Altered States

I ride the metro two stops to get to one of my day jobs. I know that is totally lame, I could walk it in twenty-five minutes or Metro it in about fifteen, so I should just walk and save the $1.20. But I never leave the house in time, and besides, with this heat, I fear that my brain will melt and leak out of my head and trickle out into the cracks in the sidewalk.

So I take the Metro.

Today, when we got to the Metro stop that is in between the one I get on at and the one I get off at several people got up and stood at the door (par normal) waiting for the doors to open. The train stopped, paused for several moments, and then -- started up again. The doors never opened. Everyone looked around, a little baffled, and the three people at the doors near me got a little indignant. "Why didn't he stop at our stop?!!?"

At my stop the train stopped and the doors opened, so there was clearly not a problem with the functionality of the doors.

And my first thought was:

"Oh, the driver must be high".

That was my initial and rather certain explanation. What do I know? He may have just forgotten. There may have been some emergency happening at the station that prevented them from being able to open the doors (though no announcement was made). Maybe he got distracted.

Or maybe he was high.

I guess I just marvel at the number of people who function through much of their life high. I was never into the pot thing - didn't like how it affected me, found that I inevitably smoked either too much or too little, and could never make it a normal, social thing (which I have, certainly, achieved with the drinking thing, ahem). I also never got into the whole culture that surrounded pot (at least in my college days). Never a fan of phish and I always hated patchouli.

But I have realized as I have gotten older that many people carry the habit beyond the patchouli phase. That many people function as completely normal, active, contributing members of society, while getting high every day.

Every. Day.

And then I started noticing that there are certain jobs where I now assume that everyone doing the job is high. That they'd have to be high. That it is something of a pre-requisite.

These jobs include:
-working at quiznos
-delivering pizzas
-working at any food booth in any shopping mall food court
-soliciting donations for PIRG
-dog walking
-any job that involves working a soft-serve dessert machine

I realize that most of them involve food. That is probably not entirely coincidental.

Then I thought, maybe there are some positions that would benefit from having consistently high employees. Maybe it would help take the edge off.

For example, employees at The Heritage Foundation. I see them stream out of their offices everyday. If anything would help get the metaphorical sticks out of their asses, I would be all for it.

Or soccer moms who drive SUV's. But not while they are driving their SUV's.

Or Ann Coulter.