School is finally out. Summer is upon us. My kid is thrilled. No more classes. No more making up reasons to not go to school. No more learning. No more reading. No more research. Or at least no more forced education. Just free time and staying up late and sleeping in. Or at least that’s what I thought was happening. Apparently, he’s been doing a little reading and research on his own.
I posted a picture on my Instagram the other day of a little collection of items he had in his room…tape, foil, soil, lights and I made a joke about him growing weed. I went through this with my older son when he was in high school. The closet was converted into a mini grow house. He had a bunch of sprouting pot plants and spent a lot of time figuring out how to grow them. But he was about 16. So when I made the joke, I didn’t think it was time for that again just yet, but Mel saw the Instagram picture and asked me why I was in his room. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about and then I remembered. I politely reminded him that he will have privacy he wants when he grows up and moves out. Until then, I’m going to be all up in his shit.
One of the perks of being a young mom, as I’m sure any young mom will tell you, is that it was not that long ago that I was pulling some form of deceit against my own mother. So it’s not so easy to pull the wool over my eyes. I also don’t have the preconceived notion that everyone else’s kids are all fucked up and mine is perfect. I’m quite sure I’m raising my own little brand of fucked up but I have their best interests at heart. So when Mel showed me his little closet science experiment and pulled out a handful of pot seeds, half germinating half waiting for their turn, I didn’t freak out. For a few reasons:
1.) It’s hard to successfully grow a marijuana plant
2.) In order to successfully grow marijuana in his closet, he is going to be doing a lot of research and reading which is something I cannot get him to do for a class he hates
3.) It’s weed. He’s not in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make crack or meth. He’s learning how things grow.
Sure there’s the legal issue. And if I thought that in three months he was going to have ten pounds of pot growing in his closet, I would definitely shut his operation down, but as it stands, he has less than three months of summer. Smack dab in the middle of it, he will be leaving for a week to visit his sister, so unless he figures out a self watering system and a light timing system, they will die and he will have to start over again when he gets back and then school will start and he will neglect it until next summer. If he does, however, do the research and figure out the kinks and manages to produce a bud bearing plant, it will come in handy when he starts his culinary classes in high school and we will all get pot brownies out of the deal. I would call that a win/win situation.
So maybe I’m not going to win any parent of the year contests, and that’s perfectly fine with me. He’s doing hands on learning. If he is anything like my previous gardener, the process goes from soil gardening to hydroponic to just saying fuck it. So I’m not too worried about the FDA showing up. Plus, if he figures out this whole gardening thing, I won’t have to work so hard to keep shit alive. He can help. It never hurts to have a healthy dose of botany under your belt, right? I was a little concerned about where he got the seeds from, but again, I was not born yesterday and I quickly figured out that they probably came from his little buddy in South Knoxville. I’ve always had a feeling his parents dabbled a little. They have a lot of traffic coming and going, but the kid is a good kid and from what I could tell the kids were in the dark. Obviously that has changed if he’s giving my kid pot seeds, but then again, he could have gotten them anywhere. Hell, I have had some sitting on the window sill
RouletteWeekend 