The other day, Spencer, 10, showed me something he had picked up on the ground.
Pulling it out of his jacket pocket, he revealed a little piece of paper – a McDonald’s Monopoly game piece.
And I told him to throw it away, right now. On the ground. Don’t bother for a garbage can.
Why?
Recently I wrote a story for the Estevan Mercury about an American who got collared at the border, crossing with 20 patches of LSD on a paper, kept in a tin.
Here’s how the story read:
“Your buddy gives you a blotter paper with a small amount of LSD for your 23rd birthday. You think nothing of it, put it way in your pile of things where you live, somewhat haphazardly communally, as an instructor at a ski resort in Colorado.
“Two years later, driving through Canada to get to your new job at a ski resort at Juneau, Alaska. Canada Border Services Agency officers at North Portal find your small tin, with the 20 blots of LSD on paper. When they confront you, you immediately fess up that it’s LSD.”
Now, I will freely admit that my exposure to illicit drugs, of any type, is nearly nil. Only once, in my entire life, has anyone ever offered me any drugs – a puff on a joint of marijuana – and by that time, I was already 24. I was a man, not an easily influenced child.
But this recent case got me thinking about how such innocent things, like how little pieces of paper, soaked in drugs, can find their way into kids’ hands.
Two days later, CBC reported on October 29 that, “Winnipeg police are warning the public about a potentially deadly drug that looks like a harmless piece of paper with a witch stamp on it.
“Police seized six fentanyl blotters, each marked with a witch on a broom — a drug dealer's signature — in a drug bust in Fort Rouge Friday and believe there are more blotters in the city.”
Such an innocent looking thing – a little piece of paper, with a cartoon on it, yet with one of the most potent, and, if you follow what’s going on in British Columbia, deadly drugs out there.
So here I found myself, explaining to my very innocent 10-year-old, that he shouldn’t pick up little scraps of paper, because you have no idea what it could be.
And before you think I’m off my rocker, the CBC story noted, “‘With Halloween coming, police are especially concerned the blotters could get into the wrong hands, maybe of a child, and be mistaken as just a piece of paper,’ he said.”
I showed Spencer the CBC story, with the picture of the cute little cartoon on the paper, and explained it could kill him. His response? “Whoa!”
Our kids are living an essentially bucolic life. Yeah, we have our struggles, like everyone else.
But exposure to anything that might be considered “inner city,” drugs, gangs, prostitution, poverty, destitution, crime, family members in prison – that’s only stuff they see on TV. For them, none of that stuff is “real.”
For most of my life growing up, none of it was real either. I never saw it; I was never exposed to it. My life has largely been sheltered, I guess, and so have the lives of my children.
With a daughter about to go into high school next year, she already knows she will be offered drugs there.
I still think high school should begin at Grade 10, not Grade 9, for this very reason. Doing away with junior high schools throughout Saskatchewan over a decade ago was a bad idea. I don’t think Grade 9 kids should be in the same building as Grade 12s, because they’re still too wet behind the ears, as it were. But that ship has sailed.
This is where parenting gets tough. The long nights rocking the baby, the diapers – that was easy, I now realize.
Getting kids ready for the bigger world appears to be a lot harder.
Maybe I did overreact with regards to the Monopoly scrap of paper. Things are generally pretty innocent around here. But I don’t think I can ever look on a scrap of paper the same way again.
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