poppies ... poppies ...

   "I wonder if when Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900 he was an opium addict?"

  "Excuse me?!?!?!  Are you now seeking knowledge from moi?  The foolish Jeopardy aficionado?"

  "Well, you know everything else.  Was he?"

  "I doubt that he was, but he may have experienced the effects of it as a child."

  "Oh, so he was a child addict?"

  "No, that's not what I said.  Or meant.  Opium production from poppies began as early as 3400 BC but by the late 19th century when he wrote the book, it was peaking in the U.S. as laudanum."

  "So he wrote the book when he was a child?"

  "NO!  He wrote it when he was 44 years old.  But he had a great deal of health issues when he was younger, and may have been given laudanum to help him rest.  Especially after having a possible psychogenic heart attack when he was 14."

  "He was psycho?  No wonder there were flying monkeys and oompa loompas."

  "NO!  I don't know why I even try to educate you at times!   And there weren't Oompa Loompas in The Wizard of Oz!   That was Willy Wonka!  There were MUNCHKINS in the Wizard of Oz!"

  "Jeepers.  Don't have a house fall on you over it.  I was just messing with you.  So Baum was a psycho child drug addict?"

  "Argh!  No.  Frank essentially had an anxiety attack at a military boarding school when he got severely punished for daydreaming. and they allowed him to go home after that.  But he likely experienced being given laudanum during his childhood for his health issues and knew how it would make users fall asleep."

  "Hmmm.  I don't know.  Flying monkeys.  Munchkins.  Lollipop Guild.  There might have been some recreational use going on there when he got older."

  "Get out.  Just get out.  You are an uneducated, and unstable dweeb."

  <SLAM>

  "I don't know what he was all bent out of shape about."