Ravon Williams

Every year, the Thanksgiving table is a place where friends and family come together to enjoy a great meal and create new memories. It’s also a place where stressful questions and comments never stop. “How’s School? I can see you picked up that freshman 15. Where’s your girlfriend? Do you even have a girlfriend? When are you gonna start hitting the gym and get swole like your Uncle? You help your Mom cook any of this? When are you going to get a haircut?” – The list goes on and on, and that’s not even including the general conversations about politics and world views that everyone has different opinions on. However, there is a tried and true way to combat all of this madness, the “walk”. 

Now this is no knock on Thanksgiving or family time at all, just a commentary on the pressures that come along with it from time to time. Let’s be real, for all of the joy that comes with the holiday season, there’s always a small side of stress. Best way I, and most consumers, deal with stress is by smoking my lungs out. Being even just a little high is a great way to help yourself deal with the stressors of the day, just make sure you smoke something that’ll relax you and not make you more anxious! This is when the walk makes its appearance at the function.

The walk is one that we all experience differently. As I prepared to write this, I asked around to gather stories from friends on what their version of the walk is and not a single person told me the same story. I found that to be quite a delight yet a little nerve wracking as I prepared to write this piece. It made me realize that the walk(s) I know is just the walk I’ve experienced. That walk has even had different meanings to me as I’ve grown. 

The first instance of the walk I’ve seen was conducted by my older cousins. My house would host Thanksgiving dinner and these cousins never failed to dip out before the food was served. They’d say that they were going for a quick walk, as if it wasn’t freezing outside, only adding more questions to that long list: “What y’all going on a walk for? Do you know how cold it is outside? Do you want to get sick?” – Questions that would just get them outside faster.

They’d come back smelling weird (I was a kid who didn’t know what the smell of weed was) with glossy red eyes and fill their plates with food, garnering much attention from the family in attendance, myself included. Little did I know I’d be partly following their footsteps years later. 

My version of the walk began as this: Meeting up with my friends that morning in a parking lot, smoking too many blunts, dosing my eyes with Visine, bathing in cologne, and going home with a smile from cheek to cheek.  

That ritual changed from year to year but the underlying idea was always the same: get blasted with friends and family, eat good food, and navigate all the questions with a certain wit that the high version of myself carries. 

But forget about my walk, the goal of this piece is to get you reminiscing and excited about your own Thanksgiving tradition. Whatever your version of the walk looks like, I hope it’s so good that you get higher than Mount Wachusett. At the end of the day, the holiday season is all about spending time with your loved ones, and there’s nothing like getting high with the people you love!