Posted on 04/20/2005 11:46:51 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Who's roadtripping to Bong state park?
Today is 4/20. Parents, do you know where your teenagers are?
Few people know the number 420 is underground code for reefer badness, though it's been around for years.
April 20 has been known as a skip day for students who want to be like Bill Clinton, except they do inhale. If you're putting your nose in the air to detect this today, I suggest 4:20 p.m. would be a good time.
My sources - OK, my kid in college - tell me there's a buzz on campus of smoky parties set to break out precisely at that hour today. My student has promised to be studying at this time, and not herbology.
Why 420? How has this become the pothead equivalent of Miller time? What were we just talking about again?
According to High Times magazine, the bible of the red-eyed and undermotivated, here's the official explanation. Supposedly a group of friends in San Rafael, Calif., began meeting after school at 4:20 to smoke marijuana. The time became a code they could use in front of parents and teachers. And the word spread.
You're thinking this was a few years ago, right? Try 1971.
So that 420 (pronounced "four-twenty") on your kid's notebook with the funny leaves around it is probably not his locker combination. It could be his class ranking, though.
A couple of students were caught with marijuana at Nathan Hale High School in West Allis last April 20, but absenteeism that day isn't a big problem.
"If they do skip out that day, they would just be drawing attention to themselves," said Vice Principal Nick Schultek.
Cpl. Ron Donigain, police liaison officer at Hale, is on to 420 and will be on the lookout today. "There are a lot of parents who don't understand what it is, but it's common knowledge among a small group of kids," he said.
The kid at Franklin High School who thought he could get away with wearing a T-shirt with an Interstate 420 logo on it found out the staff are hipper than they look.
Several years ago in Colorado, pranksters rearranged the rocks that spelled EHS (for Evergreen High School) to say 420. School officials seemed relieved it was a pot reference rather than the Columbine shootings date.
Legends about 420 have grown like weeds. The respected myth-busting Web site snopes.com compiled quite the list:
People have said 420 is the statute number of marijuana laws in California or possibly the police radio code as in, "We've got a 4-20 in progress at the alderman's kid's house again." It's actually the number of the law on access to public land, and there's no such radio code.
But indeed it was Senate Bill 420 to allow medical marijuana in California.
Is it the date Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin died? No, no and no. What about Cheech or Chong? No, somehow they're still alive.
Didn't the Grateful Dead always stay in Room 420 when they toured? Nope, their spokesman told snopes.com.
But the site's researchers found some places where the number does pop up, very possibly as a nod to tokers. In "Pulp Fiction," most of the clocks visible on screen read 4:20. The time also appears in "Lost in Translation." And the football game score in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" is 42-0.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young did a song called "4 + 20," but it seems to be about a 24-year-old person. A pie baked with 4 and 20 blackbirds sounds awful but is less illegal than some brownies.
And Atlanta-based Sweetwater Brewing Co. makes 420 Extra Pale Ale. A coincidence? "Drink 'em if you got 'em," the slogan says.
Great sign !
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