Tight = drunk

[James Harbeck]

>Eh, I know them both and I'm 26 and from Edmonton, AB (though that is
>the "Texas of the North" ;) ).
>
I grew up in southern Alberta and lived in Edmonton for four years
and I certainly knew "tight" for drunk, though it seems to me that I
more often encountered it in reading and popular entertainments that
in the speech of my peers. We used to use pissed, hammered, smashed,
and occasionally wrecked. Bombed was a word that seemed more of a
slightly previous generation.

But in Banff in the early 1980s, we were more interested in getting
stoned -- meaning smoking spliff (tobacco plus hash), usually, though
sometimes we actually had some weed to roll. We got drunk more often,
for sure (and we did use the term "drunk" often enough, too, but it
was more of a bald-on-record term, almost clinical), but cooking
blackum (smoking hash, which we also did by hot-knifing, which was
considerably facilitated by the recently invented two-litre plastic
bottles, which could be converted into hooters) was more of the taboo
thrill. (Eventually I realized I hated being stoned and have stuck
with alcohol ever since. But, ah, youth.)

James Harbeck.

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