420 All Month: Triangle Mints

After 27 days and 20,000 words dedicated to cannabis and cannabis-related stories, I am going to level with you all, I feel like the well is drying up a bit. Countless customers have asked me how I know so much about not just cannabis in general but all of the strains we sell, and I almost always overly emote a bit and sigh something along the lines of, “Well, I have to smoke a lot of weed, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for my customers.” And then we have a good laugh, and I quickly explain that it’s just a combination of indeed dedicating some of my cannabis use exploring strains and methods of use that I might not otherwise if I were only smoking for me and not for a job, plus I also have this academic background that lends itself well to research methods, and I really am just intensely curious about this plant that we humans have been using for various things for tens of thousands of years and we’re still trying to understand it fully. I like to say that the science on cannabis is an endless rabbit hole that we’re just starting to really fall into fully.

But the main point here is that I smoke a lot of cannabis that I wouldn’t otherwise smoke so that I can either talk about it with customers or – at least this past month – I can write about it. In fact, of the reviews I wrote prior to this month’s marathon, all but two were top 10-20 favorite strains, and even then those other two were strains that stuck out enough that I wanted to write about them on the spot. This month I’ve really had to stretch myself. I was just thinking about this yesterday specifically. I was catching up with some other parents as they were picking their kids up from a slumber party at our house (which went pretty great, if you’re following along with the saga of my non-cannabis life either through snippets here or in person), and by coincidence all of us were teachers, or in my case a recently former teacher. And not only that, we were all the English/Humanities/Creative Writing/Librarian flavor of educators.

The conversation had moved through topics like memoirs, shifting careers within education, and what personally drives our pedagogical practices. As is sometimes the case when you’re in a conversation with people who are obviously better than you at the thing you’re talking about, or are at least more successful at it, I found myself kind of fluffing up my bone fides a bit concerning the legitimacy and value of my work in the cannabis industry.

Something that has made the transition from teacher to budtender/cannabis writer work for me is that it scratches the teacher itch so much more than I had anticipated. It’s one thing to hear in an interview for a job for which you have no immediate experience but the interviewer can see on your resume that you were a teacher that “We take an education-focused approach to our customer service,” and another to actually experience it. The most common feedback for something to improve upon that I had received at work for a while was “Sometimes you still need to move a little quicker with customers.” My supervisors knew what I was spending that time doing (educating), but it’s still a retail business, and not every customer can have a 20 minute tutoring session when there are other customers that need assistance as well. I get that. I’m just inclined to spend as much time with every customer as that customer wants or needs. I firmly believe the ideal scenario for public education is that every student has an individualized learning plan, not just kids in special ed programs. I take that philosophy to work with me now.

So I’m standing around chatting with teaching veterans of 15 and 20+ years, and a creative writing professor who teaches at Ivy League colleges. And I abandoned teaching a few years ago and am now selling weed instead. My inclination to get a bit defensive manifested as a sincere statement on the value that I bring to helping people find the right cannabis for them, and the value that my writing has for me personally, and how I could see the series of stories I’ve been telling being reworked into a memoir, flipping the script as I already have with each individual post, where the cannabis review has not quite become secondary to the story or exploration, but has become the common thread or framework for the stories. And then this morning I checked the word count of all my posts this month, and it was a few hundred over 20,000. I’m not announcing a book right now, but I am thinking about it as an eventuality.

Skip to Recipe, I know, I know. Triangle Mints. Admittedly, I dipped into my archive of notes for this one, found that I had properly stored the remaining flower I had initially brought home a while ago so it was still perfectly good, and I packed a hefty bowl and got to work. I really like this type of bud, with the pale and piney greens, orangey pistils, a medium frost of trichomes, and lumpy shaped but otherwise tidy nugs. There’s always something a little funky with these strains. The flower gave way easily to my fingers and the grinder, and burned very easily and very evenly. The aroma of the flower before smoking is both complex and subtle. Light notes of cheese, flowers, menthol, and sage linger about the edges of a woody and herbal core. It took me longer than expected to tease out all the discrete characteristics. The smoke was very light, with just a touch of buttery mouthfeel, and tasted gently pungent, with notes of menthol lingering from the aroma, and a nutty aftertaste replacing the generic bitterness that most smoke leaves behind.

The high is a lovely daytime high, more lucid and clear-headed than the moderately high THC might imply. I was a bit stoned, but there was a social and creative-feeling aspect to it that kept my mind engaged. I don’t feel like I was distracted, but I did want to flit about between activities to keep my brain moving. The body high was minimal, but slightly calming, and I did get a tiny bit munchy, which further reminded me that this is a better daytime strain than an evening strain. While no Super Lemon Haze or even a Lemon OG Haze, I could see getting some cleaning or organizing done while listening to a thought-provoking or narratively complex podcast or audiobook. Perhaps I should have done so for this post, but I’d like to go back again and try to get as high as I can with Triangle Mints and see where it goes.

Huh. I guess the well wasn’t as dry as I thought. And I’m not even high as I write this. See you all tomorrow.