Back when I was in senior high school (pun intended!) this is the kind of stunt you laughed constantly about, but after you got caught, you apologized, acknowledged your punishment, and that was the end of it. But in these times, when a student’s juvenile exuberance leads him to show a banner that cracks up his cohorts but humiliates the senior high school administrators, he instead sues all the method to the Supreme Court over his suspension.

The time was January 2002, and the occasion was the passing of the Olympic Torch through that snowy Alaskan town of Juneau. Of course, Joseph Frederick, the defendant in cases like this, was warned that any inappropriate behavior if the torch passed by (and the National advertising showed their town’s high school to the world) would not be tolerated, but apparently the chance was too-good for jokester Joe to pass up. For because the cameras whirled and the flashlight paraded at night high-school (with all the dutiful students standing outside), Frederick and the guys unfurled a fourteen-foot banner on national television which read ‘Bong Hits 4 Pictures of Jesus.’ Juneau Senior School Principal Deborah Morse angrily confiscated the indication and suspended Frederick for ten days for ‘advocating unlawful drug use,’ or even completely idiocracy. However the kicker arrived when Frederick (who stated he was just having fun) introduced the case to court to the guise Juneau High violated his right to freedom of speech.Well boys and girls, five decades have passed, which should mean the Supreme Court is currently about to hear this case of high school hi-jinx; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg certainly reveals her age when she says .’.

. it is unclear that this [means] ‘smoke pot.” Justice Stephen Breyer is unquestionably closer to the middle along with his comment, ‘If kids go around having banners creating a joke out of drug use, that truly makes it tougher for me personally to tell individuals… not to use drugs,’ but I believe it is Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. who certainly hits the nail on the top, or the pot in the pipe as the situation may possibly be.

‘There’s a bigger issue,’ states Roberts, ‘of whether principals or teachers… Need to fear that they are going to spend of their personal pockets whenever they take actions pursuant to established policies.’It just so happens that (sadly) I am now somewhat of a specialist on both sides of the problem. In high-school, I not merely smoked marijuana, but my poetry ‘Stoned’ was every bit the anthem in my Midwestern 70s city that Dylan’s ballad ‘Everyone Must Get Stoned’ was in its 60s hey-day. But I’ve perhaps not partaken in container in a fraction of a century and, for Pictures of Jesus, ‘the medication of immortality’–the daily Eucharist–has replaced marijuana as my drug of choice.

I still chuckle sometimes at Cheech & Chong movies and sometimes still perhaps read ‘Stoned’ (which still gets the most laughs of anything I have prepared before or since) but ONLY in reference to my later poems including ‘The Convert’ or ‘The Endless River and the Timeless Tree’ to show that my entire life, like that of the other Augustine’s, has changed from careless childhood to pursuit of Truth.The actually funny (this time, ‘funny’ as in ‘interesting ‘) point about this case is that, in the ensuing five years since the case began, Joseph Frederick has turn into a instructor (in China, no less!) himself. Of course, Joe hasn’t, like myself, had the double lesson/blessing of being fully a father AND teacher, or has he had as much years of experience. But, granted all that (and allowing for the fact the Chinese children may be a touch more respectful of authority), I’m still shocked ol’ ‘Bong Hit’ Joe has not yet realized the necessity for student restraint. Ideally the Supreme Court will get this one right, but when they do not, this former stoner may individually take a slow vessel (packed with loads of silly-druggie banners) to China, search for Mr. Frederick’s classroom, and try to convince him myself.