I learned how to roll a joint from my older brother.
He was three years ahead of me and I tried to hang out with him and his friends whenever they’d allow it. And because of my age, they pushed me away most of the time. We lived in a number of different neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley and I struggled to maintain a consistent friend group. The kids in these southern Californian schools were tough and formed strong cliques. That’s why I always followed my older brother around if he’d allow it. In retrospect, I should be thankful for his influence on me at the time. Sure, you might say it wasn’t right for him to let me try marijuana at 16, but I had been pestering him for years and he always told me “no way” with no further explanation. When I told him that I had studied meditation from books I got from our uncle, I tried to get him to see it from my perspective. For all I knew, cannabis would be a great meditation aid. Once I was officially a “smoke buddy” of my brother and his close friends, I soon learned the art of rolling joints. Now that I’m nestled into the Tarzana area along the Santa Monica Mountains, I’m still rolling joints the way my brother taught me all those years ago. Recently my girlfriend and I stopped at a dispensary in Tarzana to get the best cannabis flower products that we could find in the area. Then we rolled a bunch of joints and packed a lunch so we could hike throughout Topanga State Park for the day. We had loads of fun and grew closer after the trip.