+ confessions of a red-headed stepchild: it is 420 maaaan

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

it is 420 maaaan

I never felt comfortable uttering the words. It made my skin crawl whenever I heard it. And I never needed any additional excuses to get stoned.

"'420' began its sub-rosa linguistic career in 1971 as a bit of slang casually used by a group of high school kids at San Rafael High School in California. '420' (always pronounced "four-twenty," never "four hundred and twenty") came to be an accepted part of the argot within that group of about a dozen pot smokers, beginning as a reminder of the time they planned to meet to light up, 4:20 p.m. Keep in mind this wasn't a general call to all dope smokers everywhere to toke up at twenty past four every day; it was twelve kids who'd made a date to meet near a certain statue. [read more]

Some of these definitions are funny too.