music…(okay, I’ve just finished the blog and this has nothing to do with music.)

Yesterday, after the panel, a few of us were walking to the pub to get a bite to eat as the caterer had momentarily run out of food and was waiting for more supplies to arrive.  We could have been patient, but there was something about the feeling of grabbing the fate of our own hungry bellies into our hands I suppose.  Whatever it was, we set off. 

One really interesting thing I found out on the walk, that had me lying in bed last night musing, was the fact that some people walk down the same streets as I do and are offered drugs.  ALL the time.  The very same streets as me.  It’s not like you have to go to some other foreign far off land. 

Now, to be fair, apparently one of the code words is smoke.  So, maybe somebody has said that word to me and it didn’t registrar as someone offering me drugs because I would have figured that they were asking me if I could spare a cigarette and since I don’t smoke I’d have nothing to give them.  Who knows.  Maybe people have offered me drugs on the street and I just didn’t realize it.

“Karen,” I asked K.C. do people on the streets offer you drugs?”

“No,” she said, to my relief, because I don’t want to be the only person in the world who is not offered drugs.  Not that I want them, mind you.  It’s just this was after the whole goody-two shoes drawing childhood incident and I felt like maybe there was some sort of mark tattooed on my forehead and I was the only person who didn’t know it was there.  “They just ask me for directions.  Once I was totally lost, standing in the middle of London and some guy came up and asked me how to get some where.” K.C sighed.  “I guess I just have one of those faces.”

I was offered drugs once when I was a nineteen year old ballet dancer and living in New York.  My girlfriend, Kathy G and I had gone to a disco (this was in the late 70’s.) I’d just finished dancing with some guy and he said, “Would you like some Coke?”

“Oh, I don’t drink Coke, but a 7’up would be great,” I said.

He blinked a few times and then went to get it, while my friend almost killed herself laughing. 

“You’re so naive, Meg!” Kathy guffawed.  “He was offering you drugs.” I didn’t believe her, but later that evening when he pulled out his little silver spoon that he was wearing around a chain on his neck and a packet of white powder I realized Kathy was right.

So, lying in bed, I was thinking about this.  How some people walk down the street and are offered the opportunity to buy drugs all the time and the rest of us have been sallying down these very same streets oblivious.  I bet my kids are offered drugs all the time.  I always wondered how people knew where to go.  But how do the people on the street know who to offer it to?  I guess it’s the same as me being able to spot a good ballet dancer from a mile off.  It’s something in the way they move, the shape of the muscles, the lift of the head. 

“Don,” I said.  “Do people offer you drugs when you walk down the street?”

“No,” he said. 

“Did they used to?”

“Only in New York,” Don replied. 

So, this morning, my son Will comes into the kitchen.  “Um..yum...” he says, because I’m taking a nice fresh batch of delicious sticky pecan cinnamon buns out of the oven. 

“Will, when you walk down the street, do people offer you drugs?” He gets that slightly trapped look in his eyes, like, where is this conversation leading?  Because anyone who has lived with me for a while knows that my conversations can and do go anywhere. 

I tell him about yesterday, walking to the pub.  I tell him about my late night musings.  I tell him I’ve already asked a bunch of other people.  He looks relieved, that it’s just overall curiosity and I’m not targeting him specifically.  “Yeah,” he says.  “In London.” He notices the shocked look I’ve tried to cover, and smiles.  “They aren’t aggressive or anything, Mom.  They just say, smoke.  It no big deal.”

David’s sleeping over with a friend.  They are going to go mountain biking today.  I’m going to ask him if this kind of thing happens to him when he wakes up.

Hmmm...I was going to blog about music today.  But I suppose that will have to wait until tomorrow.  I’m off to make some scrambled eggs to go with my delicious cinnamon buns.  I’ll give you the very good and simple recipe in the next couple of days.

Bye.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Sunday, February 24, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

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