Since "Drug Free Zone" signs started popping up I've been wondering about the streets being littered with Paxil, Lovastatin, Advil and Preparation H.
What I want to know is, where are all the Free Drug zones?

Drug Free Zone
by Stephen D. Gross

We were driving home from the airport, Aunt Sadie and I, talking about all the changes that had gone down in the many years since we'd last seen each other. Five hours aboard the 747 widebody had turned her 75-year-old stomach into an Osterizer and although her diabetic condition indicated that she should have eaten something, she couldn't. I'd brought along a Snickers and a couple of tangelos to share with her, but I'd worked up an appetite sitting in traffic and downed them before I got as far south as Candlestick Park. We talked about how happy we were to see one another and how we both missed Mom, and then I remarked that she was looking a bit pale. Mewling miserably in that awful Baltimorean twang of hers, she advised me that she would do well to give herself a shot of insulin "before very long at all, if you please".
I love Aunt Sadie dearly, and truly, I was glad to see her, but God, how I hate that accent. I just can't help it. And when she gets into her suffering mode and starts whining and sighing, and mewling and whimpering, she brings out this ugly side of me that no one should ever have to contend with. But poor Sadie is diabetic, I reminded myself, and I don't want her to go into insulin shock just because her Chesapeake Bay way of speaking makes me irritable. A green sign proclaiming, "Forest Glen, 1/2 mile" looms above the highway, so I heave the old Roadmaster over to the righthand lane and ease on down the off-ramp so Sadie can do her business.
On our left lay the new industrial park and the woods beyond it, so I pointed the Buick's toothsome smile to the right, in the direction of the village and its high school football field with the white-steepled church next to it dominating the neat little row houses snuggled together all warm and secure.
Sadie was not looking well at all, as I turned right on Temple and pulled over to the curb next to a big Sycamore. The ancient beauty was heavy with springtime aroma and there was a pink bicycle leaning against its mottled trunk. Poor Sadie had her insulin out before you could say Brooks Robinson. Her angst was rising and a thread of drool hung unappetizingly, like dental floss, from the corner of her mouth. I was anxious for her to get the messy injection business over with. She hadn't been speaking much but I once again felt the heat of irritation come creeping, and I didn't like it a bit.
By now, Sadie had her orange and black Orioles kerchief wrapped around her arm and was steadying her aim, getting set to 'fix' herself when the owner of the pink bike sauntered past the car and looked over at us. The cocked syringe gleamed as it caught a rose-tinted shaft of light, and at the same moment, the eight-year-old's keen eye, flashing with anger, caught fire.
"Hey lady - what's wrong with you? Don't you know this is a Drug-Free Zone?", she admonished my aunt. With her spike poised, ready to pierce the ancient flesh, Sadie paused and looked at me questioningly. "I'm afraid the kid's right, Sadie. There was a sign back there." Her vision might have become too fuzzed to read it but that's hardly an excuse. After all, it was a Drug-Free Zone. With her strength and logic rapidly leaving her, Sadie again looked at me beseechingly. "Come on lady", wheedled the pig-tailed kid. I know you're trying to do some drugs and I'm sorry, but in this neighborhood, you're just not allowed!" A couple of the eight-year-old's playmates, like jackals on the veldt, caught wind of the victim's onrushing helplessness and moved in for their share of the kill. "Yeah, lady, you ain't allowed to do no drugs 'round here", screeched a tiny redhead with snot bubbles ballooning from one nostril. Sadie's eyes grew wide and her hand started shaking. "Dincha see the sign - ? NO DRUGS ALLOWED!", howled a freckled lad. His dirty cowlick lashed back and forth as he violently shook his head in protest. Sadie lost her grip and the syringe fell to the floor. "NO DRUGS, NO DRUGS!", the trio chanted over and over.
"Well, Sadie, I guess we just picked the wrong neighborhood to stop in", I apologized. Her mouth opened and closed like a halibut in the desert, as she recoiled (rather weakly) in disbelief.
As we left the shade of the huge Sycamore and pulled into traffic I peripherally saw the whites of Aunt Sadie's eyes as she collapsed in a doughy heap on the Buick's wide floorboard.
The pile of ashes left after we had her cremated fit into a neat little container marked "Cajun Spices" that had been sitting around empty since Thanksgiving. Gloria was going to throw it out but I knew we'd be able to use it for something. I felt bad that Sadie and I didn't get to visit with each other longer than we had but the sign clearly informed us that we were in a "Drug Free Zone", and you can't just go around bending the law whenever you feel like it. Wherever Aunt Sadie is (I think she's still on the spice rack in the kitchen), I'm sure she understands.