.

Yesterday I got a phone call from Kayla. She normally talks at warp speed and only the trained ear can decipher all the information that is usually spilling out of her at once. But as she paused to take a breath, I said, "You did what?" So she started the story over again about her drug bust. Now you have to understand that I still think of her as a kid, even if she is married. So just the fact she did this makes me laugh. Anyway, she proceeds to tell me, she watched a girl from the high school walk over to the apartments, go into the laundromat and shut the door. Kayla being wise to ways of the world, suspects wrong doing. So feeling extremely feisty that day, she takes it upon herself to take matters into her own hands and goes marching across the parking lot to the laundromat. As she approaches, she smells exactly what is going on in there because the window was open. So Kayla, who I guess never got over being hall monitor in school, throws open the door.

Standing there in front of the washer and dryer in a cloud of smoke, is a very young teenage girl with a lit "joint" in her hand. Aren't you impressed that I know the drug lingo! When I was young and we went to school in caves, we called them doobies, roaches or reefers. I'm hip to the 411, I even heard it called a blunt on the TV show "Cops" the other day. The names change but it is a rolled cigarette of marijuana, grass, mary jane or pot. Needless to say this girl was quite shocked as the door was thrust open and my daughter, the undercover cop posing as an adult, stood in the doorway. With finger pointing, Kayla starts telling this kid the perils of drug use.

Kayla's speech covered A to Z on being a teenager and smoking pot. Now picture this, because when Kayla gets fired up, she is talking loud and fast... imagine a machine gun. This kid is standing there with her eyes popping out of her head not knowing what is coming at her. I'm sure part of her confusion is due to her drug induced haze, not to mention the finger wagging in her face. So Kayla starts telling her these apartments are people's homes. Would she go into her mother's house and light up a joint? Absolutely not. You are not respecting the people who live here and you are not respecting yourself. We have children living here and they look up to teenagers and want to be like them. You might not have children now, but one day you will and then you're going to understand what I'm talking about. Would you want them to be around this kind of thing? Smoking a joint does not make you a grown up, acting like a grown up makes you an adult. So you need to leave right now, don't come back, and tell anyone else you know not to come here either.

So as Kayla finishes her lecture, she steps out of the doorway so this kid can leave. The girl finally opens her mouth and says "I'm sorry, I won't do it again." Then she says, "I have to change my pants first." At this point I'm doubled over laughing and say, "Well, Kayla how bad did you scare this kid that she had to change her pants?" Kayla said, "I don't know, but she came out with a different pair on." I'm guessing this girl won't be back. I don't know if Kayla had an impact on her smoking, but I bet she won't darken that laundromat door any time soon.

I suppose I need to realize Kayla is an adult now and considers high schoolers "kids." It's just hard for me not to see her as my little girl. I'm proud of her for possibly stopping this teenager from joining the "Reefer Madness" (for all you young people, this was a cult movie classic in the old days and is now hysterically funny). So if anyone needs to get someone "off the pot" ... Who
you gonna call? Kayla, undercover drug cop, at your service!