High!

Developing your unique voice

Scan back over your life, think of times, things, places, etc. you remember for no apparent reason. Write the memory as you remember it, and start the rendering. This is an exercise in using your own personal voice.

Begin the essay with the phrase "I don't know why I remember.


I don't know why I remember just now but chocolate chip cookies remind me of the first and only time that I was high in my life. Hey, guys, don't jump the barricades. I didn't buy nor did I smoke the stuff. Someone foisted it off on me.

Before I start the story, some essential things. In Germany there's no course system like in America. We have classes that stay the same until the 12th grade. Since 2004 grades 12 and 13 are organized like in a course system. Several classes can have the same number, e.g. 11a, 11b, etc. It's common here that from grade 5 on there's an annual class trip to a culturally important place either in Germany or in Europe a class goes to visit for between a week or two each year end of October to beginning of November. For example I've been to Munich, Berlin, Rome, Avignon, Barcelona and Prag.

Prag was in the eleventh grade and the place where the following event occurred. Actually Prag was cool. We visited landmarks like the Karls Bridge (yes, Karl with K), several museums, the Jewish Quarter including Franz Kafka's house. Kafka is cool. We've read quite a lot of his parables in German and I loved his peculiar style. But I digress. The fact that it rained there the whole week we were there didn't make it an exactly pleasant trip. That sucked.

I think it was the third of four evenings that we stayed in our hotel because it was really pissing down. We could've swum downtown if you know what I mean. So we rather stayed in our zero-star-rathole-hostel with the flimsy excuse for furniture and more, food.

Most fellows of our parallel classes stayed at the hotel as well and most of them pursued their favorite activity: drinking and engaging in silly, childish pranks on each other. I never drank (and seldom drink) because it makes me fall asleep. Often I was the only person during such an event (class trip) who was completely sober and that the whole time. One can argue on it but sometimes the behavior of drunken people is involuntarily funny and sometimes downright bizarre.

I tell you: only drunks can laugh it off when another drunk pukes on her head before all others or when they are ripped of an alcohol induced semi-coma and made up like like drag queens by drunken girls ridden by the devil who still have a crow to pick with him and who make polaroids of him after having finished as "evidence". That is no joke!

Anyway, my friends Rebecca and Claudia, Elisabeth and I - we shared a four bed room - decided to get some food for the McDonalds nearby (the hotel food was as dubious as the hotel itself, Salmonella & Co., hello!) and eat it at the room. Actually it was forbidden to bring food to the hotel, but when nobody watches nobody cares, right?

We were just finished with "dinner" when Sarah, a girl from the parallel class came in and offered us some chocolate chip cookies she'd brought with her in a big box. Two of her friends later joined us. We talked about stuff: boys, school, teachers, what we wanted to do in the so far away future, and ate the cookies.

They were delicious. I think one had more calories than a chocolate cake. I still remember the rich cocoa and chocolate aroma (whoa, I'm starting to drool right now). Therefore I ate them slow - I wanted to enjoy it to the fullest.

After about the third cookie I got a warm feeling inside and felt relaxed, more than my "dinner" would have caused. But then I still didn't think anything about it. The others had eaten faster and were giggling like little girls; even Elisabeth. That made me wonder because Elisabeth never giggled. I shook my head and ate another cookie.

A short time later I began to feel sleepy and a bit lightheaded. That made me wonder even more. What was going on here? After the fifth cookie I began to see rosary auras around the outlines of my friends, the beds, the cupboards, the cockroaches (no, just a joke, it wasn't THAT bad a place! ). I heard myself giggle about the silliest crap. And I also never giggle - I either laugh... or not. I paused a little. The changes were amazing. The others not only seem to have blushed but they also had glassy eyes and their speech was a bit... slurry.

After some time I took a last cookie out of the already very empty box. Shortly after eating it the lightheadedness increased and I saw everything in rosary, the whole room, my friends. The relaxation increased to a half-sleep like state and I felt insanely happy for some strange reason. This absurd feeling made me giggle along with the others.

Come on, take another one. That stuff's great! slurred a little voice in my head.

Don't you dare! another one interjected. I have no idea what's going on here but it's certainly not normal. You stay away from that stuff!

Killjoy pouted the whiny little voice.

Damn, what's happening here? I never felt like that before.

Why must you talk everything down!? Can't you just enjoy it? Oh, and give me another cookie, will you?

I followed the strange dialogue in my mind - is it an acoustic hallucination when one's talking with oneself and listens to oneself talking to oneself?

Anyway, my mind was like fogged and walked as slow as if it was pulling itself through syrup until it finally found one last shroud of reason that hadn't already left for vacation in Nirvana which finally told me.

What!? How can I be high? I haven't drunk something or smoked... those darn cookies!

I never found out who prepared the cookies - if it was Sarah herself or anyone else - but I definitely can tell you that my hunch was right because after returning home I looked up the symptoms for a THC intoxication in a textbook and what I displayed were some of them.

It wasn't that bad an experience, only new and strange, and I hadn't done anything more than giggling stupidly and engaging in slippery jokes before finally falling asleep right on the spot and waking up with a killer headache and backache because I'd knotted myself like a pretzel during sleep.

I never felt the urge to consume the stuff again. I don't even know where to get it. But I'd definitely recognize it when someone would try again to foist it off on me again.

My, why did I remember that stroke of genius again? Oh, yeah. This evening after dinner I watched Men in Black and guess what I had as a little snack? Yeah, but definitely without dope!