Is Blood Really Thicker than Water?

It was 1998, I was sixteen, in Strasbourg, France, and a year prior I had gotten in trouble for smoking weed. I moved to France when I was seven, and by 1998, my entire life was based there.

On the last day of school we all said our goodbyes and that we'd see each other in September like we did every year. I attended an international school, so most of us went back to visit our homeland during summer breaks.

And I visited my mom in NYC every year. The night before my flight, I was quite sober and searched my entire room for some extra weed or hash, but even before I started looking, I already knew I was out.

It had been a rough couple weeks financially to begin with. Either way, during my search I found a small plastic baggie in my wallet with some stems and seeds. Remembering that there were dogs occasionally at airports, I took it out and left it in my room.

My theory in hiding it was that maybe if it were fairly in the open, it might not be detected because it was so obvious. So I just threw it in a basket which had a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff in it.

Hopped on the plane, flew across the Atlantic, got to NYC, and (mind you, this is how I remember it, after talking to my mom, it seems it wasn't quite as abrupt as I describe) almost as soon as I walked into the door, my mom said:

"Alex we have to talk."

Sheesh, I miss you too, Mom, I thought.

(sidenote: it's weird how my interpretation of this memory is quite distorted, but this is what led me to believe that although there is an absolute truth, there's also a relative one, and although this scenario didn't play out the way I remember, since that's how I remember it, that is in essence, my truth)

Apparently my grandmother had called, claiming she found a bag of weed in my room and two joints all rolled up, ready to be smoked.

I balked.

"No, she's lying, I don't have that in my room!" Blah blah blah.

"Well, Alex," my mom replied with resignation. "I just can't take your word anymore because you've lied so many times."

Fair enough.

"Okay, so you want to know the truth? The whole truth?"

"Yes."

I'm still ashamed that despite my claim to tell the whole truth, I still lied. But it was a rather small one (then why lie at all, right?). So I told her I smoked every other day, instead of every day. I also told her that I cut classes on a regular basis. I didn't mention that I sold hash because I was cut off from an allowance. Omission lies don't count right? ;]

"But, I know for a fact that they didn't find that in my room because..."

"... you would have smoked it," my mom finished for me.

I nodded.

The next time my mom spoke to my grandmother, she asked if they were sure that it was weed.

"How am I supposed to know?" my grandmother replied indignant.

"Just burn it, it'll smell differently than cigarettes."

"Oh, we already threw it away."

So now it was my word against theirs. Obviously mine wasn't worth much.

Then at the next plot development, they finally found the small baggie with the stems and seeds. And how surprising, they tested that instead, and of course it came back positive.

Bottom line? I was to stay in NYC. Torn away from nine years of my life, all of my friends, all that I know, the town that I lived in, my home.

Their reasoning (paraphrasing)? Alex and his friends in France are a bad influence on each other. Alex has a drug problem and because of that, we think we should separate him from his friends. There are alternative schools we were looking into in France, but they all fell through, as such, we think it's best he move to NYC.

Wait. Hold on. What? I have a drug problem, so the solution is to send me to New York City, of all places? Ri-fucking-diculous.

They're not stupid, so I dismissed that as being the real reason why I was sent back to NYC. I think it's a combination of my getting in trouble and being too much to handle, my grandmother's desire to move back to Cali (impossible any time soon if I were to stay in France and go to college there), and the fact that I failed sophomore year and had to stay back.

But is framing me really the adult way to approach this? Yeah sure, telling me "Go back and live with your mom, we don't wanna deal with you anymore," is going to hurt, but I'll understand to a certain degree, and I'd be able to get over it.

But my own blood lies to my mother about what they found in my room is just low. Aren't adults supposed to set an example?

I never got to say bye to my friends. From that day till today, some of my friends from France I haven't seen again, others I've seen once or twice in eleven years.

And since my "move" back to the States was unplanned, finding a school last minute over the summer was damn near impossible. Every school required teacher recommendations and a bunch of documents. It was summer break already. All the teachers in France were long gone.

We finally found a school in Ithaca, NY, about five hours away from the City. On brochure it sounded amazing. It was right next to Cornell University, it had an accelerated program, it looked like a complete paradise for dorks and geeks.

Going up there I really thought I was going to reform my ways, even quit smoking cigarettes. Boy was I wrong. And boy, was that brochure misleading.

But that's for another post. So when people invariably say that blood is thicker than water, I politely disagree.