A Lesson Learned

Must have been 1986.

I was working in Rockefeller Center. No fun to get to and from, but being there was terrific. We had the music stores on 48th. Diamond district right there. You could get a birthday or anniversary present at lunch and not be ripped-off. Street vendors everywhere you looked. Souvlaki. The best you ever tasted. Falafel. Hot dogs. Radio City just up the block. Never went, but it was cool just stompin’ on the avenue by it. Times Square and Broadway just a couple blocks away. Lunch time on a nice day was brilliant. You could grab something from one of the push-carts, sit on a wall and just watch New York. The best show ever. In that hour, you’d hear snippets of conversations in 10 different languages. You’d see the most beautiful women, the dirtiest homeless people collecting aluminum cans, punk-rockers, executives, wannabe executives, teenagers selling Onega, Bolivia, Cartien and Roldex watches to the unsuspecting shills, jugglers, magicians, mimes, everything. You could walk up and down 6th Avenue and more often than not there would be a band set up with the guitar-cases opened and sprinkled with cash, and many times the band would be fantastic.

That was lunch in Rockefeller Center on a nice day.

We could actually walk to Central Park, eat a quick lunch and walk back to the office in about 70 minutes. As long as we got our work done and didn’t do it every day, the bosses didn’t seem to notice.

One day, my friend stopped by my office. At that time, there were no cubicles at this company. We were two to an office. My roommate, straight as a yard-stick but a righteous hard-working dude had stepped away. My friend closed the door.

“I’ve got some kick-ass weed. I rolled one up this morning. What say we take a late lunch, walk up to Central Park, smoke it up and come back to work?”

I was a COBOL programmer at the time, and was in the middle of defining variables for a rather large program. It was a two or three day process, and not difficult work. I had some cassettes with me, and it sounded tempting. We could leave at 1:00, be back by about 2:10. I could get a cup of tea, turn on the tunes and rock out coding the file specs and working-storage variables until it was time to go home.

“I’m in.”

It was a beautiful day, probably about 70 degrees with a gentle breeze. We grabbed a sandwich, a couple cokes and some chips. I was still young and didn’t even think about getting a coke and a bag of my favorite Doritos to compliment my sandwich.

We skipped up 6th Avenue, laughing and joking all the way. We entered the park, found a quiet place and ate our sandwiches. I remember very clearly the squirrels. New York City squirrels had balls. On Long Island, which is where I grew up, you couldn’t get closer than 10 feet to a squirrel, unless the stupid thing ran in front of your car. In Central Park, we found ourselves surrounded by about 5 or 6 squirrels. I threw one of them a Dorito, and he held it in his little paws and munched on it. We were both entirely amused. I held out another Dorito, and the bravest one actually came up to me and I let him take it out of my hand. I ended up giving about half the bag to the squirrels that day.

Lunch was quickly consumed, and my friend lit up the joint. We sat there and smoked the whole thing. I had my Visine, and some Halls Ice Blue cough drops. My wife (now my ex ) had one day decided that “we” were no longer going to smoke weed. Being faithful was one thing that came easily to me, but damn it I wasn’t ready to give up getting high just yet, so I had gotten pretty good at hiding the evidence. The Visine worked really well, and if you’ve ever had a Halls cough drop, you know that you, your clothes and the room you are in all end up smelling like menthol.

We got up and started to walk back to the office. My older brother used to refer to being that stoned as “cartoons.” He would say, “we smoked up a bowl of some good ham and it was cartoons.” That’s the way he talked. Still does today.

It was cartoons all the way back. We were quiet, walking, taking in New York on an entirely different plane then we had about 45 minutes earlier. Subtle sounds were amplified. The sun was ultra-bright, glaring off of the cars. People seemed to be running everywhere. We were both a little concerned that we were a bit too stoned to return to work, but what could we do? We would lay low when we returned and ride it out.

We took the elevator back to the floor, stopped at the break room and I got my cup of tea. I floated to my office, feeling a bit paranoid, but eager to get behind the tube and start coding.

I glided by my roommate, sat down at the tube and sighed. As I reached over to turn on the music, my boss (Tony D.) and the controller came bursting into my office. Tony D. was a good guy. Viet-Nam vet, NY Italian kid from Brooklyn. Liked me a lot. Made me want to work hard for him by being decent, open and fair.

The controller, on the other hand, was a genuine prick. He used to like to make people squirm. I remember one time I was in line at the break room (we had a food service) and he walked to the front of the line, put his hand on me and bodily pushed me out of the way to get to the cash register before me. Like I said, a genuine prick.

“Hey Al! We have an emergency! We have to go to the boardroom. There is a meeting with the officers and I need you just in case. Get your suit jacket and let’s go!”

Oh.
My.
God.

At this point I am in a state of panic. I am at the peak of the buzz, in the space where after you say something, it echoes inside your head and you aren’t really certain if you said it at all, or if you just thought about saying it.

I grabbed my jacket and struggled into it as we ran up the stairs and pressed into the boardroom, a room I didn’t even know existed up until that day. Big oval mahogany table, leather chairs, and about 10 old men wearing black, blue and grey suits and dour grimaces on their faces.

We sit down, and one of the guys starts talking in a loud voice about something that happened the night before. Questions are being fired at each other. My boss looks at me and I look at him, and I think, “he knows!” I keep waiting for them to start asking me questions, but that never happens. They don’t ask Tony D. any questions either.

The meeting lasts about 15 minutes, and suddenly it is over. Everyone gets up and files out of the room. The controller thanks Tony D., ignores me and walks back to his office. Tony and I walk downstairs and he says to me with a grin that may or may not have been informed, “Thanks Al. That was a close one."

Indeed.

I have long since abandoned that particular avenue of pleasure, but that was the last time I ever indulged on company time.