Greg and the marijuana garden

I dreamed I was living with the folks again. They'd bought the old Orrick place in Paradise and had it rebuilt to suit their needs. They wanted a big place with many rooms to accommodate all the relatives that would be staying there on visits. I took to the place right away and started up a little marijuana patch in their freshly planted vegetable garden.

Several months had gone by, and my plants were getting taller. I've always taken pride in my greenish thumb. I can't really grow much of anything else, but I excel at cultivating the devil's weed. They had been OK with it this time around, unlike the few times I tried to get away with it as a teenager.

Or so I thought. One day, Greg called a family meeting. He wanted to talk about adding more rooms to the house, so he invited a team of architects and engineers to discuss the finer points of the plan. Some of it even involved widening the city bridges, since they posed a congestion problem that he felt would impact future guests. Right before the meeting, which I was reluctantly forced to attend, I saw that all of my plants were gone.

"What happened to my plants?" I kept asking, interrogating everyone I saw. 

People just looked at me strangely and continued to file into the meeting, taking seats in the padded folding chairs. My mom took me aside and said:

"It was Greg. He's concerned about a new technology that is able to account for every single marijuana plant on the planet. He's sorry, but your plants had to go."

I couldn't accept that answer, so I waited for Greg at the meeting. I wanted to give him what for about tearing out the plants, but since it was their house, I really didn't have any grounds. Still, I wanted to try to reason with him or allay his concerns about the threat of this super surveillance software that he was so worried about.

"They aren't going to pursue every sprout and seedling," I told him. "You should see some of the stuff growing up here that goes unreported. I just want to do a small fraction of that." In my mind, I held the more reasonable view.

"Imagine how I feel," Greg said to my mom. "It's like telling a woman that you have to take away the medicine that she relies on, and that she has to give it up. It doesn't make you very popular. Someone, please tell me when that one lady shows up. I forget her name."

Yvette Nicole Brown

My mom said nothing. I watched as a few more people crowded in. One was a black lady, a roundish comedienne who has been in my dreams before. I'll think of her name in a minute. She entered the room with a flourish, wearing a flapper outfit, some form fitting black sequined dress with tassels and, of course, the obligatory pillbox hat to match. 

"Who's forgettin' my name?" she bellowed. "Miss Dee has arrived!"

 

I intercepted her before she got to my stepdad. I wanted to commiserate with her about my feelings toward Greg at the moment. I felt she'd make a powerful ally. She wasn't interested, though, and she took a seat after being handed a complimentary gift bag by mom. 

I decided to look in the gift bag under my seat, and found it contained a bottle of tequila. I was contemplating opening it right there when my half-brother David entered the room, scowling into his gift bag. 

"I'm not sticking around for this," he said, and he opened his bottle of liquor as he exited the room.

Finally, a kindred soul, I thought. I left with him, and we went back to my room to talk shit about parents in general, and Greg in particular. I reasoned out my latest beef with Greg to him, and he seemed sympathetic enough, but his sourness went way back to the days of our dear old dad, and it had nothing to do with Greg. This was my fight.

"I mean, I can't really complain," I said, "since they are putting a roof over my head...but FUCK!" I just couldn't get past the idea that they'd pulled up my plants so heartlessly. 

I woke up grumpy, pissed at myself, mainly, for sleeping in extra late just to wind up having this crappy dream.