Lucy in The Sky (aka I'm Still Game)

     So now I am 11, maybe 12.  Still love board games - still experience a dearth of willing players, still continue to wheedle and beg my way into a little healthy, organized, 'from ages 6 to 60'  competition.  Of course, we had Monopoly Careers, Stratego (a bit too..warlike for me).  Aggravation, however, was a family favorite and enjoyed top spot for a while.  Those marbles got a work out, let me tell you.  I was always the red marbles.  I am still the red pieces in any game.  To this day.  Fact.

   One game of Aggravation in particular was quite surreal, and still amazes me.  This time, I wasn't necessarily the one looking to play.  

     One evening, my Mom and I were home.  My Dad - probably asleep.  Everyone else - basically grown and gone.  My brother was "out" (as in "where you going ? " "Out."  "What are you doing ? "Nothing") This brother is 4 years older, closest to my age and my biggest source of, well, aggravation.   The last thing he taught me was the true meaning of "dead to me".  What brother ?

    So, Bro came home from wherever he had been.  The first thing I remember was him standing in the upstairs hallway - repeating something about "..they're marching...they're marching."  I briefly wondered who or what was "marching" up there - and how did they get by without me seeing them ?

    Then, Mom - up and down the stairs, looking worried ?  I couldn't tell.   Maybe she, too, saw the marching.  Great.  Maybe we'd better wake Daddy. Something was clearly up.   And marching.

     In any other household, this may have been cause for concern.  In my house, the outrageous was served up just like the banal - it was all normal.  Just register the event, accept it, and move on, already.  If is is happening in your house, with your family - odds are it is run-of-the-mill - and likely happening in homes everywhere.  I never questioned anything - what a trusting child.  I was somehow instinctively ready and able to roll with the punches at a relatively early age : without ever realizing that there were punches to be rolled with.  What a smart child.

    Mom and Bro then come downstairs, and I watched as she tagged along behind him, wringing her hands and scowling.  He was muttering and swatting at something in front of his face.  Mom then suggested that I play a game of Aggravation with my big brother.  YAY !  It's like they know me !  I get to play (and hopefully win !) a board game without having to beg someone.  There is a God - and he favors me !

     I grab the Aggravation board, and set up the marbles (red for me, green for him).  I am so excited !  This evening at home has taken a wonderful turn !  We roll to see who goes first (please let me roll a 6) - and he suddenly jumps up and runs back upstairs.  (I think to myself : "Watch it up there - they are apparently marching.") He then returns with armloads of the oddest selection of items : books, socks, comics, Hai Karate aftershave etc.  His arms are full of this eclectic mix of shit - and I wonder what this has to do with the business at hand.  Just my luck : someone to play with, and he is not focusing properly.

     It is then that I look up and see his eyes.  Wow.  Huge, bulging, seemingly spinning.  Somehow, not looking at anything at all, but seeing everything.  Kinda scary, actually.  Without knowing why or how, I figured : "Oh great - drugs !"  This happened a lot in my formative years - not having the language or life experience to identify something, but somehow, always knowing what was what.  Maybe that's the part of me that learned to adapt, identify, and gear up for whatever came next.  Survival of the youngest ?  I guess I am lucky I could think on my feet.  Didn't occur to me that being..off my feet wasn't even an option.  Think fast, cutie.

     Still, we had a game of Aggravation to play.  He muttered and giggled and darted his eyes all around and endlessly fussed with all of his weird shit.  I grew irritated with his lack of attention to the game and seeming disregard for proper marble placement.  Did he forget how to play ?  Jesus Christ - they're marbles !

     Before long, he tells Mom he's on acid ( ? ) and tripping heavily (??).   SHIT !  I WAS 11 YEARS OLD !  I was now officially scared to death.  Fairly conservative at the time, I was totally appalled that he was "on drugs".  Big drugs.  Serious and heavy drugs.  (A tee-totaller since birth, I was known to be so anti-drug that, when faced with my sister and her boyfriend smoking pot while I was in the car - I frantically covered every bodily orifice to escape the Demon Weed.  But that's a whole 'nother story...)

     Now that I knew that LSD was vaguely involved, every move he made terrified me.  Every time he looked at me, I thought he was going to kill me.  I was sure that he would die right then and there.  I felt so responsible - totally in over my head.  Maybe because I WAS.  Mom thought it was somehow appropriate for 4th grade me to fucking babysit someone blasted out of his mind on acid.  Good call, Mom - I'm SO up for it !   I  long to put "Helping Someone Through a Face-Melter of a Bad Acid Trip" in my Girl Scout Badge workbook - will you sign off on it, or shall have the druggie do it ?


      She kept leaving me alone with him - still not knowing what to do, except for continue on with the charade of Aggravation.  Pathetic, really.  Then, she asked me ( ! ) what she should do.  She had somehow narrowed it down to calling the police or calling the hospital. ( How about waking Daddy, the other adult and parent of the acid head ?)  Again, instinct kicked in.  I "knew" right away that the cops were the wrong call . Okay, I also "knew" that Dad was so the wrong call, too.  Maybe a doctor could tell you how to take care of him, Mom.  I don't know - I'm 11, remember. ?  

     And I am scared.   Meanwhile, he kept fucking with the marbles on the Aggravation board (but why ?) - laughing maniacally and hallucinating to beat the band.  I was so pissed : there goes the game.  I was scared. 

      Like everything else, like in all my friends' houses, this was kept a big secret.  40 years later, I still don't know who (if anyone) knows about The Aggravation Acid Trip.  It was never spoken of again.  Way healthy for all concerned.  Especially for the unsuspecting baby sister.  
     My introduction to seeing someone through a "bad acid trip".  Learned early, never forgotten.  No cops. No parents.  Things marching.  Spinning, empty eyes.

     The thing about 40 years passing is...sometimes it all seems like one hell of a bad acid trip.

        And it started out as just a game..

(In retrospect, I should have just told him he'd taken a very heavy drug - and to sit back, smoke a fat joint, and listen to a little Allman Brothers.  Hindsight - still 20/20.)