Hooked.

I spent most of last week in Boulder, a trendy college town in Colorado, and got a chance to scratch off one of my life to-dos: try a hookah.

My life to-do list is still pretty long--I still haven’t gone on a safari, had a constellation named after me, or taught traffic school to a classroom full of Maggie Gyllenhaals--but hey, one down is one down.

It cost about $10 per flavor, and I think we chose something like strawberry and watermelon. Sure, those flavors sound pretty weak, but they don’t sell hashish over the counter yet.  And I like them anyway because they taste good and make you forget that you’re turning your lungs into a toxic waste dump.

There are other good aspects of a hookah:

  • The smoke is white and curly, and if you exhale through your nose you can pretend that you’re growing tusks.
  • It gives you an excuse to say the word “hookah” repeatedly, which is an excellent word.
  • One gets tired of always seeing alcohol and coffee on the table; it’s new experience to see a gigantic hookah or two.
  • You can talk in a throaty voice and give instructions to Alice:

    “One side of the mushroom makes you grow larger; the other one makes you grow shorter.” Jesus, no wonder I never liked mushrooms.

    The other thing I learned--or re-learned, to be more accurate--is that I’m too old to hang out in college towns, hookah bars being the exception to the rule.  This is what you tend to realize when you look around and wonder how all these kids got past the guy checking IDs, and realize that they are, in fact, probably 21.  At least, in dog years.

    Posted by Greg at 10:56 AM on 10/21/07

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