by Seth Rogen
They led us around the back of the school to a narrow walkway that dead-ended at some dumpsters. It was indeed very isolated. Then, with a flourish and level of showmanship that I still marvel at to this day, the dudes all reached into a backpack and pulled out gigantic butcher knives. One of them held his up and said proudly, “You motherfuckers are getting jacked.”
It’s a cliché to say that things move in slow motion in these situations, but when you may or may not be on PCP and you’re in a life-threatening situation, shit gets REAL slow. Molasses slow. Slow enough to have meaningful and in-depth conversations with yourself about all the terrible choices that led to this moment and all the terrible choices you could still make while in it.
My first thought was Dear god, please don’t let Baumshtick pull out that little Seattle Mariners baseball bat. I did NOT want this to devolve into hand-to-hand combat. They had knives, Baumshtick had a Ken Griffey Jr. souvenir, and I had nunchucks, which, unfortunately, as a weapon, fucking suck. It all seemed so stupid. Why did I even bring these fucking things? They simply didn’t work. I had tried to flip them around a few times before, and every time I ended up whacking the fuck out of myself. Even if I did get into a nunchuck groove, as soon as I hit anything, it would send them bouncing all over and fuck up the nunchuck groove or, again, bounce back and whack me in the face.
The next thought I had really made no sense, and my only justification is that PCP makes me rebellious or petulant or something, but I thought, Fuck these dudes, I’m not giving them SHIT. They knew we had three hundred bucks on us, but still, I decided to hold my ground.
Scary Dude: Give us your fucking money!
Me: No.
Scary Dude: Give it to us now!
Me: …No.
Baumshtick took the opposite approach and unloaded all his belongings instantly. “Here! Take it! Take it all!”
My third and final thought, which was also debatable, was: We should fucking run.
Now, Baumshtick was more boxed in than I was, but I guess PCP messes with my spatial awareness, because that didn’t seem to matter to me. As the dudes were swinging their knives at us, screaming for us to finish unloading our cash, I leaned into Baumshtick and said, “Run on three. One, two, three.” And then I ran. I was ten feet away before Baumshtick even processed what I’d said. Everyone kind of froze, shocked. I stopped in my tracks, looked back at the group. “FUCKING RUN!!”
Baumshtick took off behind me, and the dudes gave chase. We rounded the corner and sprinted across the front lot of the school. My sister saw us coming and started the Jimmy. We hopped in and peeled out, leaving the butcher-knife dudes behind us.
We lived, and I hadn’t lost anything, but Baumshtick lost his half of the money and his grandfather’s Holocaust necklace.
Pretty much every Jew has some precious heirloom with the word “Holocaust” in front of it. “This is your great-aunt’s Holocaust brooch” and “I want you to have Morty’s Holocaust watch” are both things that you’re very likely to hear in a Jewish household. My assumption is that it means that these particular objects were along for the ride when relatives successfully avoided extermination in the Holocaust, which I guess makes them lucky? It could also make them wildly unlucky, depending on how you look at it.
Brian Baumshtick: My mom is gonna notice it’s gone. I’m fucking DEAD.
We came to school on Monday a bit traumatized. Billy Yang commiserated with us: “I can’t believe they fucking did that!” We thought he mmmmaybe set us up, but that would be a fucked-up thing to do. I mean, we could have fucking died. He swore he didn’t, and to help make it up to us, he said he’d reach out to the guys to try to get the Holocaust necklace back.
A few days later, he told us they’d sell it back to us for a hundred fifty bucks. Since I didn’t give up my money in the robbery, I offered to pay for it, but we ended up splitting it. Billy Yang took our money and got the guys to sell him the necklace back, which he returned to us by the end of the week. We were ultimately grateful but also fucked up from the whole thing. It was traumatic, and it made us nervous when we were walking home from school for years to come. And the worst part was, we were never really sure if we were set up or not.
Until around fifteen years later.
I got a call from Baumshtick.
Brian Baumshtick: You’ll never fucking guess what just happened. I’m at a party and guess who comes up to me? Billy fucking Yang!
Me: Holy FUCK! What did he say?
Brian Baumshtick: He said that he set us up.
Me: Really?
Brian Baumshtick: Yeah. AND that it was the worst thing he’s ever done and that he’s felt bad about it for the last fifteen years. He apologized. I accepted. He asked me to apologize to you, too.
I had really not been expecting this, nor was I expecting how much closure it would give me. It also gave me context as to why it all happened in the first place: I wasn’t that nice to Billy Yang. And since he was tiny and I was big, he got back at me the only way he thought he could—by tricking me into getting robbed by even bigger dudes. We didn’t just get randomly robbed; we were dicks to a dude who was a lot angrier than we thought he was, and he got back at us.
If it was a movie, we’d be the big dumb bullies, and he’d be the clever little kid who got revenge by using his brain. Maybe we were the villains of the story and Billy Yang was the hero? I don’t know. Those butcher knives were pretty big. I guess we’ll call it even.
Also, if weed was legal, none of that shit would have happened in the first place. Well, maybe it would have, because we were actually too young to buy legal weed. But still. You’d think legality brings with it less danger. I don’t know anyone who’s been robbed at knifepoint trying to buy some Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
Either way, it’s legal in Canada now and, at the time of this writing, inching slowly toward legalization in America, but there’s still a long way to go, probably because it’s just too effective a way to persecute minorities and keep prisons full, which are things that they love to do in America.
* * *
I used to think a lot about why I smoked weed, but, honestly, I stopped. Because I realized the only reason I was thinking about it was because of the negative stigma, and the only reason it has a negative stigma is that it makes it easier for white people to control nonwhite people, which unfortunately is also the reason for a shitload of other things.
There’s stuff that makes our lives better that hasn’t been stigmatized, and nobody gives those things a second thought. Nobody thinks about why they have a strong desire to wear shoes. Nobody says that people who wear shoes are denying reality. Instead, the consensus on shoes is that we use them to adapt to reality. If we don’t wear them, our feet will hurt. They make our journey more comfortable, and we don’t judge ourselves for wearing them. They don’t make walking any less “real.” Nobody’s ever like, “You’re not really experiencing walking. You’re under the fog of footwear.” They’re like, “Yeah. Our feet aren’t made for walking in the environments we’ve settled in as a species. Wear shoes.”
That’s why I smoke weed. It’s additive to my journey. It makes getting from here to there manageable and comfortable.
There’s this odd concept of functionality that people apply to some things but not others. Our feet need cushioning. Our skin needs protecting. Our muscles need exercise. Our asses need wiping. But our brains? Don’t touch those! They’re perfect, and if you’re having a hard time with yours and are smoking weed, it’s bad! Unfortunately, as well designed as people are, we just aren’t completely cut out for this world we live in. We need shoes, sunblock, exercise, toilet paper—and weed.
People criticize weed for changing your view of reality. But sunglasses literally change your view of reality, and nobody gives them a hard time for it.
Weed is my sunglasses. Weed is
my shoes. I’m not quite cut out for this world, but weed makes it okay.
I had started doing stand-up when I was thirteen, and by the time I was fourteen, I was getting better at it. I wasn’t fantastic, but I was probably on the better end of the spectrum of the comics in Vancouver at the time. Coupled with the fact that I was a teenager, I was a bit of a novelty. Like when you see one of those YouTube videos of an elephant that can paint: They’re usually not that great at painting, but the fact that it’s an elephant really buys it some points.
I was at the Urban Well, which was a bar that had weekly stand-up shows on Tuesday nights, where I performed regularly. They would also let me hang out after my sets, which was technically illegal. As a young stand-up, that was always part of the challenge; a lot of bars weren’t really clear on the legality of the whole thing, which I get, because it probably didn’t come up that often. But, in a bizarre stroke of luck, right after I turned fourteen, I performed at a charity show where the premier (kind of like the governor) of British Columbia happened to be. My mom, who was at pretty much every stand-up show I ever did—half out of love and support, and half out of the fact that I couldn’t drive and needed a lift to and from the shows—marched up to the premier and explained the problem we were having. He told us that technically it was legal for me to perform at a club or bar, as long as I was backstage before my performance and left immediately after. We even got his office to print out the bylaw and mail it to us, and we would carry it around and show it to the owners of the bars and clubs if they hesitated to let me perform.
The Urban Well didn’t give a shit about any of that and just let me hang out. Which was fucking fantastic. Because as a fourteen-year-old, being in a bar, even one your mom is at, is exciting. Also, the stand-up comics were WAY nicer to me than they had any obligation to be. As a thirty-nine-year-old man, the concept of chilling with a fourteen-year-old stand-up comic is fucking insane: I would literally NEVER do it. It just seems strange to me. But, bless them, these comics would let me sit at the big kids’ table while they said some truly horrific shit that was so thrilling to hear adults say.
So I did a set and was talking to some of the other comedians afterward, when a guy in a suit came up to me and asked if we could chat. I remember thinking that maybe he was an agent or a manager who liked my jokes and wanted to send me out on auditions. He had that sort of vibe. Kind of slick, cool, and maybe even a bit…flashy. I’m not gonna say douchey, but I clearly thought it enough to say that I wasn’t gonna say it, so it was for sure in the mix. I was like, “Yeah, sure, let’s talk, dude.”
We sat down and he told me that he loved my material and was actually looking for someone he could pay to write some jokes for him. He said to call him if I was interested, and then, before leaving, he gave me his card. It read:
Dr. Stephen Bredeson, Mohel
Now, if you’re not familiar with the term, a mohel is the dude who, in Jewish tradition, performs circumcisions on our sweet, unsuspecting, eight-day-old male babies. This was, quite honestly, pretty fucking confusing to me. My mind flooded with questions. Did he want mohel jokes? Was he giving a speech or a toast at a wedding or something? Was the whole mohel thing, like, a day job, and he secretly wanted to be a comedian, so he approached an okay teenage comic to write his material for him? Material, I remember thinking, that would probably have to be about the life of a middle-aged, flashy, maybe douchey mohel in order to feel organic coming out of his mouth. That was a challenging prospect, considering most of my time was spent listening to Wu-Tang Clan, smoking weed, and playing GoldenEye on Nintendo 64.
The next day, I called the dude. He told me that the jokes were in fact to be used IN his mohel ceremony, or service, whatever it’s called…the thing where they cut the baby’s dick tip off. One question was answered, but many more fell into its place. Is that even a good idea? I remember thinking. Like, a funny mohel? Do people want that? This dude is dealing with your baby’s penis. Do you want him cracking jokes?
I’d probably want the guy slicing the tip of my baby’s dick off to be quite serious about it. No horseplay. No nonsense. “I cut babies’ dicks and I don’t fuck around about it.” That would probably be the attitude I would want. Also, what if the jokes didn’t play? Then you’re having your newborn’s tiny baby dick circumcised by a guy who’s up there swinging and missing comedically. Nothing makes you doubt someone more than seeing them bomb. That would be potentially horrifying for a parent.
He explained that he thought the jokes could be good icebreakers throughout the service. “People are nervous,” he said, “and it might be nice to break the tension with some jokes.” I was like, “Oh yeah, of course. That would be really nice.” I should add that I had never attended a circumcision in my life and truly had no fucking clue what the vibe was like, but I kept that to myself. He said he would pay me fifty bucks a joke, and we planned to meet the following week to go over what I had written.
Here’s the thing: I needed money. I had none. I never got, like, a formal allowance. My parents would give me money to get specific things when I needed them; I wasn’t going to school in a burlap sack or anything, but I didn’t have, like, savings. Which was fine, until I started smoking weed.
Now, weed was cheap back then. When I first smoked it at the beginning of eighth grade, it was fifteen bucks a gram. Then, I think due to competition, it dropped to ten bucks. This was game-changing. Because all you needed was three people to come up with around three bucks each. Three people put in for a gram, you roll two fat-ass joints, and you’re all getting nice and baked for the price of a Big Mac.
This payment system the mohel was proposing was kinda vague and, for that reason, awesome. No matter what, I could write ten jokes, so I said, “Yeah. Let’s do this.”
For the next week after school, as I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, I wrote mohel jokes. These are some of the actual jokes:
He is gonna be the coolest dude in preschool. How many kids his age can say they’ve survived a knife fight?
I used to work in Winnipeg, but I had to move to Vancouver. You see, there’s not a lot of work for a mohel who shivers uncontrollably. (This is a VERY Canadian joke.)
Please give it up for our musical act, the Slice Girls!
Now, just give me a moment as I oil up the chainsaw.
(Before putting wine on the baby’s lips, which is part of the service:) Excuse me, sir, can I see some ID? Just kidding, he for sure looks old enough.
He’s not driving home, is he?
The only problem with being a mohel is that you get used to the ceremony. Last night, I found myself going through a half-hour service before I could cut a carrot for my salad.
At the end of the week, I called to tell him I had a good batch and asked how I should get the jokes to him. He told me he would pick me up after school on Monday and we’d go to a nearby coffee shop to go over them.
It was raining that Monday, and I was standing with Fogell and Evan outside 7-Eleven, which is a statement that applies to about 90 percent of my life between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. I was bragging that I was getting money for writing these jokes, and my friends were, by all accounts, quite jealous, which thrilled me. And to make things even better, at that moment, the mohel pulled into the 7-Eleven parking lot in, I shit you not, a fucking Ferrari. Like, a brand-new incredible Ferrari. The kind that, if you’re in high school, is simply the dopest shit you could ever imagine. The kids in the parking lot looked at it like a spaceship was landing. “What is this thing doing here? Where did it come from? What does it want?”
I was psyched. I turned back to my friends to soak in the last bit of envy and admiration, but…their faces did not look envious. Instead, they looked horrified.
I was like, “What?”
Sammy Fogell turned to me. “Don’t get in that car.”
Me: Why the fuck not?
Sammy Fogell: Do I have to say it?
Me: What?
Sammy Fogell: He’s gonna try to fuck you!
Me: What?! You’re crazy! No he’s not!
Sammy Fogell: Yes! He will!
Me: He’s a fucking doctor!
Sammy Fogell: Who SPECIFICALLY specializes in little kids’ dicks! What kind of person does that? I’ll tell you what kind! The kind who LOVES little kids’ dicks. The kind who chose a life and profession that is BASED on the touching of little kids’ dicks!
Shit. He had a point. I struggled for high ground.
Me: Well, he slices up their dicks! If he loved their dicks so much, why is he slicing them up? He hates little-kid dicks. He’s the last guy to want to fuck a kid.
“No, man.” Fogell stared into my eyes. “Dude is circumcising the dicks. Making them look nicer, prettier, cleaner. That dude is gussying up those little-kid dicks. That dude LOVES little-kid dicks. He’s got a flashy car, which little kids like. He needs jokes and he could have hired ANYONE, and instead he hires, what? A little fucking kid with a little-fucking-kid dick.”
Fuck. I couldn’t deny it. I was in fact a little fucking kid and I did in fact have a little-fucking-kid dick. The mohel looked over at me and honked the horn. I looked back at my friends.
Me: Dudes, this motherfucker is gonna give me five hundred bucks. If he fucks me, it’ll almost be worth it. I’m doing this shit.
I walked over and got in the car like I was in the opening scene of Mystic River. As we drove away, I looked back at my friends through the tiny, impractical rear window of the Ferrari. They waved meekly, as if to say, “Nice knowing you. Or at least this version of you.”