That summer that I was fifteen, my cohorts at Teen Town planned and executed a beach party on the shores of the Miramichi river, down the road from Chatham and almost to the Strait of Northumberland. The water there is never warm, but that doesn't matter to a bunch of teenagers, and there was a rather nice beach there, so we had all the elements of a lot of fun.
I was much more self-conscious back then than I am now and wouldn't have been caught dead in a swim suit. (I didn't even wear shorts until I was about 30!) I was probably the only one on the beach wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, but that was okay with me. The other girls were decked out in their skimpy bikinis or halter tops and cut-offs. For a change the weather actually cooperated with our plans and the sun shone brightly.
What makes this event so memorable for me was the curiously bizarre situation that led to me becoming a drug trafficker for the day. Sort of. I was one of the kids who was not paired off at that point in time and so I spent some of the afternoon strolling along the beach with Paul Pennimpede. We came across evidence of someone riding a horse down the beach a few days earlier. This evidence was above the high-water line and was quite dried out. I jokingly suggested to Paul that we might convince someone that it was some other form of vegetative material... if it was presented correctly we might fool them into thinking it was marijuana. (Goes to show just how much I knew about marijuana! And how warped my mind was then... not that it's any less warped now.) Anyhow, Paul mooched some Vogue rolling papers from one of the other guys and then rolled a couple of "joints" from the horse manure. On our stroll back up the beach the first person we came to, Paul Farrell, took the bait. To this day I can't believe that happened because of all our crowd, Paul was the MOST familiar with horses and their effluent. His dad owned two race horses that were stabled in Chatham; Paul was responsible for their day-to-day care. But he was hornswoggled into believing that we'd given him a real joint. He fired that doobie up and took a huge toke. Then he coughed really hard before saying, in a tight and breathless voice, "That's some GOOD shit!" My partner in crime and I nearly turned blue trying not to laugh our behinds off. I don't recall if we ever came clean about the origin of the shit, but I do remember how funny it was to see Paul smoking it!
And that's the story of how I was a pusher-for-a-day.
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