Math, Meth, Same Diff

I once received feedback on a scene in my coming-of-age comedy script The Cow Ate My Homework in which some little kids make mention of meth (which is followed by, "What? How would he smoke math?").

The person giving me notes thought the scene seemed unrealistic. Granted one of the little kids was also swearing, but I've definitely heard of young kids dropping a few bad words at times (luckily not my own kids -- I curbed my drop-something-s-word habit just in the nick of time to prevent it from catching on with my oldest...).

The meth mention, though, isn't actually unrealistic at all. It was inspired by an awkward conversation I had with my oldest kid (age 5 at the time) one day as we were driving in the car. Here's how it went:

Kid: Mommy, what's meth?

Me: Um, uh, um, math? You know what math is. It's like your math book. Adding numbers, and --

Kid: No, meth. Not math.

Me: Oh, um, uh... It's a thing that, uh, some bad guys do stuff with. Where did you hear that word?

Kid: You said it on the phone when you were talking to Auntie A that one time when there was that really bad smell in our apartment.

(Note: At the time, we lived in a super great apartment complex that I had affectionately nicknamed Hellcrest Estates. It ended up that the chemical smell we were smelling one day was coming from a leaking airsol can on our back porch, but the idea that a neighbor could possibly be cooking meth was definitely not that far-fetched.)

Me: Oh, okay. Yeah, it's nothing you need to worry about.

Kid: What do bad guys do with meth?

Me: Uh, I guess sell it and, uh, smoke it --

Kid: Like a smoker? (his name for cigarettes).

Me: No not like a smoker. Way worse than a smoker. It's reeeeeeeally bad for people and would make them super duper sick.

Kid thinks for a sec.

Kid: I guess you'd better take a lot of Vitamin C's before you smoke meth.

Face-palm emoji.