Story time: One evening at Franciscan University, I was studying with my fiancee (now wife), housemates, and some friends in our home in the downtown projects when there was a knock at the door. We opened it and in strode a tall, lanky man in a leisure suit I can only guess was not designed by Josef Pieper, as it appeared to be a shiny, metallic fabric. The gentleman got right to the point:

“Y’all got any of the green stuff?”

“What?” We asked, genuinely perplexed.

“Weed, man! Y’all got any weeeeeed?”

We looked around at each other. I can honestly say that marijuana was the last thing on our minds that evening, as we were studying for final exams. Even under ordinary circumstances, it would hardly have occurred to any of us. I may well have been the only person in that room of mostly sheltered homeschoolers even to have ever seen the stuff and that was because mom was a cop.

“Uh, no?”

“Oh,” he said, looking around at the Marian art and Byzantine icons surrounding him, “y’all students up at the college.”

“Yes, sir,” we said.

“Never mind,” the man replied as he glided out the door.

When the door closed, we all let out one simultaneous laugh. Agreeing he was probably an under-cover officer who didn’t suspect a bunch of theology students would be smoking pot, we returned to our studies.

But to this day, somewhere in Steubenville, there’s a metallic, blue leisure suit, perhaps with hint of ganja smoke in its fibers.