Genesis of an Idiot

by John Alexander

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the marijuana grounds and breathed into his nostrils a puff of smoke, and the man became a living being. Now the Lord God had planted a garden and bench at the Gunk of Eden in the mythical land of New Paltz; and there he put the man he had formed. In the middle of the garden bench was the backpack of knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to smoke from any weed found in the garden; but you must not smoke from the backpack of good and evil, for when you smoke from it you will certainly pay the price.” The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a sister suitable for him.” So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, induced by the indica blend he had fashioned for him; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s lungs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the lung he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. He named the man John and the woman Angie.

The two lived in harmony at the Gunk of Eden for many days and many nights, leaving the backpack of knowledge of good and evil untouched while they galivanted through the gardens and the cool pond. Of all the animals the Lord God made to keep the pair company, the serpent the craftiest and slyest of them all, though they spent a long time trying to convince the ducks to speak back to them. John said to the serpent, who was coiled around the backpack of knowledge of good and evil, “We may smoke from the weed in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not smoke from the backpack that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will pay the price.’” The serpent responded to the man, “You will not certainly pay the price, for God knows that when you smoke from it, you will become like him. And he doesn’t want that.”

When the man rummaged through the formerly untouchable backpack and realized that it contained everything one would need for a smoke session, including a small baggie of weed, he pondered for a while. Should he follow God’s directions and leave it on the bench? The serpent told him to take it, and Angie supported that choice – she wanted to try some for herself, after all. He took some of the forbidden fruit and smoked it. He looked around for signs of God’s disapproval, waited for the Heavens and the universe to punish him for what he had done. No such signs came. After all, he left everything else behind in the backpack – the papers, the pipe, and the lighter. He felt he was in the clear. He had gotten away with it, just how God would.

Then the Lord God said to the man, “What is this you have done?” The man said, “The serpent deceived me, and I smoked.” To John he said, “Because you listened to the serpent and smoked from the tree about which I commanded you, cursed is the ground because of you, through painful toil you will walk as if it was leg day every day, and by the sweat of your brow, you will search for your AirPods until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken. Finally, you will fall victim to your own stupidity, puny human.”

John was too stoned to care. He just thought the big man in the sky was bluffing. He wasn’t.

So the Lord God banished him from the Gunk of Eden. The Lord God took the man away from the paradise he was born into and placed him in a purgatory like no other, College Hall. While sitting at a desk too short for his legs and too tiny for his notebook and coffee, the Lord God began his series of punishments on the man. First, the Lord God commanded the professor of the class to kick John’s cup of coffee like a soccer ball all over his brand-new backpack and notebooks. The man had to miss an important lesson on the bass clef and ledger lines so he could hobble to find paper towels that only ultimately spread the mess further under his seat and into his backpack. Each step grew worse and his pain was excruciating, he didn’t know how he would stand back up from the floor.

The Lord God made sure that the man would frantically search through every pocket, every zipper, and every crevice before finally finding his headphones. The Lord God would hide them in different places each time he went to look, forcing him to retrace his painful steps around the hellishly cold campus only to find them again somewhere on his person. It was like a game for the Lord God, every time the man reached for relief through music, he wouldn’t be allowed to have it and would fear losing that privilege permanently.

At the end of the day, the man thought that he was finally finished with all of the Lord God’s punishments for the night and retired to his bedroom. The Lord God knew what a tough day John had just been through, so he decided to encourage all the man’s friends to squeeze into his cramped room to keep him company after his long day of torment. Something in the back of the man’s head, presumably the cunning Lord God, told him that the torment was not over just yet. The Lord God bestowed a gift upon the man; finally, something positive. Still, a test all the same.

The Lord God chuckled in the sky as he waited until the next day to tell the supposed patient zero that his results were a year old.