WEE(d) AND ME

Sometimes when things get as sticky wicket as they are today, the only thing to do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and take yourself out to lunch. Well, I had to go shopping anyhow…

… at the metropolitan Kalaheo Post Office where I picked up a zillion catalogs and bills,  I met Helen. She’s a Jehovah’s Witness. Used to walk the street with a Watch Tower in her hand. She tells me ‘they’ now speak about athiests-ouch-and  when she dies she’s not going to heaven but coming back to paradise on earth. That sounds neat. I’d come back too, only I don’t think I’d like to spend all eternity in heaven or planet earth with Helen and the Jehovahs.

When I got to OId Koloa Town and did my shopping at the Big Save, I met a man at the head of the line, a tourist,  who was passing out money like it was going out of style. I asked for some- since I had to go home and feed Ari, my horse-but he, the guy, not Ari, shook his head. ‘Course I had a basket of Chardonnay and Kahlua so guess he didn’t believe me. Believers, I tell you. I din’t gets no money. Ari  ate anyways, and I took the booze home.

At this point I hied myself into the darlingest Pizza joint in Old Koloa Town- just beyond the collosal mess the Knudson’s made-Pizzeta-that’s amore- restaurant, where I immediately dumped the most delicious pizza I’ve ever eaten on the floor. I was stoney cold sober, honest, at that stage. It was replaced and cleaned up-post haste-by the cutest dimpled waitress I ever saw. Met there a guy named Tom-with his two children and a wife-from Alaska. I am not a people collector but I meet people easily-I am legally defined by a shrink as delightful and ongoing even though I am a secular humanist- so when I asked if he was a ‘Palin’ fan, he said, “She embarrases us.” So I gave him my card and invited him to my house.

So where does the WEE(d) AND ME come in? Well, forty years ago-at least- in Old Koloa Town, which was a wreck but  didn’t have the messy black tarps the Knudsen’s erected, or any Pizza joint, fancy or not, when a little hippy friend offered me a toke-is that what you call it?-on a Thai stick. What the hell is a Thai stick, I wondered. But, not caring to appear too super uncool, I replied, cooly, “Yep” and took a drag. I damn near chocked to death. I’m not a smoker. My throat burned and my eyes watered and I thought I was going to die. Didn’t. But I rushed out and killed at least a half a dozen passing tourist meandering up the road towards Spouting Horn. That’s a lie. What I did do was go on a crying jag that lasted three days. Never tried that again. Well at least I admitted I took a drag. So there Bill Clinton.

Readers and Editors, did I also tell you-truth-that I was once a featured columnist with Herb Caen?

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