Drug References That Have Gone Over My Head Throughout The Years

by Jaya Saxena · February 9, 2016

Clueless (1995)

Tai: Man, I’m freaking. I could really use some sort of herbal refreshment.

Dionne: Oh, well we do lunch in ten minutes. We don’t have any tea, but we have Coke and stuff.

Tai: No shit. You guys got Coke here?

My thoughts: Man, Dionne is dense, Tai is obviously asking for pot. But I also don’t get why Tai is so excited about soda.

 

Descendents, “I’m Not a Loser” (1982)

“Take a girl out / she won’t fuck you / you just bought her a gram of coke / spent all your money on shitty coke”

My thoughts: Again, I don’t really get why a small amount of soda is such an issue on this date.

 

Third Eye Blind, “Semi-Charmed Life” (1997)

“The sky it was gold, it was rose / I was taking sips of it through my nose”

My thoughts: That just seems like interesting imagery right there.

 

A MAD Magazine cartoon that mentioned “angel dust” I read when I was 10

My thoughts: Is that like, a magic thing? Like fairy dust? That sounds fun.

 

The Simpsons, “Homerpalooza” (1996)

Bart: [sniffing] What is that smell?
Lisa: It smells like Otto’s jacket…

My thoughts: I guess Otto has a lot of body odor, as I imagine standing in a crowd at a music festival you’d smell a lot of body odor.

 

The band The Crystal Method

My thoughts: They must be into reiki.

 

The Velvet Underground, “I’m Waiting For The Man” (1967)

Every single lyric

My thoughts: Well that was a strange interaction.

 

[Image via]

Jaya Saxena is a Staff Writer at The Toast.

218 Comments

  1. catweazlol +94

    Wait, you mean “I’m Waiting for the Man” isn’t about buying $26 worth of gourmet candy?

    2. EmpressofBland +8

      Legit did not get that song until this minute.

      Was he not just waiting for a very good friend of his?

    3. layrl +2

      I legit thought it was about a blind date. The $26 was for movie tickets.

      I thought that until about ten years ago.

  2. champagneghost +185

    “That just seems like interesting imagery right there” is how i react to all drug references, much to my much more culturally aware partner’s embarrassment

    1. urspostrophe +54

      Same! I am also the last person to ever consider that someone might be high and/or drunk when they’re acting weird, and it always seems obvious to everyone else.

      1. pigeonsquid +16

        God, I have had so many interactions that just felt kinda off and it always takes me waaaaaaay too long to piece together why…

      3. SarcasticFringehead +53

        I spent an embarrassingly long time wondering how other people could possibly have the energy to stay out & party so late, when I can barely make it past midnight on a good night. Then I finally realized that in a lot of cases, the answer is drugs (or so much caffeine it’s basically drugs) and I felt simultaneously like much more and much less of a loser.

    2. adoptraya +70

      Did everybody else know that the The Weekend’s song ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ is about cocaine? Because I sure as hell didn’t. APPARENTLY YOUR FACE GOES NUMB WHEN YOU SNORT COCAINE, GUYZ.

      I definitely thought that the guy was just having a weird and/or metaphorical reaction to being in love. I never lost feeling in my face when I was in love, but who am I to judge someone else’s amorous experience, right? Life is a rich and complex tapestry!

      I only found out that the song was about cocaine because a friend and I heard this song and he was like “Oh man, this takes me back” and I cheerfully queried “To the days when you were in love and your face felt numb?” and he just looked at me like ???o_O??

      1. Strophoria +21

        Yeah, that’s why it’s more commonly insuffulated than other drugs – generally putting powder up your nose hurts like hell.

        (That’s also where lidocaine and benzocaine get the last part of their names)

  3. Linette +75

    The sky it was gold, it was rose / I was taking sips of it through my nose

    I had no idea this lyric was about drugs of any kind and still do not know what drug it is referring to. I know what goes up your nose but what about gold and rose what?

    Help, I am old.

      1. irreverantontheinternet +65

        Wait bumping is a cocaine thing??

        I once explained to a literature class what opium was, how you made it from poppies, and the cultural significance of the time while even the professor looked on in horror and wonder but apparently if you throw a cocaine reference at me I’m stumped.

        2. kalat1979 +20

          So…when a song talks about bumping they’re talking about cocaine? I never have any idea what’s going on.

          1. cosetthetable +28

            I mean, sometimes in songs you are literally bumping into something/someone. Especially in a dance sense.

          2. pretty_monster +28

            a bump is a little bit of something sniffable (think: coke nail) as opposed to a full line of said sniffable thing.

          3. Strophoria +14

            It could also be ketamine, meth or mdma but usually they’re referring to coke, yeah. A bump is less than a full line.

        1. JGlows +22

          Maybe it’s a metaphor for the beautiful feelings you have from doing coke? I don’t know, I haven’t done it. :-/ I figured that it was cocaine since he said nose and then talked about doing bumps, which is another coke reference.

      3. gozerjo +42

        I believe you can bump any drug that’s a powder, cause it’s just snorting a little bit.

    2. irreverantontheinternet +56

      Like even after I knew the song was about drugs I still just thought this was a poetic way to describe breathing at sunset.

      I am also old, apparently.

    3. gozerjo +93

      It’s meth, which can be pink. He actually says “doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break” later in the song. The entire song is about doing crystal meth, which is why teenage me was so amused this was such a popular song.

    4. hugpunch +22

      I think he’s trying to be poetic about the sky and drugs but really, the fault with this confusion lies with him and his terrible lyrics.

  4. Grace +103

    Woooooow. I’ve always understood the Coke joke in Clueless but this is the first time I realized there was also a pot joke.

    1. citizenchristy +39

      I’m in the reverse scenario. I understood “herbal refreshment” but did NOT realize that was a cocaine reference.

      1. irishbreakfasttime +22

        Me too! I thought Tai was making fun of Cher for not getting her reference. (At least, I thought that last time I watched the movie, god knows what I thought was going on when it came out at age 11.)

        1. Christin +76

          As someone who went to a school that banned soda machines, her excitement about Coke (the soda) made total sense to me.

      2. kalat1979 +54

        We did not have Coke machines at my high school, so I legitimately thought she was excited that they had one at hers. For many years I thought that.

  5. ramina +132

    I relate to this on a deep emotional level.

    In seventh grade one of the things you could make in shop class were toaster tongs (so you could get your stuck bagel out without getting electrocuted, I guess) and I was talking with a friend of mine and she said that “they looked like a roach clip” and I wondered why people would do that to bugs.

    My mom overheard this conversation and thought I was legitimately talking about drugs and I had to have a Talking-To with her about that.

      1. daftwingduck +26

        Same. I used to work at a department store jewelry counter; we sold these beaded hair clips that 100% looked like roach clips. My grizzled old hippie-lady coworker had to explain this to me.

          1. formergr +17

            It’s to hold a marijuana joint that’s almost burned all the way down without burning your fingers. So basically tiny metal tongs.

          2. builtahouse +69

            wow, thanks. Even from the context of the comments I assumed it was some kind of baggy clip to seal the bag to prevent roaches from getting inside the pot stash.

            my squareness apparently knows no bounds.

        2. Ivans_Sister +31

          I remember going to some craft fair and BEGGING for some hair clip with feathers, and my parents would NOT get it for me. Later I realized what I’d been begging for was a roach clip.

        3. mekline2015 +32

          If you go too far with this sort of things it eventually reverses itself: I just googled roach clips and I DEFINITELY had a bunch of cool hair thingies like that as a kid, so that means my mom didn’t know what they were either. She wouldn’t have let me get them if she knew – she got flustered and refused to even answer when I asked what the cool little rose-in-a-tube thing at gas stations were. (PREEMPTIVE EXPLANATION FOR 23 YEAR OLD ME: THEY ARE POORLY DISGUISED CRACK PIPES.)

          So following that logic, just think of all the cool things the children of Toasties are going to be able to do/get away with!

    2. irreverantontheinternet +136

      I went to a college house party once and the hostess greeted us by showing off the keg, the hard liquor, and saying “and if you want a bowl just help yourself!” and I thought “a bowl of what? Ice cream? Cereal?”

      I’m so glad I didn’t say anything aloud because those were not the bowls she was talking about.

      1. robot_dinosaur +139

        college house parties would be better if they just had bowls of ice cream or lucky charms imo

        1. bird_internet +95

          I’m a big believer in staying hydrated/ nourished while binge drinking, and I got chastised a few times in college for getting into the kitchen cabinets and making myself a bowl of cereal at house parties. I have no regrets.

      2. keythah +20

        My second boyfriend’s immigrant coworker used to ask him if he wanted to “go bowling” together.

        (And no, that is not a generally-understood way of using that bit of slang. In case you were wondering.)

        1. fromthelandwithlove +13

          Marijuana! Because you smoke it in a pipe, which has a bowl, where you put the marijuana.

    3. Claudia +19

      Same but seen while walking around a flea market in Mississippi with my cousins. Roach clips were *super* popular, what with the feathers and leather ties and whatnot. Girls wore them in their hair!

    4. atlasblue85 +56

      I went to Panera once with my older brother and his girlfriend and I got soup in a bread bowl and didn’t eat it all so I asked my brother if he wanted to finish the bowl and they both started laughing and I was sitting there like “I know something just went over my head but I don’t know /what/ and I’m really mad about it.”

  6. SmrtCookie +164

    Clueless was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the title. I feel validated! It also works if Jaya wants to do another piece in this series, References To Sex That Have Gone Over My Head Throughout The Years.

    1. catweazlol +100

      My parents so effectively sheltered me that when by some fluke my mom actually believed my friend Molly’s mom when she said Clueless was appropriate for a 9-year-old I understood none of the jokes or references. I didn’t even know what a virgin was and from context clues decided it meant somebody who has never been on a date.

      1. catweazlol +88

        Hey Purity Culture, did you know you can take it one step further and just not ever discuss sex with your daughter until she’s 14 and you randomly tell her about how you read in an article that Lisa Kudrow saved herself for marriage because “it was just that important to her” while you’re driving to the grocery store?

        1. catweazlol +51

          P.S. Can anybody verify that Lisa Kudrow story because I want to know if it’s true or if my mom just made it up because she noticed I watched a lot of Friends reruns?

        2. night_squirrel +68

          I also did not know what a virgin was until the fifth grade because my parents were liberal hippies who thought it was a stupid concept and so never bothered to explain it. I thought it meant like a really really holy goody two shoes type person.

          1. WallisWallyOlly +66

            I totally agree it’s a stupid concept, but man, you gotta explain these things to kids. Otherwise there’s like a 90% probability they will embarrass themselves at some point.

          2. SmrtCookie +40

            It’s AMAZING how little I embarrassed myself considering 98% of my sex ed came from Cosmo.

          6. cleoreads +8

            Same, except from Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins.

            I’m stil very grateful to my college roommate’s aunt for sending her a care package of books – mostly sf/f but there was a sex ed book we assumed she’d put in as a joke and reading it saved me from a LOT of embarrassment. Plus, it made giving blow jobs sound like fun.

          7. shy +24

            I work with kids, and one time we picked up the 10 year olds and they were all excited from having sex ed as their last class of the day. One of them asked me if I was a virgin, and I said ‘That’s a personal question it’s not polite to ask.’ One of them said ‘That means she is!’ and the other interjected ‘No, it means she isn’t!’

      2. MunchletteBelle +81

        I babysit for a girl who is not particularly sheltered but I had definitely forgotten how many times “virgins” were mentioned when I showed her Hocus Pocus a couple of years ago. (She was maybe 11?) And so after they make a big deal about how a virgin lit the magic candle, she was like, “So… Boys can be virgins too?” To which I responded with, “Yup!” Thankfully she did not pursue the line of questioning further. But at least she learned something that day!

        1. shy +8

          I always found that so confusing, because I used to watch Eerie Indiana with the actor from Hocus Pocus in, and he was about 13 in that show, and looked the same to me in Hocus Pocus. So when they were laughing at him for being a virgin, 9 year old me was like ‘…But he’s not that old, that’s not weird…is it?’ (It didn’t help that the female lead looked about 18.)

      3. mekline2015 +37

        I still vividly remember my mom telling me that a virgin was someone who had never given birth. I was hearing the word in Christmas carols, and felt vaguely disappointed that Mary was just someone having a baby for the first time rather than something cooler.

        I think I also mostly knew she was lying from how she said it, but couldn’t come up with an alternative….

    2. thebeagee +116

      Omg, the “activity where balls fly at my nose” moment in Clueless went over my head for an absurd amount of years.

      2. roisindubh211 +80

        ha, I felt soooo sophisticated when 11 year old me saw that and got the joke right away. (

        Also my reaction to Tai saying “you guys are straight?” was a bit confused, I thought she’d believed they were lesbians and wondered what kind of school she came from where she had no “straight” friends.

    3. beakbreath +83

      When he donates all his bongs to the oil spill people and Cher’s like, “I’ll put these in the kitchen section” “That’s where I kept them!”

        1. thebeagee +25

          It looked like part of an old car jack in our garage to me. I thought the joke was that he didn’t know where to keep part of a car jack. *facepalm*

    4. msbias +19

      Literally realised the other day that the thing that little Gary talked to Keano about in Parenthood was masturbation.

    5. Frumiosa +26

      My parents would not let me see Clueless, but they did let me read the book. Yes, someone took the time to make Clueless into a book.

      1. alder_tree +10

        Clueless is a really good movie.

        But any movie that popular is gonna get novelized, even when it’s originally based on an Austen novel.

    6. therealadri +27

      I came to the comments to see if anyone else had this problem with sex references. (One that sticks out to me – of MANY examples in my life – is hearing Nelly Furtado lyric “Move your body around like a nympho” and having no idea what it meant until my mom asked in horror was I was singing. So I Googled it. I was…..14.)

      1. SarahChiang +13

        Oh, I had a bunch. The biggest one I can think was from when I was 15 and playing Final Fantasy VII. In part of the game, the main character goes to a brothel called “The HoneyBee Inn.” I thought it was just a hotel/spa where all the people who worked there were girls dressed in sexy bee costumes.

    7. Swan Parade +11

      Californication.

      I was about 13 when it came out. I remember asking my mom what it meant. I’d figured out the California part, but was the ‘cation’ bit? California vacation?

      She said we would ask my sister. My sister, three years my senior, had not reacted well to the puberty talk, which lead to my mom’s strategy of leaving a helpful book (with transparencies!) on my bed one day and saying no more about it. Presumably the sex talk went similarly for them, so I can only imagine that my mom figured she’d avoid my presumed-to-be-disgusted reaction to hearing mom talk about sex by making my sister do it.

      Of course, by the time my sister came into the room, my mom had mentally swapped another popular song of the time and said “Explain to your sister what _____ is”. (I can’t for the life of me remember what the other song was, possibly a drug reference.) So my sister thought I was dumb for not getting the drug reference, and I still didn’t know what Californication meant. I got the hint that it was something my mom didn’t want to talk about, but that my sister would judge me for not knowing, therefore probably about sex. So we all just said nevermind and left it at that.

      And eventually I learned what fornication meant, so I always assumed that song was way more about sex than it is. Pretty sure now that it’s a pun, but the main meaning was “the process of becoming like California” rather than anything sexual.

      ALSO I just looked up when Austin Powers came out and SOMEHOW MY MOM THOUGHT THAT WAS OK FOR US TO RENT FOR MY 11TH BIRTHDAY PARTY?! She really failed at vetting that one. But why did WE even like it? We barely got the sex references, definitely didn’t get the drug references, and probably didn’t even get most of the ‘spy movie’ references either.

    8. cleoreads +22

      I’m here for that. There’s a song in Grease that goes something like “I won’t go to bed til I’m legally wed” and I legit thought she wasn’t going to get any sleep until marriage, which confused 11 year old me.

      I was also confused by the section in Deanie by Judy Blume about masterbation. They mention rubbing a special spot and I was sure that was the inner elbow.

    9. zerosuited +5

      It definitely doesn’t help that the novelization of Clueless removes all references to sex entirely, including the word “virgin,” and instead stipulates that the difference between Cher and her female friends is that she never had a serious boyfriend. (The book also makes it VERY unclear that Christian is gay, which made for a confusing read when I was a kid. I think the book leaves in the phrase “friend of Dorothy,” but that’s as far as it goes, and I definitely didn’t know what that meant as a kid.)

      I read the book first, because my parents wouldn’t let me watch the movie. I didn’t see the movie until I was an adult and I was pretty shocked by how much stuff they changed for the book — mostly because WHY BOTHER? I guess they assumed younger kids (like me) would read the book and older kids would watch the movie? So weird.

      Did anyone else read the Clueless novelization by HB Gilmour? I also read all of the Clueless “mystery” series books, which I didn’t necessarily like even at the time, because they’re pretty silly.

  7. irishbreakfasttime +47

    there’s that Sublime song Garden Grove, with the line “finding roaches in the pot,” and I understood that those were drug words but I didn’t really know what either one meant, and I am still not sure if that line is meant to be about drugs or just about his filthy apartment bathroom.

      1. irishbreakfasttime +11

        that would make perfect sense if I heard the song for the first time now but I subjected this line to so much “I should understand this, all the other kids understand what these words mean” analysis at age 13, it’s ruined forever!

  8. speakingofcake +83

    When I first got into Velvet Underground aged 14 or so, I thought ‘Waiting for the Man’ was from the POV of a young male prostitute. That’s where my mind went straightaway, and the idea of drugs didn’t even occur to me. I was a weird combination of precocious AND sheltered as a young teen.

    I still kinda prefer my original interpretation.

    1. v_d_budenmayer +51

      I thought he was WAITING for a young male prostitute who charged an alarmingly specific price for a bj.

      2. speakingofcake +22

        I read the Man as his pimp and the $26 as his earnings from the night before, ready to be handed over, along with other things.

  9. Claudia +145

    I once told my parents that, while putting away a random Christmas ornament in June or something, I saw a light and a plant in a back closet. Was somebody doing a science fair and I didn’t know about it? I mean, because, totally let me help out. I’m good at science.

    1. Claudia +20

      I should mention that it was my brother who’s one year younger than me who was responsible, so I must’ve been at least been a teenager. Or I hope that that’s the case.

    2. alder_tree +24

      My parents apparently grew it in the closet until I was four and old enough to start asking questions. They told me when I started experimenting with weed as a late teen, which they were okay with. “Just don’t do it in front of your brothers.” Okay mom.

      (They were the same with alcohol. My friends were mostly good-girl types so it wasn’t a problem.)

  10. bookwormV +86

    I don’t remember any particular drug-related examples, but after hearing the term “streetwalker” in BtVS I assumed it meant a homeless person. I may have used it incorrectly on a few occasions after that.

  11. Unreadaethel +208

    I once referred to a very fluffy cat as “made of angel dust,” angel dust, to my (embarrassingly old to have said it) mind being the dust that coated the wings of angels, much like the feathers on butterfly wings.

    In a similar vein, my grandmother liked knickknacks, particularly ones which were miniature versions of real things. So she picked up, at a garage sale or a thrift shop or somewhere, an adorable tiny spoon which could be worn on a necklace. And that’s the story of why my dad has my grandmother’s coke spoon in a jewelry box.

    2. feelingofgaze +74

      HA! I have a fairy pendant my grandmother got in the 70’s which has what she thought was maybe a teardrop? raindrop? hanging off her foot. So I also have a grandmother’s accidental coke spoon.

      1. Matilda, RN +11

        back in the 50s apparently there was a fad for giving out a tiny spoon that matched your silver pattern when you bought one. My mother (a VERY drug-innocent woman) thought it would make a lovely necklace for me, so she had them put a loop on it. I, being a very drug-naive teen, wore it to school. ONCE. My father, seeing it on me at the end of the day, burst out laughing and asked why i was wearing a coke spoon….its never been worn since :-p

    4. GirlBob +23

      There was a blacksmith around here who used to make tiny little spoons for children out of horseshoe nails. I suspect I still have mine somewhere. I’m vaguely traumatised.

    5. layrl +4

      My grandmother gave me pot leaf earrings for Christmas when I was a kid, with both of us thinking they were pretty flowers. I don’t remember what happened to them; I never wore them.

  12. irishbreakfasttime +72

    ok this one only sorta counts because I was definitely old and wise enough to know what was up, even if I’d never done the drug in question…but I was watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I think it was, and all the stoners came out of a van they’d been hotboxing, and I said out loud “they have a hot tub installed in that van?!”

    yes, they have a hot tub. in their van. that’s where the, uh, steam, was coming from.

  14. irreverantontheinternet +36

    On a tangentially related note I always thought that “having your stomach pumped” meant they took the contents out, not that they put stuff in.

      2. irreverantontheinternet +7

        APPARENTLY! I guess the point is to flush your system with fluids and not take the offending stuff out!

        1. v_d_budenmayer +11

          But flushing your system with fluids does mean you’re getting the offending stuff out SOMEHOW, right?

        2. Frumiosa +19

          WHICH HAS FOREVER RUINED “CHERIE AMOUR” FOR ME BECAUSE IT’S CREEPY WHEN HE REALIZES HE’S FALLEN IN LOVE WITH HER WHEN SHE’S VIOLENTLY RETCHING INTO A TUB

    4. clairebm +2

      I always thought they pumped stuff into your stomach to make you vomit up everything?? (Totally based on Almost Famous!)

    5. Queenjulie +78

      It’s both–a nurse sticks a tube up your nose and snakes it down into your stomach (it’s called a nasogastric tube). Sometimes they then pump in activated am charcoal or something similar to soak up whatever’s I there. The we hook it up to suction and suck everything out.
      Love,
      A registered nurse

      1. femaelstrom +3

        Dang, I once had to drink activated charcoal and it was so awful that I asked the nurse if they couldn’t just pump my stomach instead. She said “you don’t want that” and now that you’ve explained what it entails, I agree.

        (At the time, I was just mad that I had to keep drinking charcoal. I asked someone if it would make me throw up, he said no. HE LIED. I kept throwing it up so they kept making me drink more.)

  15. megalesias +93

    ahh, when I was in 3rd grade, and a bit of a space cadet, I guess? (I am still a bit of a space cadet) Some boys on the playground tried to make fun of me for being a pothead (literally… “hey, meg, do you smoke pot? [break off into giggles] I think you’re a pothead… ” etc, etc)

    They had older siblings who were already in high school, so they definitely knew what they were asking me, but BOY was it an ineffective bullying tactic on 8-year-old me, who pictured myself with a literal pot on my head, was entirely confused, and deigned to ignore those poor boys.

    1. builtahouse +25

      I once had a CLASSMATE in my super-Christian-and-dry-no-really-not-a-joke-actually-very-sober college, comment on my “liveblogging my all-nighter” status that “see, we don’t need weed here when we have this.”

      In his defense I had just said: “whoooaa. The sky just turned on! No sunrise, it just turned on!”

      ….yeah. #spacecadetsympathy

  16. praemunire +36

    On a related topic, it took me quite some time to figure out what “shower-nozzle masturbation material” was in “Heathers.” (Not the masturbation part–the shower nozzle.)

  17. OrganizeInternet +54

    Just learned this weekend “chronic” is for slang for marijuana, taught by my husband as we rewatched Lonely Island’s Lazy Sunday sketch. Previously, just assumed that the joke was a genre-one: two guys who were rapping enthusiastically about watching the Chronicles of Narnia/romantic comedies and eating snacks. Why not? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKSIaeQHV94

    1. irreverantontheinternet +29

      That’s my problem with marijuana references, it feels like everything is one somewhere!

    2. Pygmalion24 +24

      Wow I already knew that chronic was slang for marijuana, but I’ve never put two and two together for “Lazy Sunday,” and that’s like my favorite Lonely Island sketch. Woah.

    4. AOpp +37

      I mean, I think that is the joke, but then the “chronic” reference makes it a double joke — not only that the topic of the song is unexpected, but also that when it sounds like they’re referring to drugs, they’re actually just referring to the Chronicles of Narnia. I think if the joke was that they were only watching silly movies and stuffing their faces with cupcakes because they were high, the video wouldn’t be subtle about it. We’d see them sneaking it into the movie theater or whatever.

    6. dorianneemmerton +6

      Once at a music festival someone I know was on the hunt for weed (marijuana) and she found someone who said he had a bunch of stuff and she asked once and he listed off: rolls (this is apparently was some USians call ecstasy), mushrooms and a word that she took to be crack, which she was horrified by. Turned out he didn’t have crack at all (and that would really have been inconsistent with the rest of his stock.) He was saying “chronic” but in whatever accent it is that’s non-rhotic and pronounces Os as As. (new englandish?)

  18. Frumiosa +75

    Imagine being a sheltered 14-year-old who forever misses drug references going to see Rent for the first time. In the course of one song I went from zero to sixty in knowledge of euphemisms for heroin.

    1. jhsaxena +86

      I listened to the RENT soundtrack like every day from ages 10-14 and then I finally saw it on stage and somehow had completely missed that it was about AIDS and drugs. I just thought it was about poor, sober artists.

      1. Frumiosa +55

        Girl. My parents wouldn’t let me see Clueless but took me to Les Miz three times, which is 95% violence and death and prostitution. The pretty music is blinding.

    2. atlasblue85 +54

      I used to work in children’s theater and there were a lot of super sheltered kids and parents who sheltered them and did not realize what a lot of really well-known shows were actually about. There was this one 4th grader with an especially protective mother who somehow missed the memo and thought HAIR was an appropriate musical for her child.

      1. Frumiosa +90

        It’s all fun and games until your nine year old comes home singing “SODOMMMMMMYYY, FELLATIOOOOOO…”

        1. Queenjulie +27

          Um, I’m glad I’m not trying only one. My ten-year-old loves musical theater, and she has legit sung “My sodomy is between God and me” more than once. 😐

    3. EmW +10

      My super Christian, 60-year-old orchestra teacher took the entire class to see Rent on Broadway without knowing what it was about while we were on a trip to NYC. The LDS girls were so horrified they walked out part way through the show. I haven’t seen Rent recently, but I’d bet a huge amount of the references went over my head at the time.

  19. Frumiosa +65

    Who else only realized as an adult that Miss Hannigan was making bathtub gin? I just thought she had been about to have a bath when Daddy Warbucks stopped by.

    1. WallisWallyOlly +15

      Haven’t rewatched that in years so I did NOT catch that. Thanks for making Annie more enjoyable for me.

    2. anniekate76 +11

      Yeah, a huge number of things in that show went right over my head all hundred times I watched it as a kid.

    3. Mrs_Peel +46

      When I was about 7, I saw “Annie” and Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” back-to-back and I’ve had them mixed up in my mind ever since.

      So I don’t remember the bathtub gin, but I do remember “Annie” having a lot of torture scenes and blowing up buildings.

  20. GingerHawk +73

    All of the comments here just remind me that a. I am not, in fact, alone and weird in having missed all of these things and b. Toasties are my people.

    2. inkwashed +5

      Yes!

      When I was in high school – I was a “transfer” from being homeschooled – I had so many people ask me about my connections, you know, & make veiled weed/acid/mushroom references & I simply had nooo idea what they were talking about. On another, very related note, I admitted to a friend when I was 16 that I didn’t know what a blowjob was & she was equal parts shocked & amused. Oh innocence!

  21. Robert M. +81

    The band The Crystal Method
    Me: Wait, that’s a drug reference? What kind of drug is a “crystal”? Is there some special way you have to take it, and that’s what “method” means? Which is weird, because if you were going to work a drug pun in there you could just use “meth”…

    OH OK I GET IT NOW

    2. alder_tree +13

      The fact that it took me so long to get the reference is especially hilarious when you find out that I did buy one of their CD’s back in the day, and Target’s receipt shortened the band name to Crystal Meth, which I thought was HILARIOUS.

  22. alder_tree +25

    I always got the sex references, but I was sure my parents didn’t think I was old enough to get them, and so while watching, say, Clueless; I had to stifle my laughter after sex jokes. I don’t think it worked.

    1. becky f. +10

      Yes! This was me watching SNL with my dad. It’s such a weird thing to remember with as much fondness as I do.

  23. walrathem +36

    Dad story time! When I was younger I used to listen to my parents copy of The Big Chill soundtrack (LP, obviously) and I was about 9 and asked my dad what on earth Whiter Shade of Pale was about and he said that back in the ’60s people used to take this stuff called LSD that made them see weird things and then they wrote songs about it. I believe I said that I thought that was odd but the organ music was great. I don’t remember him specifically telling me that Drugs Were Bad until I was much, much older, but I knew that LSD was not a Good Idea.

    1. mbculver +6

      Oh man, I LOOOOOOOVED all the Krofft shows as a bitty Bittersweet and had absolutely no clue that they were drug-influenced. I just thought it was all really colorful and imaginative.

  25. somethingthatneedsnothing +42

    OH HELLO IM ALMOST 30 AND THE FIRST TIME I UNDERSTOOD THE COKE JOKE IN CLUELESS WAS TODAY.

    Today because of this article. I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT.

    I thought her school was poor and maybe poor schools didn’t have Coke bc Cher’s school was a rich school??????

    Sorry, this has been a very enlightening interaction and now I shall show myself out.
    [hangs head in shame]

    1. irreverantontheinternet +25

      “I thought her school was poor and maybe poor schools didn’t have Coke bc Cher’s school was a rich school”

      I mean… yourline of reasoning is solid

    2. RosaRachel +9

      I am also almost 30, and went to the kind of school where there are passionate PTA debates about whether to allow a soda vending machine on the premises, so I always assumed Tai went to a school where soda was seen as a corporate plot to create sugar addicts. Seemed perfectly logical until today.

  26. GirlBob +19

    You know, I only ever heard the radio edit for Semi-Charmed Life, which… leaves in all the drug references, but takes out a bunch of sex references. I didn’t notice the drug references until one day I heard the full version and was just like wait WAIT BACK UP, THIS SONG IS A LOT RAUNCHIER THAN I REMEMBER, which indeed it was, and then I noticed all the drug references as well. (It’s a lot better unedited, because they remove the entire bridge for the radio edit, which leaves it a bit same-same, I think.)

  27. raqueue +84

    When my friend and I were 12, we misinterpreted “smoking grass” as literally smoking lawn grass.

    We ate a bunch of sour patch kids, rolled up backyard grass in a postit note, lit it, and inhaled.

    I think we did permanent damage to our taste buds with that.

    2. tinypaperme +36

      One of Paula Danziger’s novel – it might be The Cat Ate My Gymsuit – has a line about “plant grass on Mr. Stone and get him busted,” and I had to ask my mother how you grow grass on another person without them noticing.

      1. Fern +8

        It was definitely The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, and while I never asked anyone aloud, I remember wondering the same thing.

    3. dcbrierton +22

      When I was around ten, some friends and I tried eating catnip to get high, because it worked on cats.

      It didn’t work, but we acted pretty suspicious about it, so the playground supervisor told us to knock it off.

      This was my only experience with any kind of drug until college. I was super cool.

      1. bammertheblue +3

        I tried snorting ibuprofen once in high school. It was horrible and disgusting and I felt like shit for like 4 hours afterwards.

  28. aparker288 +24

    My mom wouldn’t let me wear branded billabong clothing when I was a kid and I DID NOT UNDERSTAND. She found those that said “billa” on one side and “bong” on the other particularly offensive. I was mystified because I didn’t know what a bong was, or event that it was like, a thing.

    1. swords-and-spindles +10

      But billabong is just the word for waterhole/watering place, and I assumed the kids at school wore the stuff because they loved to pretend they were surfers…. or did they?!

      1. alder_tree +10

        To be fair, in the coastal town where I lived for a while growing up (Virginia Beach), all the surfer kids were also stoners.

  30. yda +22

    Oh, man. This takes me back to the days when I first got into rave but hadn’t been tuned into the drug culture yet. It retrospect, damn near everything was about drugs, mostly ecstasy. I felt like such a chump when I realized why every third song and/or group title had “E” in it. Oh, to be young, dumb, and able to dance all night without so much as a coffee again…

  32. Bittersweet

    Oh man, I LOOOOOOOVED all the Krofft shows as a bitty Bittersweet and had absolutely no clue that they were drug-influenced. I just thought it was all really colorful and imaginative.

  33. mrtafadhali +29

    I’m sure I could tell plenty of embarrasing stories about myself, but instead I’ll tell one about my brother!

    When I was 14 and my brother was 12, we went to Amsterdam. This was around when Goldmember came out, in which there is a scene where the Dutch Goldmember offers another character a variety of pastries and “herbal refreshments” — “Smoke and a pancake? Bong and a blintz?”

    My brother got the general gist of this scene, but not all the…details, so when we walked into a typical pot-and-porn-laden tourist shop he pointed at the wall of bongs and said, “LOOK AT ALL THOSE BLINTZES.”

    (Within a year and a half of this trip he was saying things to me like, “Don’t you just…like…love it when you’re drunk, and you climb a tree to smoke?” and I was like, “Why on Earth would you think I am familiar with that experience, I don’t even get the herbal refreshmen joke in Clueless,” so I have to celebrate the brief window where I was less naive than him.)

  34. sdamot +26

    Prince singing “Pop Life” : “What you putting in your nose? Is that where all your money goes?”
    Young me: Oh, boogers and money are both green. That’s what that must mean. That’s silly.

  35. RLT +22

    I thought “Interesting Drug” was actually “Interesting Job”. But hear me out, it totally works! See:

    La la la la la Interesting Job
    The one that you took
    Oh it really, really helped you

    That song for many years was, to me, a song about how someone was having a really hard time but then got a job that helped her to get back on track.

    My husband LOVES this anecdote.

    1. RLT +9

      I should elaborate, it’s a song by Morrissey. I went to the video to link it here
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42zo8hbxR1g

      And now that I’ve seen the video I’m back to my original interpretation. I mean, the title is “Interesting Drug” but the video has nothing about drugs whatsoever, but seems to be a woman’s wacky path in animal rights activism? Which is, in fact, an interesting job. Or perhaps she is pulling an interesting job when she and the schoolboys team up to rescue lab animals.

      Morrissey! Every time I uncover a layer of you, below is only another layer.

  36. lightle +27

    I definitely thought “Me and Julio” were doing gay stuff to each other “down by the school yard”.

    2. cleoreads +12

      They weren’t? I thought I read somewhere that Paul Simon said he wasn’t quite sure what they were doing but he was sure it was sexual.

  37. ThisAgain +9

    Interpol, whenever: My friends they come / and the lines they go by / tonight I’m gonna rest my chemistry

    Me: is that a song about studying really hard or what?

  38. OhRather +7

    It is only right now that for the first time ever I realise what that clueless interaction was. I totally thought it was just about herbal tea and soda! Despite having briefly studied it in high school!
    I guess it is truly I who am… Clueless

  39. cleoreads +6

    I was shocked to learn that And She Was by the Talking Heads was about drugs and not sex. I saw David Byrne in concert and he said it was about a friend of his who’d get naked and drop acid in her backyard.

    And she was drifting through the backyard
    And she was taking off her dress
    And she was moving very slowly
    Rising up above the earth
    Moving into the universe
    Drifting this way and that
    …

    She was glad about it… no doubt about it
    She isn’t sure what she’s done
    No time to think about what to tell him
    No time to think about what she’s done
    And she was

  40. Jody +7

    As a kid my Mum used to thrash Bob Dylan in the car. I never understood why everyone must get stones thrown at them!

  41. Jwsciencedad +2

    I lived in Boulder, and grew up in SoCal in 70s, but when I saw ads for these gnarly knobby things from the dispensary, I said what are those?? Total science nerd

  42. darthhellokitty

    I legit thought it was about a blind date. The $26 was for movie tickets.

    I thought that until about ten years ago.

  45. darthhellokitty

    My grandmother gave me pot leaf earrings for Christmas when I was a kid, with both of us thinking they were pretty flowers. I don't remember what happened to them; I never wore them.

  48. layrl +5

    So, around 12, I found evidence that my dad was smoking pot, and I was worried that we would all go to jail (this was 30 years ago). My father, when I said “what’s this?” hoping it was not what I thought it was, yelled “You didn’t see that! You’re crazy!” (Which was not great for my mental health, but that’s OT.)

    Later, I found a big glass jar full of pot in the kitchen cupboard. I found an empty laundry detergent box in the garbage, put the jar in it, and pushed it down to the bottom of the garbage, which I assume went to the curb on garbage day with everything else.

    A few days later, my father frantically asked if I knew anything about a jar. I said “I never saw it.”

    I have always held that memory close to my heart.

  49. darthhellokitty

    So, around 12, I found evidence that my dad was smoking pot, and I was worried that we would all go to jail (this was 30 years ago). My father, when I said "what's this?" hoping it was not what I thought it was, yelled "You didn't see that! You're crazy!" (Which was not great for my mental health, but that's OT.)

    Later, I found a big glass jar full of pot in the kitchen cupboard. I found an empty laundry detergent box in the garbage, put the jar in it, and pushed it down to the bottom of the garbage, which I assume went to the curb on garbage day with everything else.

    A few days later, my father frantically asked if I knew anything about a jar. I said "I never saw it."

    I have always held that memory close to my heart.

  50. eliterehabplacementjosh +3

    I knew the Semi-Charmed Kind of Life one, but a lot of these I didn’t catch. Finding a drug or sex reference always catches me off guard. A good, subtle reference puts me into a laughing fit.

  51. Josh D.

    I knew the Semi-Charmed Kind of Life one, but a lot of these I didn't catch. Finding a drug or sex reference always catches me off guard. A good, subtle reference puts me into a laughing fit.

  52. ERP_Tom +2

    Drug references are something to watch out for. You may not be so certain about the future. However, seeking help for your addiction could be the best alternative.