This is a story about getting way too high in Denver. I was going to tell this story for its comedic potential and just stick to that, but now it's also the story about how I caught covid. I want to insist to you that this is not a tale of recklessly licking doorknobs and coughing on people I sit next to. I did what I could to minimize the spread of the virus.
I follow most of the covid guidelines. I wear a mask where it is mandated, I wash my hands frequently. I got both vaccine shots, and even a booster when I was due. But it apparently wasn't enough. Within a week of our return from Denver, three members of my family tested positive for covid.
Fauci is so disappointed in me.
I went to Denver to see Tool in concert. (In 2000 the band went from using all caps (TOOL) to all lower caps (tool). no one seems to know which is correct anymore.)
It has been nearly three years since tooL released its last album, Fear Inoculum, and along with it, they released all of their music to streaming services for the first time. If you had asked me then what my favorite band is, I'd have told you Metallica. Since gaining access to streaming their music, my favorite band is most definitely TOol. (In fact, according to the stats spotify gives you about your streaming habits, I am in the top 0.2% of TOoL streamers. Listening to ToOl while writing this in fact.)
Anyway, my lovely wife, Princess Consuela Bananahammock (names have been altered to protect the mostly innocent), bought me tickets to see this fabulous band in concert for Christmas last year. It had been planned for 3 months, and I wasn't about to miss it.
Denver, Colorado. Capital city of the first state to legalize recreational marijuana. The concert was to be held at Ball Arena in downtown Denver, and there was no way I was going to be sober for the show. Early on the afternoon in question, I stopped by a local dispensary and picked up something I had never tried before, drinkable THC. I'd done edibles of course, but never a drinkable. The package was covered with warnings about not taking too much, and how to properly dose out yourself just enough THC. So anyway, I threw out the measuring cup and drank a little more than half.
Then with testing-my-personal-limits-of-tolerance levels of weed in my system, I called an uber and set out for the concert.
I knew it was going to be bad while I was still in the uber. I got paranoid. And I'm talking 'this driver is going to take me to a shack and harvest my organs' paranoid. More than once during the car ride in, I considered just having him take me back to the hotel. But this was TooL damnit, and I wasn't about to miss Tool just because of a little paranoia.
I managed to make it to my seat by sheer force of will, and it was a great seat. Once in my seat, I didn't leave it again until the end of the concert.(I was sure if I left my seat I wouldn't be able to find it again, and if I asked for help finding it, they would kill me and harvest my organs.) I sat for easily an hour before the concert started, getting higher, and more paranoid by the minute.
Actual picture of the stage from my seat (why does it always feel closer than it looks?)
By the time the concert started, I had a serious case of the "no touchies". Over the last hour, I'd watched literally tens of thousands of people file into the same one room. We had to provide proof of immunization to get in, but in my paranoia induced state I couldn't stop thinking: How many of these people faked their vaccine card? How many are asymptomatic carriers and don't know it? How many of these people are here just because they aren't willing to miss TOOl in concert because they've got the sniffles? I clutched that mask to my face and wished it was thicker.(And see, I ended up getting it in the end. It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you.)
The music was sublime. I danced, I sang, I headbanged, I pounded out drum solos on my chest. From the first note, I was lost in the music, and all was right with the world again. Though, I jumped a foot every time someone brushed against me, and I was constantly checking to make sure I still had my wallet. I made such a scene that the two people on either immediate side of me did not return after intermission. Well, it probably didn't have anything to do with me, but in my paranoia, I was certain it was just because of me.
After another paranoia-fevered taxi ride, I finally made it back to Princess Consuela Bananahammock who'd stayed at the hotel. Turns out she'd had the other half of the drinkable and was every bit as paranoid as I'd been, but that's her story. Neither of us intend to drink it ever again.
Birds of a feather, am I right?
Lololollll
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