Always Button The Toes

Something strange happened to me on the way home from school the other day. I was riding that train, high on cocaine, and I had to check my mirrors to make sure I wasn't being followed. When the Captain told me my stop had arrived, I got on, closed the doors, and proceeded to make a mockery of the pills I took to stay sane. Often times I wonder if I had chosen correctly that day, or if a release valve was found, would it stabilize the pressure? If you'd heard them sing it like I did, no doubt you'd agree it was time for alternating the letters. It can come and go so quickly, if you don't pay strict attention to each part for that moment. "Cheer up." Punch on the shoulder turn kiss on the forehead, shake the hand, bend down, pick up the luggage and choose the street over the sidewalk. Remember to tie each lace twice and button the toes. Always button the toes.


That's how you stay sharp. 


I'm guessing you're as perplexed as I was when I first saw this. Cleaning out a bin under my desk, I came across some odds and ends. An old Cherry Chapstick (that made me think of a song), some paperclips, bills, a Weinstein Company budget report I had done for an animated foreign feature called "The Blue Elephant." You know, shit everyone's got lying around. Then I found an old hardbound sketchbook I had. Christ, I thought to myself, I haven't written in one of these since college. And when I opened the cover, a single loose-leaf page fell out. It was perfectly folded in half. I opened it up, and there, written in blue ink, was the above note.

The first thing I noticed was, "this is NOT my hand-writing." Way too neat, way too small. Then I realized, the last line, "That's how you stay sharp." Holy shit. I knew exactly what is was, there was no doubt in my mind. I was now fully immersed in a memory, that I hadn't thought about in a very long time.

Somewhere's around 2002, some people I know (ahem), ate some mushrooms. These mushrooms were not the kind mama cooks with, unless you're mom is fucking nuts which, is probably the case for many of you. So to clarify, these mushrooms were the Psilocybin kind. Now listen, I don't condone drug use at all. Seriously. Most people are way to unstable to handle reality as it is, and they certainly shouldn't be altering it. But for those of you who do partake in the extracurriculars of life, you will be able to relate. You see, everything seems clearer, but nothing makes sense when you're on mushrooms. It's not worth trying to describe the feeling, you either know it or you don't. College was the time to know about these things. It was the time when you could get lost for a night on the streets of Boston, and wake up the next day on a friends couch with peanut butter, nutella, and honey smeared across your face, wearing a mesh shirt, underwear you didn't own, and Mocassins you'd never seen before, and that'd be ok. Frankly, in the eyes of some, that'd be a normal thursday.

Let me quell the uprising in your heads. This was not normal for me. Granted, I'm known to have fallen asleep in some odd places before, but nutella? Come on, I never touch the stuff. But on one obviously eventful night, when we ate a few more caps than we should have, some very odd things went down.  This is life. This is experimentation at its finest. Sometimes all the television shows and second hand accounts in the world just aren't enough. You've got to do it for yourself, kids. And that goes for driving stick shift to tripping on mushrooms. Again, I don't condone it. Most of you can't handle it. Obviously on that fateful night, neither could we.

But I think I've made this out to be a bit more dramatic than it was. Most of the night I remember somewhat clearly. There was a lot of singing and music, and brotherly love amongst roommates. There was a lot of laughing, more music, and impassioned discussions of alternate universes, the "Baka" tribe of Cameroon (pygmy's, though that name is no longer considered respectful), and why the removal of  "This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals," from Sweet'N Low packets was evidence of a government conspiracy. By the end of the night we all probably agreed there was a cure for cancer, the government just didn't want to distribute it to the masses because it would cause the collapse of the drug companies that owned our country. You know, one of those nights.

But back to the loose-leaf that made me think of all this. At one point in the night, we all got out our pens and paper, and started writing. I don't know if you'd really call it free association, but it was somewhere between that, and a half-assed attempt to write down all the magical things that were going on in our minds. Twisted? yes. Silly? Most certainly. Worth it? You'd better believe it. So I read that piece of paper now, eight years or so after the events that transpired that night, and had myself a good laugh in private. "That's how you stay sharp," was a line that was ingrained in my head forever. I remember waking up the next day, and saying that line to myself, rather puzzled about it. "That's how you stay sharp," he had said to me, and for some reason, I never forgot it. How I wound up with someone else's paper, I'll never know. Maybe one of the other guys has mine, and the same re-discovery has happened to him. Either way, the moral of this story is that if you're going to clean out your drawers, be prepared for the weird.