Why Aren't You Smiling? Read Online Free PDF Page A

their own way. But that was a threat to the Roman Empire. Those cats were all about power and violence. They tried to kill Christianity by killing all the Christians, but that didn’t work ’cause people kept converting, so they adopted Christianity as the state religion and turned the temples into churches. The real Christians were branded as heretics and driven out. The truth of Jesus was still there in the Gospels, though, so the priests threw out a lot of what He said or reworded it to suit their purposes.”
    This information was changing my worldview so fast I felt dizzy. “You’re saying they changed the Bible?”
    â€œYup,” Rick confirmed. “But God’s message is still there if you peel away all the bullshit. Just Love, that’s it! It sounds easy, but it might be the hardest thing in the world. Here, this’ll help.” He took a tiny package of rolling papers out of his jeans then pulled out a tiny wooden box from under the sofa. I watched nervously as he extracted a baggie of brownish pot from the box, took some, crumpled some into a rolling paper, and expertly rolled a joint.
    â€œI’ve never gotten high before,” I admitted, relieved to get this shameful secret off my chest.
    â€œOh wow,” laughed Rick, as he licked the edge of the paper, sealing the joint.
    â€œMy brother Danny has,” I babbled idiotically. Why would Rick care?
    â€œThis is gonna take you places,” smiled Rick. “Watch what I do.” He held up the flame and started sucking on the end of the joint. After he’d finished inhaling, he motioned to me. I took the joint, my scalp tingling with trepidatious excitement, and repeated the process. The hot smoke immediately made me cough, but Rick put his arm on my back and said, “It’s OK.” The touch of his hand miraculously put out the fire in my windpipe. I kept the smoke down for a second then let it escape.
    â€œI think you got a hit,” said Rick. We took a few more tokes then relaxed back onto the sofa. “What I mean is, like, acting all holy and uptight has nothing to do with being a Christian. And it’s not about your hair being long and saying you’re for peace either.”
    â€œBut Jesus had long hair and was for peace,” I said.
    â€œYeah,” agreed Rick, “Jesus was a hippie, for sure. But you don’t have to be a hippie or have long hair to Love. You just have to Love. Love your enemies, your friends, strangers, the animals, yourself. Do you love yourself, Leonard?”
    I didn’t answer because I was busy noticing that the room was both immensely big and very small at the same time, though I wasn’t sure what ‘at the same time’ could possibly mean since time was suddenly a foreign concept. “Uh,” I began, “I dunno, I…”
    Rick leaned over and examined my face with clinical curiosity. “Yup, you’re stoned,” he said with a satisfied smile. What did my stoned face look like? I wondered with an outsized panic that I realized was irrational. It couldn’t have changed that much. “Feel OK?” asked Rick in what sounded like slow motion. I couldn’t form words, so instead gave him a reassuring smile. Or rather I tried to. I could tell how phony my smile looked from the tenseness of my face muscles. I tried to relax my face, but felt it freeze. I imagined I looked like one of the heads from Easter Island. Those heads were made of stone; I was stoned. What did it mean?
    I glanced over at Rick, a poster boy for pot with his relaxed, dreamy expression. I, on the other hand, was pretty sure I could have starred in one of the anti-drug educational films they made us watch at school. The camera would show me sitting frozen on the couch while a voice-over explained, “The side effects of marijuana include short-term memory loss, confusion, paranoia…” I knew I was confused and paranoid, but had