Contributing Factors

Found this while looking for a word file. I don't remember writing it. Now I see it again, I find it funny as hell.


Contributing Factors


When you look at it the results after it's added up, it doesn't make sense. It's not like one day the younger me, at about 8 years old, looked across the breakfast bar at my mother and announced,

“Mom, guess what I’m going to be when I grow up. A dealer. Not a pusher, you understand. A dealer with the love grass in his hand, just like in the Steppenwolf song.”

That never would have happened. Some occupations aren’t studied for in school or found when looking at jobs listed by the EDD. Some just land in your lap.


In City College, maybe my second year, I had an art and design class with a teacher I can only name as Mr. D. But I remember I used to talk to him about mushrooms and the mushroom stones in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. His thing was stained glass, and he'd work on his projects while we worked on his assignments. He'd let us put on music.

It was my turn for the music one day. About three songs into my tape I'd recorded The Pusher by Steppenwolf. A few seconds after it started, I realized the room had gone deadly quiet. Silent actually, except for the words and music.

I looked up and around. Everyone was looking just behind me.

Mr. D was standing there with a sharpened number two pencil in his hand, ready to push it into the back of my head.

Funny guy.

https://youtu.be/Zv6PY1BQLBE The Pusher