This could have gone in last week's tales of Smugness...
...but is just as appropriate as a 'little victory'. In my 20's, I was unemployed for a good few years, and for a while was feeling very down and depressed about myself. This probably wasn't helped by the fact that I spent much of my time awake smoking enormous amounts of weed. I started to feel like a bit of a loser, especially when compared to my circle of friends, who were all starting to get their acts together and make something of their lives.

One highlight of this period was that fact that one of my mates would regularly throw excellent parties, which were marred only slightly by the fact that some of those he would invite were tossers of the first order -- braying public school types who had grown dreads and were able to maintain an air of smug superiority even while spouting the rhetoric of the right-on.

It was one of these specimens, wearing suspiciously squeaky-new leather trousers beneath his unravelling trustifarian jumper, who decided to park himself next to me one particular night and proceded to badger me about the spliffs I was rolling. His mates were lapping it up, 'yuk-yuk-yuking' as he criticised my technique, the quality of the weed I was using and - more than anything else -- the amount I was putting in it. Now, as rotten as I felt about myself at this stage, there was one thing I knew I did bloody well and that was rolling and smoking spliffs. This had long ceased to be just something I did, and had become more of a dedicated occupation. So as Leather Trousers kept on with his constant goading ("Go on! Put more in it than that! Is that all you're putting in? Homegrown, is it? Weak stuff? yeah, the stuff I get, would blow your head off....") I found myself growing strangely calm.

I finished making my spliff, and, with a look I still fancy resembled that of Danny in 'Withnail and I' when he takes off his shades, took my toke and passed it to the dreadlocked dipstick. I sat back and watched as he pulled hard, held in the smoke and exhalled; I kept on watching as he took another tug, held it in his mouth and started to go a strange shade of greenish-grey; I didn't even crack a smile as he grimaced, clutched his hand to his mouth and stumbled out the room to be copiously sick in the hallway. I just sighed 'Lighweight...' and went back to my rolling. It was nothing short of glorious, made all the better by the round of applause I received from others in the room who, unbeknownst to me, had been clocking every snide comment from the little shit and were rooting for me all the while.

Shortly afterwards I packed up the smoking and got my life back on track (I'm sure the two things are connected...), and although I haven't had as much of a sniff of the dreaded weed since, I still remember this incident with a sneaking and slightly embarrassed sense of pride.... a little victory that went a long way ;)
(MrsP, Sat 12 Feb 2011, 14:52, Reply)