My Exit Strategy

I had spent my spring break and my seventeenth birthday constantly working.  I hadn’t been home in a week.  I decided to go home since I had school the next morning.  I remember thinking on the way there that all I wanted for my birthday was more than three hours of sleep. 

When I got home, there were some birthday cards on the kitchen table and a film container filled with pot from my oldest sister, Kris.  I noticed that there were also some suitcases in the living room.  I wondered who was there. 

Sandwich World

It wasn’t until a year after I first started smoking pot, in the summer of the eighth grade, that I found some friends my own age to smoke with.  Mike was my best friend.  We would score a joint and ride the bus from Bountiful to Salt Lake to go to this park that had an empty swimming pool.  We climbed on the roof of the changing room, and hopped down on the inside to ride our skateboards.  Walk-Mans hadn’t even been invented yet, so we would just sing our favorite Kiss songs out loud as we skated. 

I got us both jobs at Sandwich World.  Microwaves were the new big thing, and this sandwich place would slap some cold meat and cheese on a bun and zap it.  People thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.  One time when we both were all stoned, Mike forgot to put a bottom bun on a hamburger and the guy burnt the shit out of his hand when he picked it up to take a bite.  He was about ready to slug us both in the face, but we couldn’t stop laughing. 

I’m a junkie…

Today is March 19^th, 2006. March 11th was my youngest son’s birthday, Todd Cody Hall. He’s been dead for quite a while now, but I still celebrate his birthday every year, silently in my heart. On January 28^th, 2006 (my middle son’s birthday), I was riding motor-cross bikes with my son Parker, nineteen, and my son John, the birthday boy at seventeen. There are few things on this earth that give you a rush like the one you get flying across the beautiful Arizona desert at eighty miles per hour, clamped down on a CR 450. Suddenly, I found myself flying through the air without my bike. I landed on my head and back. Then, when I came to, I couldn’t breathe. People have accused me of having a death wish, but, believe me, at that moment there was nothing more important to me than being able to gasp for air and stay alive.

Both of my boys were right on my tail when I bit it. They were both trying to figure out how to help me, taking off my helmet and goggles. The look in both of their eyes was shear panic and distress. I remember thinking, “They love me so much. Just look how worried they are.” I thought of how much I love them as well. It seemed like an eternity, but I was finally able to gasp for air, and the first words out of my mouth were, “I’m alright. I’m alright. Just settle down.” Simply hearing my voice telling them what to do, made them both feel a lot better.