Grabbing at Water by Joan & Madeleine Lambur

Author:Joan & Madeleine Lambur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

HELPING HANDS

Maddy

Being an activist has always been in my makeup. When I was young, it took the form of screaming until I got my way. At five, I think I liked standing up for what I believed in because it was a form of rebellion. As I got older, I turned my rebellious nature to fixing society. This started in grade eight when the school board decided that girls wearing tank tops was inappropriate, as it could distract the boys. They ruled that no shirt that revealed a girl’s bra strap would be allowed. If this rule was not obeyed, the girl in question would be sent directly home to change and not allowed back until she had. It didn’t seem fair. The boys were wearing their pants around their ankles (this was not a distraction for the girls, however, as the boys looked like idiots, but that’s neither here nor there). All I wanted was equality and to live without my clothes being censored, especially by some school board who didn’t know what was important to kids.

The day that this new rule was to be put into action, I wore my tank top in protest. News crews showed up at our school to talk to teachers and students to catch their reactions. I marched up to a reporter and started ranting about the injustice that was taking place in our schools. Later that day I was told to change, but I went home with a whole new outlook on life. I would dedicate my life to fighting injustices and standing up for what I believed in. Looking back, I must have sounded like quite the jackass. The school sent a letter of reprimand home but never enacted the anti-tube-top ban. It was my first political victory.

I took my activism to a whole new plateau with marijuana. I had a new lease on life. I was a freshman philosopher. My friends and I would sit around for hours smoking joints and talking about the meaning of life. I came to many good conclusions on life’s mysteries as a result of these talks; they made me wiser. Weed is not like alcohol. The worst thing that comes from smoking is eating a little bit more and becoming a little lazier, whereas drinking booze can end in fighting, crying, or, even worse, alcohol poisoning. A lot of our smoking sessions ended with us blathering nonsense, but when we would grab on to a good theory about life, it was as if we brought a new positive energy into the world. We also decided that anything natural could not be bad for you.

Grade ten was uneventful until we learned about the marijuana march. This was what we needed, a day to pay our dues and stand up for our friend Mary Jane! We needed to be her soldiers. The march was supposed to be on “national pot day,” which is known as “four/twenty” or April 20. Naturally, the march was a month

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