Invasion of the Blunt Smokers!

Midnight. Omaha and I were just getting ready to go to bed when we heard the sound of crunching vegetation and a revving engine behind our house. I looked out the window and there were headlights abutting our property.

My house sits on a plot of line that backs up to a greenbelt– a county-mandated strip of land that provides sound insulation from the nearby airport. It's still private land, but the owner gets special tax incentives not to develop it. So it's basically a belt of undeveloped forest about 50 meters wide and a few blocks long. There's a footpath through it that Omaha and I take to reach the nearest grocery.

Some idiot had driven up the footpath and was now gunning the engine, trying to get out. I grabbed my clothes and a flashlight and went out. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Aw, sorry man, I think we're stuck. Can you give me a push?" He was a young man, white, in his late 20s, thin, wiry, strong-looking. His companion was a woman, mid-30s, white, thinner, with a definitive hard-used look to her. I agreed to help push. Anything to get him out of here. His car was a Ford Excursion, a big beast of an SUV. As she got behind the wheel, he and I tried to push him out, but his back wheels were dug in hard into the soft dirt.

We tried to push the truck anyway. She got behind the wheel, and when I said, "Put it in reverse and back out slowly," he then told me, "There's something wrong with the transmission. We don't got no reverse."

You have got to be kidding me.

When they gave up with the attempt, he said, "Fuck, man, my mom's gonna be so pissed. We thought this was a shortcut."

I explained to him that no, it wasn't a shortcut, it wasn't a dirt road, it wasn't even good enough for a *car* and there was no way out except backing up. "Well, then, we're fucked." He looked at his girfriend. "Let's get our stuff."

"Where's my wallet?" she whined.

They hemmed and hawed and tried to find everything they needed. They littered the ground around the car with a 1.5 liter drink container– drained– and a couple of shreds of paper. "Sorry, man, we were just looking for a good place to smoke a blunt." That sounded like a more likely story. He felt his pockets. "Aw, fuck, I think I lost the blunt, too."

"Don't worry about it," his girlfriend said as she retrieved a box of cigarettes and a can of beer– Pabst Blue Ribbon– from her side of the car. "Now I can't find *my* wallet," she said.

"Don't worry about it," he said. He made apologies and explained that he lived in the cul-de-sac just west of us, which is somewhat believable. Omaha joined us and watched the Keystone Kops routine as the two of them walked around the car, over and over and over, looking for their stuff. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that it was time to go. Omaha and I walked them back down the footpath to the road. Along the way, he stops and says, "Oops! I dropped something." Omaha and I directed our flashlights to the ground, and he picked up a plastic card. "My food stamp card! Can't lose that!"

I thought, "Wait, you can afford weed, but you're on food stamps?" I didn't say it out loud. We eventually came to where the footpath exits onto the major road. They were apologetic, and probably drunk, and stoned, and it was all very silly.

If they lived to the west of us, why did they turn eastward when they reached the road? The only things to the east are a convenience store, a laundromat and a bar. And I don't think the laundromat is open at this hour.

The truck is still there. We hope someone comes and gets it soon. Tomorrow morning, I'll have to explain to the neighbors why there's a new truck in the greenbelt.