My family likes to tell the same funny stories over and over. My mom enjoys sharing about that one time she found a whole bunch of cocaine in my coat pocket. It’s a good story, funny but it reminds me that my mom does not always have my back. Hearing it time and time again stings a little.
I am one of those people who always leave their clothes in the dryer when they do laundry. It’s something I have done for as long as I have been doing my own laundry. Little did I know once when I was around 20 years old and still living at home my habit of leaving my stuff in the dryer almost ended me up in jail and/or rehab. Probably both.
As the story goes…
My mom found my ski jacket in the dryer. As she was hanging it up, she started to tuck in the pockets. That’s when she discovered a chunk of coke. A big lump of cocaine. No baggie. No container of any kind. Just a wad of drugs. My mother freaked the hell out. Good God! Her daughter is on the booger sugar! She didn’t know what to do and the only solution she could come up with was to take this loose mass of narcotics to the police station and ask for their help. I don’t know what type of help she thought the police were going to offer but there she was asking the cops to test this hunk of blow.
The police took my nose candy and walked to the back…presumably to perform some sort of testing ritual. In the meantime, my mom anxiously sat in the waiting area, wringing her hands, and wondering if I would go to jail or rehab first. She didn’t know how these things worked. She was just thankful I hadn’t overdosed…yet. When the police officer returned, he informed her she had nothing to worry about because what she found was simply a big ass nugget of undissolved laundry detergent. Umm…what? Well, that’s embarrassing.
Super funny because of course my mother can’t distinguish laundry detergent from cocaine. It never crossed her mind that loose coke probably wouldn’t survive the rinse cycle. Or that I didn’t have a job so being able to purchase that quantity of drugs was highly unlikely. Or that…I don’t know…how about ask me?
That story has always made me cringe. Not only was her reaction extreme but also, she was fully prepared to turn me into the cops. WTF, Mom? She was not my ride or die. That was a tough realization and one I resented for a very long time. Eventually, I came to understand she had been really scared. She was in a panic and as a middle-age white woman it was reasonable to believe the police would help. However, today, she has a healthy distrust for law enforcement and, after having a daughter of my own, I understand the crazy shit moms will do to protect their kids.
So yea…She will do anything to keep me safe. I guess that makes her my ride or die after all…and it’s a good story.
Dazed and Confused 
Wow. You are an amazing writer. I love the way you ended this story! Yeah, turning your ‘cocaine’ into the cops wasn’t the brightest thing to do. But as a mom and a grandma, I agree with your conclusion. Your mother probably thought that the police would help you if you had a drug problem.
I became a mom at the age of 18. My firstborn is now 51 and employed at Google. I wonder now if I can google anything without him knowing about it, lol. When he was 17, the police came to our house to question him about a burglary. I certainly did not want my child to be living the life of a criminal! But I did not want him in jail, either. So, when I saw that the smooth-talking cop was winning my son’s sympathy, and he was getting ready to spill his guts, I told him — right in front of the police — that their job wasn’t to counsel him, their job was to solve crimes and arrest criminals. My son stopped talking then, and the cops looked at me like I was a criminal. Did I do the right thing? Who knows. But now, like I said, he has a good job at Google! 😀
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