Chapter 2: Ganja Gamer

By the end of the summer, I had an appetite for weed on a regular basis. I knew I needed my own bong so I could get high without Griffin. Once school started up again, I bought my first bong off a classmate for $20.

He claimed he was quitting smoking weed after getting caught by his parents. He paid $40 but would accept $20. It was used and not clean at all. It was made of plastic and smelled like an ashtray.

On the front it had a big Sector Nine skateboarding sticker on it. The sticker resembled a billiards eight ball, so I was told the bong was called "Eight Ball".

It was ugly and cheap, but it was my first bong and I loved it. It was just the right size to hide in my backpack. I took it on all my weekend and after school adventures.

Initially I smoked for the entertainment properties. I would buy a small amount of weed on a Friday and smoke it with some friends over the weekend. I enjoyed the fun way smoking weed made me feel. It made boring activities like sitting around in a friend's garage fun, and actual fun activities amazing.

The first time I went inside a 99cent store stoned and equipped with $10 was like visiting Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

Over time I came to realize the health benefits I was experiencing without consciously intending it.

As a teen I had a bit of an anger problem. I used to get in lots of fights at school and in my neighborhood over stupid stuff like video games and Pokémon cards. I got easily upset when people playfully teased me. I had a hard time controlling my emotions.

Smoking weed completely killed that person inside of me. It gave me a sense of patience and control.

I also experienced a lot of anxiety all the time. I have a large IQ and as a child this can be a blessing and a curse. It is like my brain is always operating at full power full speed. It does not shut off. I am constantly thinking and worrying. Constantly multitasking just to keep my brain distracted.

Cannabis slows my brain down to normal speed and lets me relax. It gives me a sense of calm.

The other major benefit I discovered was increased appetite. Everyone has heard of the munchies. Well, they really worked and helped me. Some days I would be so anxious I had trouble eating. I was also a very picky eater.

Having the munchies helped me not only eat at times I might be too nauseous, but it also made me more willing to try new things. When your high and hungry you end up expanding your menu as far as what you are willing to eat. I am still a picky eater, but I like to think smoking weed made me open to trying new foods I ended up loving that I might not have tried before.

During my sophomore year in high school, I started hanging out with this fellow stoner named Mark Burnbaum every day after school. I had met Mark through Griffin the year before. Mark had attended a different middle school, but they were in the same local Hebrew school together growing up.

Mark had short curly brown hair and stylish framed glasses. He had a big nose and a loudmouth.

Mark was often the class clown in school. He gave teachers a hard time but always got good grades. I can remember him calling our Spanish teacher Mr. Roberto, Senor. Roboto every time he was called upon to answer a question in Espanol. One time he even did the “Robot”.

Mark and I each received $5 per day from our parents for school lunch. We both would not buy lunch and save our money. We would put it together to buy weed after school. No dealers were even interested in selling $5 worth of weed but together we had $10 and could buy a dime ($10) from someone at school or afterwards.

We did not have many classes together and we did not hang out with the same group at snack break or lunch. Mark would pass me in the hallways at school and if our usual plan to meet after school was on, he would say our code word:

“Three Thirty.”

3:30pm was actually the time we would meet at his house.

Mark routinely got a ride home from his sister. After ten minutes or so she would leave for work. I walked over after school on foot. This allowed him to make sure the coast was clear and his parents and older sister were not home.

We would get high together in his backyard and listen to music. I used to carry a walk man CD player and my CD collection in my backpack at school. I would show Mark my newest CD and he would burn himself a copy with his family computer.

Mark's family was weird and did not have a television at home, so we mostly listened to music.

We always smoked on his back patio. I brought my bong 8 Ball or we used one of Mark’s fancy glass pipes.

Mark was very meticulous when it came to packing bowls. He took his time and broke up each piece of weed to the perfect size. His bowls were like a work of art. Griffin and Mike had always packed "Hippie Bowls" or one giant hit for everyone to pass around. The people getting the later hits did not always get as good a hit as the first person who got "greens".

Mark packed smaller individual bowls for each person broken up into one good hit. Each person got more rips and higher off their weed, and every hit was "green". I really tried to copy him in my own efforts at packing bowls and getting the most out of my supply.

Mark got good grades and was involved in sports. He played Hockey and Volleyball, so we did not hang out too much on weekends. On the weekdays around 4:30pm I had to leave before his parent’s came home.

Mark and I would talk about what would happen if our parent's caught us smoking weed. Mark's parents were from Isreal and according to Mark they were very old fashioned.

"They would look at it like, what have I done to have my son become a drug addict. They would think I am dirty and kick me out and make me live on the street like a bum!" Mark told me.

I just assumed my dad would probably beat the shit out of me and ground me. We both agreed the worst part would be disappointing our parents.

I started carrying this little kit in my pocket. Originally it was a pocket-sized box for pencils and school supplies. I emptied it out and put red eye clearing eye drops, breath mints, and a mini bottle of cologne inside. I called it the Stealth Stoner kit. I used this to avoid getting caught smoking by my parents.

I would come home to my house and head straight to my room. My parents would be sitting in the living room watching television, and I always had to walk right past them without arousing suspicion. Once I got to my room, I was home free. I could play video games for hours and sneak eat my dinner. I had a study hall period at school where I basically did all my homework each day.

When I was high, I could get really into a video game and lose track of time. There is just something about getting high and playing video games. For me It is a winning combination.

Growing up I loved video games. My earliest childhood memories all center around my first Sega Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog when I was around five years old. I even carried around a little stuffed Sonic wherever I went. I had my own personal TV/VCR combo and learned how to connect my video games to the back of the TV on my own at an early age.

I graduated from Sega to Super Nintendo, and then eventually Nintendo 64 towards the end of elementary school. I never had any of the systems right upon release, but when the price dropped enough that my parents could afford it, they would get the latest console for my birthday or Christmas.

I like to think of the Nintendo 64 in the 90s as the glory days of my childhood. My video game prime. Staying up late during a sleep over at a friend’s house playing four player Goldeneye 007 multiplayer matches on the level Complex with power weapons. Or working together to beat the dreaded Water Temple in Ocarina of Time. Eating pizza and drinking orange soda without a care in the world beyond the games we were playing.

As I got older, I traded Nintendo for PlayStation and Xbox. A friend gave me my first Final Fantasy game for my birthday in the seventh grade. Coincidentally it was Final Fantasy VII. I instantly fell in love with the genre.

After that, the games I enjoyed most were adventure RPGs (Role Playing Games) where you got to play as a hero. Final Fantasy had a succession of good games in my middle school years between VII, VIII and IX. The original Zeldas and Pokémon initially lured me in on Nintendo to those types of games. PlayStation seemed to have more mature content.

Playing these games with complex stories and themes really affected me and molded me as a person. As a teen I dreamed of being a hero like the characters in the video games I played.

I ended up making friends with another Final Fantasy fan at school. His name was Joseph. Joseph had caramel colored skin and a big afro. He was at least six foot two. Joseph and I sat next to each other in the back of our science class and often drew little comics and made jokes instead of paying attention to our teacher. One of our favorites being a cartoon picture of the “Fiji Mermaid”.

Joseph eventually started coming with me over to Mark's house after school. He too got around $5 for lunch every day and started to throw his in with Mark and me. His extra $5 got us all a better deal.

During science class Joseph and I started our own comic. Joseph was an amazing artist, and I was always good at coming up with story ideas. I can draw, don’t get me wrong, but Joseph was the Vincent Van Gogh of stoner high school artists. I was always in awe of his talents.

The comic we drew was about two stoner friends who traveled to a fantasy world using a magic bong. The main characters looked like us. Their adventures were partly inspired by our adventures smoking weed on weekends. The bad guy was an evil king (inspired by our school principal) and his army of half pig half police officer soldiers (the school security).

We even made Griffin and Mark their own characters. We rescued Griffin from the evil King's Military school and Mark was known throughout the land as the world's greatest bowl packer. We even called him Master Packer Mark.

Joseph and I would hang out on weekends. We were stoner buddies. Majority of the time neither of our houses was a safe place to smoke weed because our parents were home. We would find different parks in the neighborhood that were empty or had secluded areas we could sneak off to for smoking. After we got high, we would return to one of our houses and play video games.

Joseph and I had decided to ditch our last class at school on a Friday. I had done it a few times with Griffin, and I was no stranger to missing a class or two. I expected my parents to be at work, so we went to my house and started smoking weed in my bedroom.

I put on some music and lit some incense. About 20 minutes after we started smoking, I heard pounding steps coming up the stairs of my house and approaching my door. It was too late. The door burst open. My dad came charging into my bedroom. Apparently, he came home early.

“I know what that is, that’s marijuana!”

Imagine that but in an angry British accent.

I was in big trouble. I froze unsure what to do. Joseph ran through the house and out the front door as quick as he could.

My parents were furious but most of all disappointed. Every time they looked at me or spoke to me there was a tone and look of disgust and disappointment. It was unbearable. It was like I broke my father's heart.

They punished me by grounding me for several months. I was not allowed to go out of the house beyond going to school or family activities. They also took away all my video games and locked them in their closet. The only thing I was allowed to do was browse the internet on our family computer. My parents considered it educational or school related.

One day while I was browsing the computer, I came across a free video game called Wandering Hamster. It was basically early Final Fantasy but with a hamster and other random graphics as the main character. I am sure it sounds pretty lame but at the time, early 2000s, it was hard to find free video games online.

I would try and play it whenever my parents were not in view of the computer. I started to notice when you started up the game at the bottom of the screen said the words "Proudly made with OHRRPGCE".

I decided to investigate the name and discovered a website for a computer program called OHRRPGCE. I came to learn this stood for Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Construction Engine. OHR was a completely free video game design program.

The website had many easy tutorials allowing just about anyone with a computer and time on their hands to make their own video games in the style of early Final Fantasy.

My parents had grounded me from playing video games, but they never said I could not make my own.

It took me a little while, but I figured out the easier stuff. I did my best to draw graphics on the computer, but I really had no formal training. I can draw pretty good on paper and blamed my poor computer drawing skills on the mouse. Advanced programing and coding were way over my head. I did everything I could without using it.

I was able to design my first simple video game before I was 16. The graphics sucked and the programming was as basic as possible. But hey it was a video game!

While I was grounded, I was rarely able to smoke. I could not make it over to Mark’s house after school and I did not have any money to spend anymore anyways. Occasionally someone at school might invite me to sneak off campus at lunch or smoke a bowl on the way home after school. But for the most part I was stuck staying sober.

I missed smoking weed so I ended up making it the focus of my first video game. I based my first game on the comic Joseph, and I drew during our science class at school. I made crude graphics for all the characters. They paid Joseph's drawing style no justice.

I never really officially completed or distributed the game or the comic. I did give a copy of the game to Joseph, and he was able to play it. He said it was the best video game he ever played but obviously he was biased since he was one of the main characters.

Joseph moved to live with his biological father out of the country in Belize right before our junior year in high school. Joseph's mom married a conservative white man who was dean of a local college. Apparently, there was no room for her pot smoking son at his new house. Joseph was shipped off to live with his dad.

It was starting to become a common theme in my life with my friends constantly moving away after becoming close with me.

We wrote letters because he did not have a computer there and neither of us had a cell phone yet. I continued to write ideas for the comic and even drew a few of the pages myself. I sent it to Joseph in the mail along with my letters.

Eventually Joseph wrote me back saying he did not want to work on the comic anymore. He was moving on from smoking weed and talking to me about it in letters every week wasn't helping him. He gave me full ownership to do what I wanted with the comic. I always found it a bit sad.

Chapter 3: Kink