Talked to my dad about weed...

I was talking to my dad about me wanting to try out for a college team, and then he noticed a plate with some old food on it, and takes it out, after making fun of me for how my roommate is going to hate me.

I tell him I lost my train of thought, and I can't remember what we were talking about...

"Hey, me either, glad to know it happens to people who aren't 45...or maybe you just smoke too much pot."

"Dad, how much weed do you think I'm smoking,"

"More than I ever did,"

"And how many times did you smoke?"

"5 or six times..."

"Oh...yeahhh I do. Like probably once or twice on weekends,"

"See, I think that that's too much,"

Then he brought up how he thought it was ridiculous that I wanted to play college sports when I'm putting something that will damage my lungs into my body.

I told him, "Look, I can show you -

He cuts me off, "Your statistics aren't going to change what I think,"

"Okay."

"I'm worried you're going to make it a lifestyle,"

"Like...what do you mean?"

"In say, ten years, you have a good job, you live by yourself, and you have a nice amount of money every month. How much weed would you be buying/smoking?"

"Probably about the same...its not something that I want or need to do...its more something fun to do, like havin' some drinks, just without the hangover."

"Yeah, but that's different. We've evolved with alcohol since 2000 BC or so. Our bodies have adapted to it somewhat,"

"Same with weed."

"Is your computer on? Go on wikipedia and search 'Cannabis'."

I look it up, and just like I knew - first recorded use at roughly 3000BC. We then got into a longer conversation about my lungs and health, and he had me look up some stuff on Harvard's website.

"Yeah, this says - Cannabis may be related to 'blah blah blah blah', but there is no conclusive proof stating this. There's also no date on this paper,"

"So?"

"Well, because of the US's policy, we can't really do research here, so a lot of states have petitioned the government to drop it to schedule 2 or 3 so that they can do research to see what actually happens. There's been a lot that's come out recently though, I mean even-" (here I pull up the recent NPR article about smoking and your lungs).

I start reading, and he scoffs at 'may even increase lung function',

"Yeah, and where's this from?"

"NPR." (we listen to NPR every morning, he praises it for being relatively unbiased in the manner that it reports news)

"Oh, they're actually pretty good,"

We wrapped up the conversation with, "Well, just...I would like it if you didn't do any at all, because you don't know if, say in three years they find out it was, in fact, really harmful, but you seem to have a pretty good understanding of what you're doing."

That went so well.

I already don't get in trouble for smoking weed, as long as its away from our house, and now I'm sort of changing opinions, or at least letting him know that, although he doesn't agree with me, I am being smart, thinking about what I'm doing, and that I do know what I'm doing.

Made my day, after finding out I did well on my Calculus midterm!