I’ll admit I was pretty floored when I read that students at Cheyenne Mountain High School — my kids’ school — were busted for using and dealing heroin. Apparently, a hired drug-sniffing dog led police to a locker containing Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, that hadn’t been prescribed for the locker’s owner. The word is that this kid ratted out his fellow drug-using students. Whether this was an attempt to minimize his crime, or to strike a plea bargain of some kind, I don’t know. I called my college girl with breaking news of the drug busts. “Yeah,” she said, nearly yawning, or so it seemed, “it’s not 25 kids, it’s only 15. I heard the two dealers are facing 7 to 12 and the rest of the kids are being sent to rehab.” With Facebook, news disseminates in real time so my scoop was already old news to her.
Undeterred, I dropped in on a fellow mother to deliver my bombshell. “Oh, yeah, there’ve been rumors of heroin use at Cheyenne for at least a couple years.” She proceeded to give me the lowdown on two of the alleged dealers.
Okay, everyone knew but me. But let me at least wager a guess about the future: since no drugs were found to be in possession of any student, there’s nothing the school can do to any of the alleged users. Not even a suspension, which is as it should be if due process is honored. I wouldn’t expect much more than hand-wringing from the parents who didn’t notice their children were strung out on heroin. The kids who’ve admitted smoking the stuff will likely be sent to $10,000/week rehab facilities where they can meet Mary Kate Olson or Lindsay Lohan and come back to mini-celebrity status.
The rest of us will distance ourselves from distasteful realities, likely with the full cooperation of teachers, shrinks, and media. One local headline read “D12 students were sold black tar heroin,” not “D12 students bought black tar heroin.” The subtle difference provides us a tiny emotional cushion.
Rather than dealing with the very real problems that plague our community, we’ll continue to emphasize the role of the drug-smuggling “Mexican nationals” in the corruption of our teenagers. Though the media has demonized them repeatedly, no one I’ve talked to knows anything about them, or exactly what a Mexican national is. But, then again, Cheyenne Mountain doesn’t know much about Mexicans in general, or blacks, or Indians that aren’t the school mascot. Come to think of it, we’d also never heard of BLACK TAR heroin. We thought heroin was supposed to be pure and white, like us. In any case, we take only prescription drugs, which is why we hurt for whichever mother had her Xanax jacked, the not-so-shocking incident that started this whole dark chapter.
Actually, she’s neither racist nor a whore. But that’s beside the point.
The point being that her peers, those bastions of the White Establishment in the Springs, were shocked that their kids would do drugs. So they went out and got sloppy drunk to forget about it. Which didn’t work so they went to their doctors and demanded Valiums to help them forget.
Then when reminded that the biggest and most important reason for dealing drugs is to get money.
So they sell a fukuvalotta dope to rich folks. Because Rich Folks happen to have more money than poor folks. Just another lame observation, you know. But people who crave money crave a lot of money and, well, they just ain’t gonna get a whole lot of money from selling exclusively to poor folks.
They do know, on the other hand, that rich kids get a little bored waiting for the ‘rents to croak so they can collect their inherited power and of course bread. They get so bored and rebellious they’ll emulate the manners and language and even destructive habits, such as poor people easing the pain of constant slavery by taking the occasional trip into the Wasted Lands.
Thank me, thank me very much. I’ve got a zillion of ’em.
So the dope dealers, being cleverly stupid, in an oxymoronic kind of way, realize that they thus have an “in” to getting their hands on as much of the Rich Folks’ bread as possible by using rebellion as a back-door, get the kiddoes to try dope, but not the cheap-ass watered down shit they sell to poor folks. They’ll sell the shit thats been stepped on two or three times instead of ten. Fellow has to make a living, you know. and if they’re going to make any money at all selling to poor folks they have to water down the quality, know what I’m sayin’?
So they get the scions of the rich a little higher than they do those of the poorer quarters,
where the ragged people go,
looking for those places
only they would know
lie lie lie
lie lie lie…
So now I’m going to be sued by the production company that screwed Simon and Garfunkel out of a huge chunk of their royalties, and all to make a somewhat pointless point. but it’s O-Midnight-thirty and I’m bored, man, real bored.
So Marie points out some really shitty aspects of the caste into which she was born, which includes a lot of Snows and not very many darkly handsome swarthy types such as myself.
And she can’t help the fact that was where she was born any more than I could help being born in the uglier side of Topeka.
(the people make up for the ugliness of the poverty, but not enough)
She points that up with some ironies that she actually has to make Black and White in order for some of the true dumbshits who run this burgh to catch a glimpse of their hypocrisy, before falling into the gentle slumber of drug assisted denial.
If she wakes up a few of them enough times that they begin to develop the habit od STAYING awake then she’s made the world a better place, even amongst the Broadmoor types.
And hey, it’s not like she’s got all that much to work with…
Try to relax, chill a little, roll with it and see what kind of a ride it turns out to be.
Cheaper than dope and not nearly as destructive.
Have I earned your forgiveness for being 49 and 51? See, with those two numbers I can average it out and we’re both 50.
Now, you might have noticed, as did I, that the Cheyenne Mountain team is called “The Indians” and there really don’t appear to be all that many Indian kids who attend.
Speaking as a non-participating member of both cultures, I find the symbolism to be both tragic and comedic.
Much like the heroin story and the shocked reaction of the local establishment.
Brother Jonah,
You’re alright, sorry I called you a dumbass. But my point still stands about the author of this article, how dare she say something like that. The entire article was just fine, nothing wrong with it until the very end where she just throws in some racial remark. What makes her so freaking special? The woman who wrote this has a superiority complex, and a bad one at that. he last comment kills the validity of the rest of the article. Without that comment I could take her and the article seriously. She needs to take a look around.
You on the other hand seem to have some brains and seem to be a real person with human qualities.
I could care less about her background or how she was raised or about the nazi group she mingles with. Don’t be an insensitive cunt, OK?
I keep re-reading it and still not seeing it. She is mocking the attitude of the establishment here, which, I don’t know how familiar you are with the Springs but it’s got some pretty awful attitudes. Nearest I can see is if she fired the sarcasm cannon and missed a shot. That and drug addiction really is a tragic story whether it happens to rich, poor, black, native, white… and in this case, teenagers. Just kids. But they do get pulled upon, in several directions, that’s sad but it’s the nature of the Springs. Not much different from Dallas except here there’s mountains and it sometimes actually snows.
My opinion is affected by actually knowing her. There are a growing number of those who can reach across the arbitrary bounds of class, income, skin tone. She’s one and really, in a good position in town here to show others how.
I had started off the day reading about the busts and thought “Oh, God not again” because it usually devolves into a long season of bashing. What encouraged me was the notes from some of the kids who actually attended Cheyenne Mountain, some of them had a really dark sense of humor about it but, it was a sense of humor.
It had its elements of Police State and Class Consciousness and the ever present oozing stain of race. A really delicate subject all around unless you grasp some of the thorns and just yank them out.