And they must be propitiated. They are ubiquitous in human cultures across time and space because they actually exist. As a rootless, and heretofore godless, mixture of various European ethnicities living on occupied Potawatomi land, I can’t rightfully say what particular trickster god(s) decided to fuck with me. But fuck with me they did.

I will be 39 years old next month and have spent 99.9999% of my time on earth not doing drugs. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but I actually only started drinking a few years back. On a recent visit to in-laws, I took half a weed gummy. I recall being unable to focus on anything, laughing uncontrollably, telling an embarrassing story in sentence-like fragments, eating a bunch of bad food, and slowly shuffling off to bed. All in all I didn’t really like it, and certainly didn’t plan on it becoming something I regular indulge in.

In the back of my mind I knew there might be a problem: my organization mandates random drug tests. Over 13 years I’ve been summoned a mere 3 times. While I knew I was taking a risk, I didn’t think it was very likely. I’ve halfheartedly declined trying THC using this as a reason, but I really just had little interest. However, over winter break, I decided fuck it, what the hell. The trickster gods, monitoring the situation, decided to have some fun.

9 days after the gummy I was called to do a random drug test. I quite literally was on the precipice of losing my job. The trickster gods, already dying with laughter, then thought it’d be funny for the lab to be on lunch, forcing me to sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes. How nice to have so much time to sit, sweat, hold my urine, and think about what the fuck I would do if it came back positive.

It was one of those tests that came back right away. The 2 minutes it took may as well have been another 45 minutes. Everything was negative.

Now, Western Science would have you believe the THC just happened to leave my system and there’s nothing mystical about it – that my metabolism, diet, liquid intake and weed-free past helped get rid of any trace of it. To that I say bullshit. Some years back, part of my job responsibilities included giving drug tests for people seeking food assistance. Cool system, right? More than a few times I passed people who came up positive for THC. I just couldn’t justify telling them they couldn’t get food because they smoked some weed. If you have a problem with this – I don’t care what you think and go fuck yourself. I believe what happened to me shows the trickster gods approved.

Anyways, weed should be legal everywhere already. And be wary and respectful of trickster gods. They are not to be fucked with.

(Also, fuck the American Gods showrunners for firing Orlando Jones, who was easily the best part of the show as Anansi. I was on the fence over watching Season 3 since Season 2 was dreadful – now it’s easy to just be done with it.)