Confessions of an Undercover Herbswoman, Part 1

Sometime in the late 60s, when I was not yet ten, I came across the possibility that Bob Denver, aka the lanky Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island, did drugs. Some rare re-run of The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis had aired, and I grokked that the character Maynard -- Gilligan in some former incarnation -- was, like, a beatnik. And beatniks, of course, smoked drugs and went on trips.  

That drug was weed. Aka pot, grass, tea, ganja, reefer, green, maryjane, herb, whacky tobaccy. I adored Gilligan and thus was horrified. “Oh my God,” I wondered, “does Gilligan smoke drugs?” * The sweet, goofy first mate of the shipwrecked Minnow might be … an addict? Was it really true that the Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost…?

I cannot recall the specifics, but there had been some anti-drug speakers at school – usually cranky, retired police officers -- who persuaded me that weed, acid, heroin, speed and the like were all quickly and equally deadly. There would be hallucinations, wild abandon, mouth-frothing, seizures, addiction, leaps from skyscrapers. 

And, ruh-roh: Shaggy, Scooby-Doo’s big buddy, also had that air of some kind of beatnik pot-toker. But Shaggy was just a cartoon character. Gilligan felt much more, like, real.

Dear God, I prayed, please don’t let Gilligan OD on pot.

                                                *   *   *

When I was 12 or 13, my next-door girlfriend’s older brothers started smoking weed that they bought at school. I noticed its heavy skanky smell and knew it had to be DRUGS. They offered hits to me, smirking at me with bloodshot eyes, and I always coolly refused and acted outwardly nonchalant about the presence of the devil’s herb. But inwardly, I judged them: They could do something terrible, smoking those drugs. There could be madness, gun fights, heart attacks. My girlfriend might be forced to sell herself so they could buy drugs. 

Madness, gun fights, and heart attacks did occur in our neighborhood. Sadly, a local pimp actually did attempt to "turn out" both my friend and her sister. (They turned him out instead, thank God.) But none of those horrible realities had anything to do with the marijuana being smoked next door. On the contrary, Andrew and Rufus -- my girlfriend’s brothers -- mellowed out and spent more time playing music. Andrew’s electric bass got deeper and funkier. Rufus became quieter, more introspective, more prone to poetic and philosophical ruminating.

                                                *   *   *

In high school, lots of my Catholic-girl-school classmates were doing drugs. Not me. My biggest crime, thus far, was chewing gum in the second-floor classrooms, which was against school rules. I’d gotten caught with contraband cud enough times to earn some after-school detention and make the rebels think I might be cool. One of these rebels – the daughter of a wealthy contributor to the school – was a big-wig dealer to students. I once overheard her in the bathroom closing an angel-dust deal with our senior class president. When they discovered my presence, they were not worried. I might be a nerd, but I wasn’t a nark. No one in our class was a nark. There could be nothing worse than being a nark. It was the unspoken rule of our class for both the drug-doers and the drug-abstainers: We’re in this parochial purgatory together, from the stoners to the jocks to the scholars. We’ll get outta here relatively unscathed just as long as no one narks.

Then, during the last semester of senior year, when we were on the verge of actually escaping our desert island – narklessly preparing for senior projects, final exams, and graduation -- the history teacher caught two girls rolling joints and guffawing to I Dream of Jeannie on the small TV in the senior lounge. 

The principal, Sister L, was incensed. She called all of the senior class to a special secret midday assembly. “My understanding,” she hissed, “is that there have been DRUGS in our school for quite some time.” 

Well, yes. That is our understanding too, Sister.

“And none of you bothered to report this?” Sister was pacing as she spoke, she was so riled.  “None of you cared enough about the dangers that your classmates – your very own friends -- were in? Why didn’t any of you talk to me or any of the teachers about this serious issue?”

No one responded. But the first thing that came to my mind, and perhaps to my classmates’ minds, was “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 1970’s adolescent translation: “Do not tattle on others as you would not have them tattle on you.”

Our punishment for neglecting to nark was: forfeited eligibility for the “school spirit” award, which would have won us a Friday off and some mutually agreed-upon outing for the whole class, paid for by the school. While committing our collective sin of omission, the seniors had also accumulated the most “spirit points" by volunteering at hospitals and in the community, having the highest GPA, and being the most involved in extra-curricular activities such as the yearbook, school newspaper, and basketball team. Our refusal to nark lost us all our well-earned “spirit” points. In addition, the two joint-rollers were immediately suspended from school for the rest of the year and banned from graduation – although they were given their diplomas without having to take finals.

Thus: the school’s big-wig dealer was never caught or reported. The middle-class joint-rollers (who probably purchased their weed from dealer-with-a-rich-dad) got a reprieve from the last two months of classes and finals and an instant diploma with no marks on their permanent record.

The moral of this story for our 17-&-18 year old minds:

1.  Hell. You mean all one had to do be absolved from last two excruciating months of classes and finals – and still earn a prep-school diploma – was get caught rolling joints in the senior lounge?

2.  Hell. Even if one of us had narked earlier, would that just mean that rich daddy’s drug-dealin' daughter would have gotten the same “punishment?”

3.  Hell. Maybe we should ALL have just narked on each other and slept in and partied hearty for those last two months?

All glibness aside:  Most of us were looking forward to graduating together and were truly upset that two of our classmates would be banned from participating or even attending the ceremony as guests. I considered all of it an injustice: to my mind, the joint-rollers were not the main “culprits.” They were neither pimps nor pushers – they simply happened to get caught with a little weed likely sold to them by someone whose family made big donations to the school. Would the dealer have been banned from graduation if she had been caught? Did Sister L know more than she let on? Wasn’t she just making scapegoats and “examples” out of the less-deeply pocketed girls? I questioned the reasoning behind kicking them out of school – as if to simply sweep the problem away, push out all the troubles and “impurities.” During my years at this well-regarded school, there were girls who got expelled after getting pregnant and deciding to carry their conceptions to term. There had also been a male science teacher romantically and (possibly) sexually involved with a student for at least two years. Upon her graduation, the two married, and the science teacher was quietly fired -- and rehired elsewhere.

(This was my introduction to the Catholic church's sadly frequent way of handling broken laws, potential scandals, boundary breaches, and sexual misconduct: deny, ignore, minimize, or ship it all away. Find good scapegoats. Punish some minions. Don’t investigate too deeply; shun responsibility.)

Essentially: Don’t nark, even as we preach the necessity of narking. We had learned our lessons well; yes?

(Click here for Part 2)

(to be continued as a multiple-part series)

* Bob Denver actually was arrested for marijuana possession in 1998, at age 63. (Before his acting career, he had also graduated from Loyola and taught PE and math at a Catholic grade school in Pacific Palisades, California.)