For Chris...

So, I'm not much of a pot smoker. I don't like drinking/smoking by myself, I like it as a social thing. Thing is, pot makes me notably UN-social. I'm a sleeper, or I turn inwards to myself. Thoughts come to me at a rapid pace, but far too fast for them to reach my mouth, before I have another rapid thought. Either that, or I feel as though I AM actually saying things out loud, when I'm not. It's like the opposite of having no inner monologue. More like my inner monologue EATS my voice.

It is on record that I once, on one of the rare occurences that I do indulge in the weed, went for nearly two hours without speaking a word. My sister, and two of my friends, one child-free weekend (the sister and I used to co-ordinate weekends so we had the same weekends without kids) were sitting around as per usual, and this evening I had opted to partake when they offered the pipe, after probably around 8 months since my previous indulgence.

We were playing this card game we had dubbed '12-step' as it involves collecting cards in different formation, for 12 rounds. For 2 hours (because it's a godawfully long game) we sat, the sister giggled, both friends giggled, they made fun observations while I steadfastly concentrated on my cards, occasionally grunting in assent or uttering an absent-minded 'heh'.

It was a saturday so it was classic rock saturday night. Every song that came on my sister would cry 'oooooh I LOVE this SONG!' At one point a song came on and after her declaration of love for the song, there was discussion as to what the song was called

"Oooooh! I love this song! What's it called?"
"I don't know, who does it?"
"I think it's Jethro Tull, but I don't know the name!"

Blah blah blah the game goes on. I have remained in my silence for this exchange, while the wheels in my brain worked. After what seemed like 2-3 minutes to me, but what must have been closer to 30 minutes later, I have a brainstorm.

"Aqualung."

The table stops. Everyone is staring at me, like I have snakes crawling out of my eye sockets. My sister looks shocked and says "What?" I look her dead in the eye.

"AQUALUNG."

A chorus of "what the hell are you TALKING ABOUT?" I myself, don't see what is so difficult to understand, so I turn to the others and more vehemently

"AQUALUNG."

Now they're totally weirded out, thinking that, I can only assume, that I've totally lost my mind. I haven't spoken in two hours and now, a half hour after it's no longer relevent, I come out with this non-sequitor, single word phrase. Looking down at my cards I shrug.

"That was the name of the song"