Thoughts I Had on 4/20 For No Particular Reason

By Megan Reynolds  |  April 20, 2021 | 6:55pm
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Thoughts I Had on 4/20 For No Particular Reason
Image:AN WOITAS/DPA/AFP (Getty Images)

Today, 4/20, is a day celebrated mostly by people who have made smoking marijuana a dominant strain in their personality. Unfortunately, I fall into this camp. My preference for weed over other substances like alcohol is because it turns off the anxiety tap that runs freely in my brain and replaces it with beautiful TV static, an ambient nothingness that finally allows my jaw to unclench. Another pleasant thing about this day is that usually in New York, where I live, the weather has turned around. Finally, it’s nice out! Marijuana is legal. The earth is healing. Summer, or something like it, beckons.

Over the course of the pandemic, I largely stopped drinking, if only because all my previous outlets for doing so were closed. As someone who waves their hand and says, “yes, eventually” to the idea of quitting smoking for good, I fear that I have the sort of “addictive” personality that would make it so that one wine at dinner would turn to three wines a day, which would spiral quickly to a bottle in the shower before the coffee is done. (This likely would not happen, but the fear of it was enough to keep me out of the bottle. Also, I hate being hungover). Weed, however, was the MVP of the quarantine, a beautiful substance that, for me, erases the edges of time just enough so that the early weeks of social distancing are now nothing more than a smooth-brained memory.

I’m hard-pressed to really say what it is I did during those early weeks, when I felt anxious, and then stupid for feeling anxious, and then anxious, and also bored, then anxious, once more. But, for every silly little television program I watched and every tea towel I embroidered, weed was there to get me out of my head for just a few hours, and to plop me somewhere else. Weed never let me down.

Here are some thoughts I’ve had on this beautiful Tuesday, which is different from the others. No reason. Just my brain.

  • Writing is hard.
  • Heating up fish in the microwave is fine.
  • An exercise trampoline is definitely worth my money, though what happens if I bounce too hard, hit my head on the wardrobe behind me, and knock myself out?
  • Did I leave the house for a beautiful walk and leave the REDACTED burning in a REDACTED near the BLANK?
  • Why did I think portable laptop chargers cost $1,000, when really, they are a very sensible $130 or so?
  • Probably not! (This is the answer to the question above the laptop chargers.)
  • This photo of Chris Christie in a baseball uniform.
  • What if my sisters and I finally did what we always said we would, which is open a food truck or something with my mom’s recipes? Will we get a TV show?
  • Thank god I bought a pet cam.
  • Relatedly, when I check the pet cam, and it says it’s “offline,” does that mean that the NSA is hacking into my pet cam to see what Daisy is doing, or does it mean that ghosts have infiltrated my matrix, as it were, and are doing things, like setting the stage for a full-out INVASION of my body—a possession?
  • This page about how to tell if a chicken is sick is now in close competition with this OTHER WikiHow page as my favorite WikiHow page on the internet.
  • Dinner dinner ugh.
  • Never mind, THIS is dinner, that’s good for me!
  • Though I think about this often, never so much as I do at or around 2 or 3 P.M., when it is too early for dinner, too late for lunch, and I have no cookies in the house: when will I ever be able to successfully execute a meal that is just enough food for one person? What even is the right amount of food for one person? Why did I make a vat of miso curry as if I were feeding a hungry family of 5, or, alternately having a dinner party?
  • I don’t miss dinner parties.
  • Weed.

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