The nickname stayed with you

Imagine lunch with friends you have known for years. You have found a Sunday and a place where everyone fits. One arrives late; another will have to leave early. At first there is catching up to do. By the main course, you are interrupting each other just as you used to.

Coffee arrives. You ask for a cortado.

“Give this one something else.”

You laugh. You know that voice and where the joke comes from. You may not have smoked for months, you may smoke less, or you may still smoke as much and be starting to question it. You do not feel like explaining while the plates are being cleared. The cortado is fine.

But something stays with you. You have asked about jobs, children and house moves. “The stoner” walked in without being asked.

The pleasure of coming back

A nickname can bring back a whole period at once. The car you squeezed into, the music the same person always played, the afternoons that stretched on because nobody had to collect anyone.

Those groups handed out jobs easily. If you could get a car, you drove. If you knew how to roll, you rolled. A few Saturdays were enough for the position to seem like yours.

There was affection too. “The stoner” might be the one who listened, found the right record or knew how to be there without filling every silence. Returning to that table could give you back something you had missed. You do not have to want to let go of all of it.

The awkward part comes when you try to talk about something happening now and someone replies with a story from back then. Yes, the story is funny. But you were about to say something else.

The role we help keep alive

We rarely carry just one label. The stoner may also be the keen cook, the calm one or the one always planning something. We recognise ourselves in that mixture. Part comes from the group; part we have built ourselves.

Sometimes it suits us. “You know what I’m like” can express trust and also leave a question unasked. If you have been the one bringing the weed for years, arriving with it barely draws attention. It is expected. It may be what you want. You may not even have asked yourself today.

My own story included breaks lasting months, and some lasting a year or a little longer. I wrote Abre los ojos through those breaks and returns to smoking. If I sum myself up as “a stoner for thirty years”, the attempts, doubts and things I was learning disappear. Even when telling my own story, I can leave out things that matter.

The character keeps you company when you are alone too. You may fear that stopping will cost you your humour, your music or a way of being that feels like yours. For a long time, they came together. It is hard to imagine what will remain if you change one part.

Acknowledging the good in that life leaves room to look at how you are now. Having enjoyed smoking does not settle how much you want to smoke today. A name that makes you feel among your own people does not oblige you to keep doing everything the group associates with it.

This works both ways. Perhaps you still expect the shy one to stay quiet or the friend who organised everything to find another date. You gave them the role years ago. Perhaps you have not asked them either.

After the joke

Back to the coffee. You can let the comment pass. You can also say you have not smoked for a while, that you are trying a break, or simply that you are tired of that joke today. You do not have to bring everyone up to date on thirty years of life between two teaspoons.

Your friend may listen, be surprised or make another joke because they do not know what to say next. One clumsy remark does not tell the whole story of a friendship. If they keep going, you can ask them to stop.

Perhaps there will then be a chance to return to what you were going to say. That change at work, something you are excited about, a difficult stretch. And to ask how things are going for them, without filling in the answer from memory.

The next story you tell together can still be a new one.