Mr. Rodando had me down in the nurse's office, and he was through slapping me on the wrist. The nurse, as she hadn't yet done all those other times, diagnosed me as most likely being 'under the influence' of marijuana. I thought it was hilarious that she perceived the effects of merely marijuana alone to be so extreme. They could never prove shit if I had only been smoking pot, (without a urine sample of course) not combined with any other drug, no way possible. All the other times I was sent to the nurse she knew I was high but she never officially deemed me as 'under the influence', and some of those times I was simply high only on the ganja. Usually I was on a mixture of substances and still getting away with it unpunished. When I was on valium and weed, the nurse still would act as though she hadn't enough evidence to prove my intoxication, though its was pretty dang obvious. Who knows maybe she was just trying to give me chance after chance, so I really believed I could go to school as fucked up as I wanted so long as no alcohol was detectable on my breath. For the school officials to really know for certain I guess I would of have had to have been given a drug test, and I don't think that they were equipped much less allowed to take such a drastic measure. The school would have to spend an insane amount of money if they were to drug test all the students suspected of being high. So I was finally suspended, but since I had been suspended once before towards the end of my sophmore year (for skipping school) they didnt send me back to where the school district had placed me then. They let the county deal with me. I would be sent to T.C.JJ..A.E.P. , (Tarrant COunty Juvenile Justice Education Program) this time, but I wouldn't start there for a week or two later.
My car was in the student parking lot, but they were not about to let me drive my happy-ass home, so they called my grandma to come pick me up, oh my poor old Grandma. Mr. Rodondo escorted me out and we awkwardly waited together for her to pull up into the fire lane. I am quite certain I was emotionally driven and chemically fueled to where, due to the circumstances, I had a lot of shit to vent about. I vomitied my irrational drug-induced opinions, and Mr. Rodando had to just stand there like a 'robot' and bare it for the short interval until my grandma came to scoop me up. I was already suspended. I safely assumed I couldnt get myself into any further trouble with this man, as long as I didn't get physical with him. I could say whatever the heck I so desired, and I basked in this sick short spanned freedom, talking some mega-ultra-diculous trash to the man. He'd already extended the highest consequences that he could dole my way, but just because he could do no more doesn't mean that this didn't catch up to me later that day. There were other officials in the town besides 'peasants' like principals that had some real authoruty, and they had a different course in dealing with doped up maniacal teens. My grandma pulled up, nodded her head with an embarrassing tilt at Mr Rodando, he nodded in silent agreement over my sad state of being, and she began to slowly drive away and as she did she started in on me, scolding me, a grown teenage man-child. Then I started in on her, and she equally felt the verbal wrath Mr. Rodando had just recently escaped, but I only ranted non-sensical ramblings at her for less than a minute or so. She had looped through the fire lane past the main entrances's front parking lot, turned left heading towards where the street t-eed with Johnson Rd., and then I bolted as the car was in motion. I didn't give a shit if it was a moving vehicle, I was invincible with drugs in me, and so I needed more. I ran out to my old 88' Celica, my cold stoic lump of steel had been waiting for me patiently in the student parking lot. My Grandma, was yelling ,"Isaaaaccc!!!!" in the only way I can imagine her saying it as she had many times before and since. I lethargically carrened that red Toyato past the old security guard Sparky, honked at him giddily as I passed, and then jumped out towards Johnson Rd myself. I wasn't about to be chauffeured off by my grandma. I was determined to continue the day in doing what felt natural to me, more drugs. I had to go home and grab my stash of weed and pills, damnit, the day was shitty thus far, but I knew how to orchestrate my thoughts away from reality. I was emotionally charged from what had just transpired at school and so my adrenaline aided the drugs to elevate myself to an ultra-dumbass caliber. I decided to drive like I was on the autobahn, passing every car that was in front of me as I bolted down Johnson road, and so by the time I turned onto Pearson Lane I was getting pulled over. "What the fuck," I am sure I said exactly that or at least something similar. I now realized I was about to talk to some 'serious' authority figures a mere twenty minutes after having to deal with the damn school nazis. The officer had explained to me that the reason I was being pulled over is that not one, but several people had called and reported that a red Toyato was racing down Johnson like a drunken idiot. I remember being told to "walk the line" and was also given other field sobriety tests, and so the cops said I seemed to be intoxicated. I only remember a few parts of the conversation. I know I tried to respond to the accusations by retorting that I had a cold and that I had recently drank some cough syrup, but that was all I had ingested, and so they said, "ok we'll then we will see when we take you to the station and give you a blood test." The gig was up, I was about to recieve a DUI, but thats only a misdeamenour, a felony would also come my way after I got down to the station.
One day a week or so previous to this whole eposide of my failure to avoid authorities I had naively showed my brother, Aaron, my stash of hoarded drugs. The whole first couple of years of my rebellion I believed I was just trying to do drugs without being bothered, and I also figured that I wasn't hurting anyone, right? I would only bullshit myself with these lines of justification for a short time frame. Soon I realized that I was trememdously hurting others. I never was able to control my mania when it came to drugs and alcohol. I didn't even realize what a warped perspective I had on 'my world' to be carelessly showing Aaron this drug collection. I was all pilled out one evening and I believe I thought I was bragging in a strange and sick way. Showing off all the drugs I had so easily and convienantly been stealing. Aaron drank a bit and smoked weed a bit by this point, I mean he was 15 so he had some experimenting to swim in, but he didnt linger, I was the one set on wading lazily in discontent. He dove into the shallow end with youthful curiosity, but turned around and got out before venturing anywhere near his big brother, who was hangin out amongst whales on a withering floatation device way out in vacant salty waters. Aaron was fucking shocked, and I drunkenly assumed he knew my intentions were only for hoarding purposes. He wasn't a mind reader, for all he knew I was set on suicide, and looking back on it I can understand why he might have drawn such a dramatic conclusion. My latest actions were drastically more extreme than even my normal temperamental behavior. Before I was casually just stoned or drunk, but now since I had combined the latest mix of chemicals that churned my behavior to a buttery quicksilver. I was cool and calm in one given moment, and utterly fragile the very next minute. People that were in my life all around me were really frightened by my behavior. The majority were mostly afraid for my own well-being, and the rest were scared for their own lives. Once my peers got too closely involved with me and the strange situations that frequented my day to day activities, they were never again quite the same again. They were shocked into a new twisted perspective of how sick people can really be. Aaron had been drawn into my fermented vortex, he was one of the tortured onlookers, but he was also my brother, and so he he didn't really know how to respond to my madness. I don't know when he told our parents about my large stash of drugs, but he had at some point before this day. My parent's had been notified by the school already earlier that day, then they were updated by my grandma on my escape from her vehicle, and lastly the cops had touched base with them, revealing to them the grand finale of this day's conclusion. Being told that I was being detained for a D.U.I. they headed to where I was. So there I was fuming with crazed, blood-shot, bug eyes down at the police station when my parents came in with this damn plastic bag. It was my precious collection, still mostly un-removed from their original containers with the Eckerd's sticker slapped across them, still in their branded (mostly labeled by Roche, a pharmecutical company) bottles that a customer with a prescription never sees. I was not charged with theft, but was charged with felony drug possesion. My parents hated my drug problem, but later in life they expressed regret in having turned me in like that because they eventually realized the court systems are one giant sad satire of brokenness reflecting brokenness. The American legal system has much greatness in it's roots, but today it is not what it was once meant to be. It is a strangled mess, proving in the simplest words that the system is really about what caliber of lawyer you can afford to obtain. This is what the world knows and it may change, but then it will revert back eventually, money rules society. Over the next ten years I would benefit when I had money, or could get my parents money. Many times I was on my own financially and it would show me how much I depended on my family when I got myself caught up in these predicaments, time and time again.
