He heard the smack of plastic on metal, followed by tinkling glass. An almost musical sound, and quite pleasant. Unless it’s your Porsche Cayenne.
“Oh, man,” a dreadlocked hippie said, picking up his skateboard. “What happened?”
“What happened, young man…” Chet said. “…is you were not looking where you were going.” The left taillight was smashed, and Chet had just had the vehicle detailed. Although a ferocious Liberal and a devoted Agnostic, times like these made him wonder if there didn’t exist a higher power. At least an evil one.
The hippie looked at his phone. “Oh, no. It’s cracked!”
Chet asked if the young man had been using the phone while skateboarding. Of course, he said. How else would he text the clerk at Headlife and have him package another three grams of Paradise Peak Premo? (And pronto).
“You’re high?” Chet asked.
“Hey. Marijuana’s legal. Not only that, it’s good for you!”
Maybe, Chet thought. But at the moment it wasn’t too good for his car.
And the worst part? There was no one to blame. The Left brought it on themselves. Stoners were everywhere, passing out in parks, skateboarding outside the library, laughing at nothing in Starbucks. Progressives had to support the company line: Marijuana good, Republicans bad. It was the Republicans who believed in prosecuting marijuana users. They were the ones who believed in laws, jails, curfews, noise ordinances, background checks, time clocks, reviews, audits, dress codes, rules, decrees, decorum, the whole buzzkill of official responsibility and respect.
They had one thing right. No one wants to be around a stoned Republican.
“I support your right to consume medicinals,” Chet said, judiciously. “But your behavior is reckless and irresponsible.”
“But you just came up SO FAST.”
“I was parked,” Chet said.
A policeman arrived. He took down the offender’s name, address, and age. Chet blinked when the hippie said he was thirty. “You’re thirty years old?”
“Yeah. And my dad is going to kill me. Look, man,” he said to the cop. “Can you give me a ride to Headlife Herbal?”
“Only if it’s an emergency.” the cop said.
The hippie said it was an emergency, all right. A total emergency.
“In that case, hop in.” The siren came on and the squad car sped away. Chet shook his head in amazement. How far we had come, or how far we regressed, he couldn’t say.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com