(c) Copyright 2025, David Dilworth
Cookies – Too Good to Pass Up
Never a marijuana enthusiast, here’s an event that ended my already rare encounters with it.
One lovely summer evening, my camping friend Steve and I visited Pat, a High School friend at his Carmel Valley Village home. Pat was busy when we arrived. He called down from upstairs “I’m doing a massage. Make yourself at home and eat something.”
Ok.
For two perpetually starving hikers (Not really; neither of us has ever missed a meal.) we were delighted with that prompt. And well Steve – he’s the closest thing to a gourmet cook on the trail. On an early overnight hike I pulled out my standard crackers and cheese. But Steve unstowed a camp stove and proceeded to make steak with mashed potatoes and Gravy !
Our attention was immediately commanded by a plate covered with marvelous looking large chocolate chip cookies. Cookies so big and tasteful it took minutes to delightfully consume. Mmmm that was good.
Steve and I looked at each other and grinned. Pat was still busy upstairs. So – sure let’s have another.
Before long we’d eaten the whole plate of cookies. Neither of us was counting, but roughly Steve ate 4 cookies and I definitely had more than Steve. I might have eaten as many as 8. We relaxed in plush chairs and shared fun stories.
Eventually Pat finished, joined us and suggested we retire outside to enjoy the night air and stars.
We found a nice place with wooden chairs and I chose to repose in a hammock.
We soon found ourselves laughing.
Fairly quickly – everything was funny.
And getting funnier. Then Pat explained the cookies were thick with marijuana. That turned out to be hilarious. Soon we were laughing loud enough that a neighbor lady, opened her window to yell at us “ShuuuUT up”
and slammed her window at us.
Well, that sent us further into Gales of laughter, punctuated with me falling out of the hammock.
Of course that was even funnier !
Or laughter grew into a storm; a cloudburst of laughing.
With no lull in our laughter, we somehow let Pat bundle us into his car and drove us all out of town.
He’d thrown some sleeping bags in the car – and we were off – still laughing. Loudly.
I’m in the back seat, and everything the guys said made me laugh even harder.
Then . . .
there arose a moment when I got scared; for my life. I couldn’t breathe.
But, I couldn’t stop laughing.
In between laughs I tried to emit – “I Can’t Breathe !”
But the other guys thought I was joking. And they kept laughing.
For several long minutes I genuinely grew a large fear that I might die of asphyxiation.
Right Then.
Laughing all the way we continued driving out to Los Padres Dam.
Well, good news – I didn’t die and we eventually arrived at the parking area for the Dam where thankfully my laughing subsided.
I grabbed a sleeping bag and walked over to the tall chainlink fence gate while the other guys were still getting ready and locking up the car.
I tried pushing the gate, but it would only swing open wide enough for one of those playing card men in Alice’s Through the Looking Glass. I kept pushing it and it kept banging against some stop.
After a lot of banging the gate Steve and Pat showed up.
They watched in rapt interest while I kept banging the gate against some mysterious block.
Eventually, Steve had an idea. He’s somewhat taller than I so he reached over my head and pulled the gate towards us – and it opened wide.
Of course you can guess by now – that sent us back into gales of laughter.
In due course, we wandered down hill towards the river in starlight, into the grassy meadow and found places to put our sleeping bags down.
Snug in my bag, I tried to remember the names of my friends – whom I’d grown up and shared adventures with for decades. But try as I might, I could not remember their names !
And recalling all this the next day, it was easy to make a solid resolution to never have anything to do with marijuana again. Even though neither of us had understood that drugs were involved in our cookie decision.
Here I am decades later, and I’ve fully and easily kept that pledge. And I have to think hard to figure out (after affects?) if any of my many wonderful friends still “take a toke.”
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