I wasn’t one of the cool guys when I was in high school.

I don’t recall ever saying, groovy, far out, peace, dig it, out of sight, the fuzz, bread or that’s a downer.You could add the word Man to almost all of these.

I didn’t smoke marijuana.

One of my friend’s older brother was so cool that people called him Groovy or Groove. I called him Tom.

I have seldom called people by their nicknames unless it is a derivative of their name. I love when nicknames are creative, but I never use them unless the person is someone I know well.

At the StarPhoenix, I worked in the sports department many years ago with, among others, Rocky, Nels, Horse, Ozzie and Roundy.

Horse, despite what you might think, got his name because he covered horse racing. Nels is actually Jens. Much of his mail was addressed to Nels Jensen, which wasn’t his first or last name. Ozzie, who is Bob, became Ozzie after he wrote a story in which he quoted a man named Ozzie. I am not sure why Ron was Rocky.

I found out recently why Ralph was Roundy. I first met Ralph in 1977, and now, all these years later, thanks to Ralph’s son Jeff, I know the story.

The StarPhoenix had a softball team. Ralph was known affectionately as the strikeout king. It was affectionate because when a person struck out, he had to buy a round.

Do you see where this is going? Ralph became Ralph the Round Buyer. It was shortened to Roundy. I love that story. I recall getting a drink from Ralph when we watched the Kentucky Derby in his basement many years ago.

Roundy had a walk that was the opposite of someone who is pigeon-toed. It was like a duck. The tracks he left on a golf green, when there was dew on it, were something to behold. I wish he would have walked toward a pond once in a while.

The group playing behind us must have wondered if we had seen the biggest duck in the world walk across the green. Kind of like the legend of Big Foot. This was the legend of Roundy.

I was Hutch. That is pretty simple and logical. I should have put Hutch on my curling sweater. With my skinny body, Hutchinson started at the bottom left and ended on the lower right.

When I started this column, it was going to be about marijuana, and specifically about U.S. President Biden’s plan to pardon people with marijuana possession on their rap sheets.

The most famous dopers of all time were Cheech and Chong. I never found Cheech and Chong particularly funny, but they made a lot of money for a couple of pot heads.

As best as I can find, Chong was the only one of two that went to jail. He had a company named Chong’s Glass. He pleaded guilty in 2003 to distributing drug paraphernalia. He was fined the equivalent of $140,000 and sentenced to nine months in prison. He entered the guilty plea to keep his wife and son from being charged.

Chong has an estimated wealth of $20 million. Cheech has an estimated worth of $30 million. That’s a lot of bread, Man.

One of my marijuana stories involves a trip that two of my friends and I took to Los Angeles in 1972, when we were 18.

We got lost in a suburb of L.A. and stopped to ask for directions. The hippie-like man I asked was standing outside a convenience store.

“I know where I am, Man, and that’s good enough for me.”

I respected that. And eventually we found our way to Anaheim.

I tried marijuana once when it was illegal. Maybe I have told you that before.

A co-worker not named Rocky, Horse, Nels, Ozzie or Roundy grew a plant in his backyard. We called the grower by his first name, but his nickname was something like Snowy Owl. I think that was the name of the Brownie group that his wife led. It was too silly to catch on.

When it was time for harvest, Snowy Owl invited a bunch of us to his house to sample his product. I took a toke or two. It didn’t affect me in any way. Maybe we were smoking a leaf off his elm tree for all I knew.

While marijuana use was legalized in Canada in 2018, the United States hasn’t followed suit at the federal level. Biden’s pardon will affect 6,500 people with federal convictions.

Biden wants the various states to review their policies as well. Understandably, there are many more people with marijuana convictions at the state level.

A 2020 report found that more than 6.1 million people were arrested for marijuana possession between 2010 and 2018 in the United States. In 2018, there were more marijuana-related arrests than for all violent crimes combined.

That seems messed up. Or, rather, that’s not cool.

The fuzz have more important things to do than rounding up cannabis users.

Well, we have mercifully reached the end of this column.

Peace. Man.

• Cam Hutchinson