My son is fifteen, and a freshman in high school. He spent his early years at a small private school, and transitioned to a much larger public high school this year. As such, he’s encountering several aspects of the human existence that he was more or less sheltered from prior to this year. As neither my wife nor I particularly care to fight with him about anything growing from his body, he has a scraggly teenage semi-beard and an absolutely glorious mane of blond hair that reaches the middle of his back.

We have warned him that, given his appearance, it is absolutely inevitable that someone will eventually attempt to buy weed from him. It’s ridiculous to deny it; if I picked him and 20 other white kids from his class and asked a cop which one of these kids is holding? mine would be the first he turned to. He doesn’t dress like a stoner, necessarily, but the rest of the look is there.

Today he went into the bathroom and two kids were passing a vape back and forth. They left when he came in, he took care of business, and then another student came in. That student came in and, no doubt detecting a whiff of the vape on the air, asked him if he wanted to buy “a smoke.” I assume that’s a cigarette; I don’t know if kids call vapes “smokes,” but whatever.

My son’s response? “No thanks. My parents love me.”

My wife and I both reacted in the same way to this story, which was that he was probably lucky he didn’t get popped for it, but he said the kid was chill about it. I did let him know that a simple “no thanks” would probably suffice next time.