Cookies Anyone?

For 11 years I had a teaching studio on the River in North Vancouver.
I had a full teaching schedule at my studio by the river in I preferred to teach over few days and stack my students in less days to free up time to compose later in the week.
At my studio one day, I was visited by an ex-student of mine Steve, who stopped in to say hello and drop off some cookies he had baked for me.
Steve had gone on to be a talented songwriter that was working hard on his performing career. He supported himself by working as a cook in a restaurant with a quite good reputation. There was an up and coming concert in the works and he wanted to let me know about it in the hopes that I might entice a few of my students to come to the concert. When he arrived, I was preoccupied in preparing for the days teaching and still had some preparation to do before my first student arrived. I told him I would tell my students about his concert and excused myself for not being able to have a proper visit.

Soon after he left my first student of the day arrived and I taught for an hour. I then had a one hour break before the major part of my teaching day began which would take me till 9:00 PM. I walked by the small bag of cookies and decided that I was hungry so I took one out and started to munch on it as I went to the filing cabinet to find a piece of sheet music for a student. Once I found the music I was looking for, I noticed one cookie hadn’t filled me up and had another one on my way back. (When you work alone restraint if difficult with no one to answer to.)

I had a few things to do and before my next student came I decided to visit the washroom as it would be more difficult later on when I was teaching. While I was sitting there, I noticed the room tilt slightly for a second. I looked around puzzled. What was that? I thought there was an earth quake. It happened again and this time I shook my head like someone trying to stay awake. When tried to stand up I knew something very strange was happening to me. I stumbled out of the washroom and headed strait for the telephone.

Pulling out my student telephone book, I furiously started dialing the parents of students informing them that I had contracted stomach flu and had to go home. They were all very gracious but as the calls continued, I sensed some puzzled responses from some of the parents. As I hung up the phone canceling my last student, I noticed colors fluttering in my periphery vision.

It seemed like a movie was going on either side of me just out of view. When I turned my head to try to watch it the movie would move with me just out of reach.. It was a scary feeling and was steadily getting more intense by the minute. Concentration was now proving difficult as I turned the pages of the phone book trying to look up the number of the local taxi company. I dialed the number and gave the address of the studio to the dispatch operator. I hung up and crumpled into my chair in relief. All I had to do now was to close up the studio and get in a taxi.
The colors were now like a halo around my field of vision. My eyes felt like I had been swimming in a chlorine pool for hours, and everything had that misty look to it.
The ride home was uneventful as sitting in the back seat, I mumbled the address over the seat to the driver. I looked out the window at the rain soaked streets and wondered how on earth l I had ended up in this predicament. The cookies my friend had left for me were laced with something and thanks to him, I was passing through the threshold of lousing control. One of the worst feelings imaginable.

When I got home I paid the driver and stumbled inside.
I did a b-line for the bed tossed off my shoes and lay on my back looking at the ceiling as a symphony of colors and sounds painted the ceiling in an ever changing collage. When my wife came home she helped me get undressed and I lay there frozen, eyes open for the rest of that day. Every time I tried to close my eyes I got the ‘dreaded whirlys’ and had to open my eyes again. It was all that night and into the next morning before I could finally fall asleep. I slept most of the next day and when I finally woke up I was furious.

Who knows what could have happened from this irresponsible act. I could have given one of those pot-laced cookies to one of my young students or my own child. I could have had to drive somewhere and not noticed until I was on the road behind the wheel somewhere across town. I could have lost it and done something irrational to myself or someone else.

I called my friend Steve and took to him like a school of piranha fish welcoming a stray goat. I called him everything I could think of that resembled the word irresponsible. His excuse was that as I was a musician, he assumed that I would “get it” when he said he made some “cookies” for me. I’m sure most of his friends smoke pot on a daily basis so someone like myself who is “out of the loop” would be a rarity. Because I played a musical instrument I was whitewashed with the same brush as all those “groovy cats that lived to get high, play music and float across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.

I continued to let him have it as I thought he needed to know what catastrophe he might have put into motion. When I calmed down, I informed him that he would be paying me, in full for my lost wages for the whole day’s teaching including the taxi fare home. If he didn’t I would go to the police and make a complaint against him. I think he got off easy and I hope he thinks twice in the future before offering anyone drugs as a gift.