Many moons ago I dabbled in the use of cannabis, aka; pot, reefer, red bud, Acapulo gold, sensimilla, and so on. This is not an advertisement or an endorsement, for I went too far in the use of these types of distractions, but as I said this was long ago.

For the sake of story, I will step back to those olden times when birthdays celebrated years between seventeen and nineteen. I was at the beginning of what I would call an enthusiastic use of marijuana and I didn’t buy the concept of herb being a gateway drug, though for me, unfortunately, I later walked through said gate as Beelzebub happily held it open. I am not judging, as many who use recreationally didn’t suffer my fate, but this isn’t that story.

On this day I was scrounging, as all baggies were empty. This required a degree of effort unrolling roaches and cleaning stem and seed in hopes of yielding something worth a flame. I did all described and felt myself in position to roll a healthy joint, which I did with relative ease. All this was accomplished from the front seat of my father’s Grand Prix, but as I prepared to light up (reaching first for the stereo’s tuner); my reward rolled off tray and disappeared in a crevasse beside seat. I grumbled, and enunciated a choice word or two before beginning the recovery effort. This proved much more difficult than I expected. I thought I would find my hand crafted work beneath seat, but it was nowhere in sight. I continued looking beside seat, under floor mats, in gap where seat back meets seat surface, in rear seat, in console, and so on. Houdini could not have devised a finer disappearance.

Undaunted, no I say challenged, I now progressed to the disassembly phase. Retrieving tools from father’s garage, I proceeded to remove the fasteners securing the obstacle which had swallowed my handy work. It did not give up easily as nuts were frozen to studs and space to rotate wrench and ratchet was limited. Finally she was loose and I examined her from all angles and was able to locate where my homemade cigarette was hiding. I dropped the loosened seat and lit doobie with added satisfaction having conquered my nemesis.

Now stoned, I forgot about refastening what I had undone. Did I mention that my brother had all but adopted my father’s car? Well he had and he knew no speed other than fast. I was long into my next project and didn’t give my adventure any further thought, until my bro approached me and asked if I had messed with “his” driver’s seat. Yeah, I answered and he informed me that he damn near ended up in the passenger seat when negotiating a particularly tight turn at sixty-five mph. I apologized and explained the reason for disassembling a portion of the vehicle. After considering my explanation—searching for lost last joint—he said, “Cool, now can you please reattach my seat?” I smiled and refastened seat is short order.