So - the funeral prep checklist was all done, Mrs Mom was in a pretty goood mood and so we suggested we get her out of the house for ice cream! I called my mom and invited her along (since the mom’s get along fab and mine lives like 8 miles away). In the course of eating the radio station mom works at comes up, she’s doing a show again there, and how different is it from the late 70’s hippy days on the bohemian campus station with long haired burnouts in thread bare tshirts. It’s now filled with khaki clad yuppies with mocha lattes.

So, I mention how when I was young during the marathon years how this one time when I was a kid I seem to recall being told I ate some pot brownies (I think after a few days after the fact), or maybe that I was told here were some and to stay away (or somethign) at the on air marthon week potluck table. No one told anyone there were pot brownies (my parents were hippies but NOT into that stuff) and were livid. Now I was pretty young, maybe 10. So my memory fades but someone told me Mom ripped the guilty party a new one. And how once I’d gotten this weird rash after one night at the station… wait a minute.

I’m telling this story and mom is cringing.

I suddenly remember that at some point I also had ginger ale after some brownies, (and this is still clear) I got hives all over my scalp and down my back and had to soak in a ice cold tub to bring them down. Mom told me I “had to be allergic to the ginger ale” because I’d hardly had any before, but had had brownies before.

Turns out, Mom saw my rash and figured out I was allergic to pot (at least digested pot) and kept it under her hat for later years as a sign if I ever got into pot as a teenager. She’d know! Ha! We all cracked up.

Mom said she never told me about the brownies, (though I think she did, if not Dad did). I just didn’t remember them being the same day as the ginger ale. (but i’m not even clear on that since when it clicked it all made total sense).

So we get back to Mrs Mom’s house and I go to the bathroom and I’m still rolling this over in my brain and it hits like a bolt… I’m not allergic to ginger ale!

I have avoided ginger ale since that rash like the plaque for like 30 years. I have that naked and shivering my ass off in a ice bath burned in my memory and any thought of ginger ale immediatly brings it back.

Oddly that never even noticed I was allergic to pot. Never tried it. It smelled so bad and the idea of smoking it seemed so replusive that what chances I had were never taken.

No word if I had a trip or anything, obviously as this was all a blur till today. I called mom on the way joking that I just figured out my lifelong avoidance of ginger ale was a lie! I was gonna go home and pick up some Schweps and see if I was still allerigc to pot.

She laughed and she’s still more than little embarrsed about all this. I think it’s hilarious.