You're as Old as You Feel (Like Partying)

When my dad was eighty I took him in for routine eye surgery. They had him and a few other patients kicked back in these sort of dentist chairs and prepped. There were several nurses and technicians and a doc or two walking around. A nurse came in to ask him some pre-op questions. I can't remember why they waited until after he got a "don't care" shot to ask him the questions, because in a few seconds he melted into the chair with a little grin and he seemed to be quite relaxed, but it was no big deal. I helped him out with any special questions if he needed it. Aside from a couple of very minor procedures my dad was always really healthy, so it was mostly No straight down the list.
 She was almost done. "Are you on any medications?" she asked. "No" I replied on dad's behalf. He shook his head. "Are you on any street drugs?" she asked. That caught me off guard a bit, and I had to chuckle. I started to say no but dad chimed in. For half a second he'd gotten this serious look on his face; like he was thinking. "Well..." he said, "I smoked some rabbit tobacco a few times when I was a kid." Everybody within earshot cracked up. "I see" said the nurse. "You haven't smoked any 'rabbit tobacco' lately, have you?" That made me crack up more. "No, ma'am" said dad. My dad's about as straight as it gets. In fact, since his "wasted youth" days of smoking rabbit tobacco, I doubt he's been high on anything half a dozen times, and all of those were in the dentist's chair or after a medical procedure. He just didn't go in for that thing, or drinking either. I knew for that reason alone he was probably a good bit higher on that shot than, well...I'd be, for example. I was pretty sure he was making a joke, but he said it so deadpan. Then again that's what he does, but it was almost like he wasn't quite sure what was going on, and he'd seriously given her his entire "drug history." Either way it was funny.
 Not that I was amazed that old people might party, but I guess I never really thought about it. "So, do you get a lot of octos in here who...uhh...toke-up or whatever?" I asked the nurse. "You'd be surprised" she said. "Really?" I said. "Yep. Oh, they don't bother anybody. In fact most of them are as nice as they can be" she said. "I guess so" I replied. "We don't ever get them in trouble" she said. "We just need to make sure they're not too high to operate on." I was thinking it was a good thing my dad hadn't gotten high before he came in, because they sure gave him a shot before they asked if he had anything in his system it might mix with. Shoot first and ask questions later, I guess.
 Anyway she didn't seem to have a problem talking about it, and I was curious. "So, you get some older hipsters in here?" I asked. "Yeah. Mostly weed" she said. "The truth is, I really think they're the healthiest ones of the bunch. They're the happiest, anyway." "That's nice to know" I said. "If it were up to me, I'd recommend it to them" she said. "Can I quote you on that?" I asked. "No" she laughed. "Too bad" I said. "It's true" she said. We sat there quietly for a moment. I don't know what the nurse was thinking about but I was picturing old groovers walking in and digging on some Count on their earbuds. "Well, hope it goes well. Nice meeting you guys" she said. "You too. Have a nice day!" I said. "Mpmffh" said dad. She smiled and walked off.  That was an interesting conversation. An open mind can be rare in the medical profession.
The image I found for this post happens to show a 93-year-old lady hitting a bowl. You know that at her age she's not going to be screwing around smoking lame weed. That's some of that laser weed she's smoking. I guarantee. What's funny is that back in the day when I smoked pot, average weed, like average beer, was about 3.5%. THC content, that is. Even most of the good stuff was around 5-6% I think. These days THC content can go up to 22% and higher. Granny's smoking weed that's five times as strong as what I smoked. I thought I was getting high. She eats my lunch. Whatever you could say about it, she's a badass. She's got it goin' on. She's got that Kind lit up. I love it. You know what they say...Life's too short to smoke shitty weed.