General Discussion

who died a few years back as the result of head injuries sustained in boxing decades before -- almost exclusively from bouts he won -- used to ask the younger generation to promise to use his ashes to enrich the soil for growing weed. All of those he grilled for such a promise found this demand rather uncomfortable -- and the vast majority did not smoke, much less grow, pot. The extended family selected me, without ever asking my opinion, to go and tell him that would never, ever happen.

I remember after one extremely frustrating day when telling him to not put his phone on re-dial to contact nieces and nephews with his demand -- and him insisting it was my duty to be sure his ashes were mixed into his pot garden (a picture of which had previously graced the cover of a High Times grow book) -- calling my normal brother on the west coast to vent. I said it was so frustrating telling our brother to stop, that at one point, I almost wanted to tip his wheelchair over. He said, "You should have. He'd have done it to you."

I tell this true story so that you will realize my request is the very definition of "normal" so far as my extended family goes. It's the cross I barely bear, so to speak.