I got high in class today

Please allow me to introduce myself...

“I usually do this thing when I’m nervous,” I told the stone-faced students surrounding me at the seminar table on a cold Monday morning.

“I tell everyone that I’m nervous. That usually calms me down.”

There were about 20 of us in that room. Mostly second and third-year university students.

“So… I’m a little nervous.”

They stared back at me in silence. The room stayed quiet and I would have liked to die.

Why did I volunteer to lead the first presentation of the semester again? Why did I even get out of bed?

Just an hour earlier my alarm was chiming and I was cowering under blankets.

There’s nothing quite like the terror of knowing — from deep within the folds of blankets and pillows — that I’d be leading a seminar that morning. My first in forever.

It was supposed to be a snow day. I checked reports before I went to bed — 75 percent chance of cancellation. I was still checking reports from bed until the very last possible minute.

Why so scared? As a former journalist and a foreign correspondent, I have plenty of experience talking to strangers. The thing is I’m also a former crack smoker.

A year ago, I was sleeping in a stairwell.

How was I supposed to talk to unblemished youth about the hardboiled detective genre and film noir when I only had one narrative running through my head: I used to smoke crack. I used to smoke crack. I used to smoke crack…

I was the ultimate work of fiction. An imposter.

Maybe I should have pretended that I hailed from the future. And I came back to deliver an important message: Kids, don’t smoke crack

No, no. I went with the usual: Vulnerability.

I always do that. When I was an addict, the first words that spilled out of my mouth when I met people on the street was, “I’m really high.”

“If you hadn’t said that,” they’d invariably reply, “I wouldn’t have known.”

At least, this time I was only confessing to being nervous.

Maybe the students were too. Okay, let’s get this lesson going. Good thing I had a mountain of notes to lean on. Plus, I had a partner. We took turns talking about genre, reading allegorically, the crisis in masculinity and — well, you get the idea.

I’d be bored too if I had to listen to all that at this cold grey hour.

The thing is, we weren’t. Someone mentioned Batman.

“The ultimate noir detective!” I blurted out.

We asked questions. Hands shot up. I may have even slipped in a joke or two. They were laughing with me.

At some point, I had to apologize for talking so much.

“I’m just really excited.”

Again, vulnerability.

In fact, I lost track of the time. I still had pages of presentation. But all I could hear was a thank you from the instructor and… applause.

Were those little angels of academia actually clapping?

I know it was probably the kind of applause the pilot gets for safely landing the plane. Still, it got me very high. Like, rush-home-and-tell-everyone-you-know high.

Like, write-this-blog-right-now high.

Sorry. I’m just really excited.