My good blog-friend Bijoux wrote a post a while back about her aversion for dogs, which jogged my memory banks for a story or two or three from my own young life (doesn't everything?). . .
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In theory, I like dogs; I really do - loyalty and obedience, and all that (and, as a father of eight human children, I appreciate obedience where I can get it. . .) But my actual history with those of the canine persuasion is a good deal more, um, checkered.
One of my earliest canine memories goes back to when I was 2 or 3 years old, when a dog bit me on my hand. I remember almost nothing about it (including anything I might or might not have done to provoke the critter), except my crying, and my mom washing my hand in the bathroom sink. After that, I vaguely recall being a bit more fearful of dogs than the average, but thankfully, it hasn't carried through my whole life, by any means.
When I was in high school, my best friend had a dog - a fat little beagle/basset/dachshund whose stubby legs weren't long enough to keep his corpulent belly off the floor, and whom the family had dubbed 'Hippo' (I think his actual name was 'Tiffy', or something like that, but my buddy only ever called him 'Hippo', so Hippo he was, as far as I was concerned). Hippo was one of those 'doorbell dogs' who came running to the door in full threatening bark-mode whenever the doorbell rang. If someone was expected, and coming to their house for the first time, my friend would often say, just before opening the door, "No! Down, Hippo! Don't kill!" thus leaving the arriving guest a second or so to contemplate on the words 'hippo' and 'kill'. Then he'd open the door, and the guest would collapse in laughter (or relief) at the thought of this little sliding ball of pudge inflicting any harm on anything.
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I'd sorta like to be 'dog people', but we really aren't. When 1F was a toddler, we got a little black lab puppy, and I'm pretty sure we ruined the poor thing, just being overly harsh with it, and making him timid. By the time we sent him back to the animal shelter, his snout had broken out in puppy-zits, and we were looking at an amazingly hefty vet bill to get them treated.
We did get one solid benefit from that poor little dog, though - he taught 1F not to go into the street. She had just learned to walk around the time we got the dog, and she was enjoying the independence that bipedal mobility afforded her. So we were training her and the dog to stay out of the street roughly simultaneously. So when the dog would drop his paws over the edge of the curb, we'd swat him with the proverbial rolled-up newspaper. The dog wasn't too bright, and he ended up on the receiving end of quite a few swats. 1F, though, was a clever girl, and she saw what happened to the dog when he went in the street, and she reasoned, plainly enough that, if you go into street, Mom and Dad will whack you; and she wanted no part of that for herself. We never had an issue with our daughter running into the street - she could run on ahead of us by 50 yards, and when she got to the curb, she'd stop on a dime and wait for us. So, you know, there's that. . .
I've spoken frequently about my bicycling hobby, and anyone who rides very many miles at all on a bicycle will sooner or later be chased by a dog. There was one dog, whose house was toward the end of one of my regular rides, so I was usually a bit tired by the time I was riding past his house. This dog was smart. Devious, even. One of the first times he came after me, he was hiding under the porch, and I, having no clue that I should even be concerned about his presence, was riding along, minding my own business, when out of nowhere, this black-brown streak of noise and teeth was sprinting across the lawn, and in no time, he was at my heels, and I was in full-panicked sprint mode. He chased me for a hundred yards or so, then trotted back to his porch, content in his own mind that he'd taken care of such threat as I posed to his master's security, while I waited for my adrenaline levels to return to semi-normal. After that, virtually every time I rode past that house, he'd run on me, coming from a different angle every time. One time, I rode onto his stretch of the road, vigilantly scanning the left side of the road, where his house was, when he ambushed me from the right. Damn thing. . .
A riding buddy eventually showed me how to use my frame-mounted pump to great dog-proofing effect. When I'd be chased by a dog, I'd unclip my pump and just point it at the dog. A few 'hunting-type' dogs would take it for a gun, and immediately back off. If the beast persisted, it looked to him like a two-foot-long stick, and he'd guage his distance to stay just out of range. I'd raise my arm to swing the 'stick' at him, but the pump had another foot or so of length tied up in the pump-stroke. So when I'd swing it, it would get longer as it swung, and often as not, crack the animal across his snout. A few whacks like that, and they didn't chase quite so threateningly anymore. One time, in the fall, I was riding past a house, and the owner was in the yard, raking his leaves, when his dog bolted after me. As I sprinted for the sake of the continued structural integrity of my ankle, the owner yelled at me. "Do me a favor!" he called. "Kick him right in the head!" Well, OK, since you asked nice, and all. . .
Another time, I was out on a ride, and maybe 15 miles from home, or so, when a long-legged dog came loping up alongside me, and just ran along with me, at an easy gait, for mile after mile. When we got to be a few miles from where he'd first joined me, I began to get concerned that he was getting to be quite a ways from home, so I broke into a sprint, to try and lose him, but nothing doing; that dog could simply outrun me, if I put it to the test. So I just kept riding, and the dog loped along, five feet or so off the roadway, as if he thought we were riding buddies, or somesuch. Finally, we got back into the city where I live. I rode up over a steep freeway overpass, and down into the city neighborhood; I had maybe another half-mile to go before I was home, when suddenly, my canine companion peeled off and disappeared into the neighborhood, never to be seen again. I'll never know if he was running away from home, or back to it, but he just buddied-up with me for 15 miles, about an hour's riding.
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When our kids were small, we had several, uh, 'adventures' with neighborhood dogs. At one point, our next-door neighbors 'inherited' a dog from a deceased relative. It turned out that the dog had been rather severely abused by his previous owner, and in the course of it, he developed quite a mean streak. His favorite trick was to hide behind trees (or under porches, or wherever was handy), and then charge after an unsuspecting child, fangs bared, barking loudly and aggressively. One time, he took after 1F when she was maybe 6 or 7, on her way to school in the morning, and scared her to where she had to come back home and change her clothes. I had a talk with my neighbor, and the dog was more effectively constrained after that.
Another time, when 1F was maybe 2 years old, we were visiting friends of ours who lived out in the country, and they had a collie who loved to run in their fields, but was getting on in years, and a little cranky. We had actually ridden our bikes out to their place (towing 1F along in a little trailer), maybe 30 miles or so one way, and we were getting ready to get back on our bikes for the ride home. 1F bent down to pet the doggie good-bye, and the dog gave her a nip full on her face. It wasn't a serious, angry, I-mean-to-tear-you-up bite, it was just an annoyed, 'leave-me-alone-kid' nip. But it left four little puncture wounds, two on each cheek. When I heard her crying, and saw blood on her face, you can well believe that my paternal protective instincts kicked in, and I was all over that dog, kicking it again and again, while our friends' kids cried, "Daddy, he's killing our dog!" Quite a scene. Perhaps amazingly, our friendship survived. Jen got 1F cleaned up, and she was fine, if rather seriously frightened. I think our friends had to have the dog put down not long afterward. . .
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But the story that prompts the title of this post happened a few years later. We were still living in the same house, the one just previous to our present house. The block we lived on, and a block or two in any direction, was pretty dense with school-age children, and in the summer months, there would be any number of games going on in the street, pretty much from one end to the other. Somewhere in there, a family moved in around the corner from us, and they had a rambunctious and aggressive dog that they were either disinclined or incompetent to do much about controlling. In the first couple weeks after they moved in, there were several episodes of the dog breaking loose on a warm, sunny afternoon, when there were a few dozen kids playing in the street. The dog woud go barking and running around, threatening the kids, and throwing our little corner of urban serenity into a tizzy. After the dog had run amok for a few minutes, its owner would saunter around the corner, calling its name, and, when she finally saw her dog, she would exasperatedly try to get the dog to come to her, which, of course, the dog was disinclined to do, and it took several more minutes before the dog could finally be brought to heel, and order restored.
After a few such episodes, a couple other neighborhood dads and I urged our new neighbor to get a better handle on controlling her dog, and we were told, in so many words, to pound sand. So I called the city's Animal Control desk, and informed them of the situation. I also asked what I, as a citizen, was within my rights to do, as far as threats to my own person, or those of my children; I was told that, if the dog attacked any of us on our own property, I could take whatever measures I deemed necessary to stop the dog from attacking. I thanked the person and hung up.
Sure enough, within a couple days, the kids were out playing in the street again, and here came our canine aggressor, right on schedule. I went into my house and got my baseball bat, then stood on my sidewalk whistling, and calling, "Here, boy!" The dog stopped and looked at me, not sure what he should do. For several seconds, he wavered between coming toward me, or resuming his chasing of the neighborhood kids. He took a couple steps in my direction just as his owner came sauntering around the corner, as she always did. When she saw me standing in front of my house with a baseball bat, she began to shriek at her dog to come to her, which only confused the dog even more, but it did give her time to run to her dog and rescue him from evil me and my baseball bat. As she led him back home, she directed some choice words my way. To which I simply said, "Take care of your dog; don't let him chase our kids, or you will lose him."
And you know, things were much better after that. . .
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Another Midweek Miscellany
Too lazy for a real post, but a few semi-notable items. . .
Please join me in wishing 6F a very happy 17th birthday today. Altho, I don't recall her ever asking my permission to be 17. . . You know what I mean? . . . And the way she looks is WAY beyond compare (considering who her mother is, how could it be otherwise?). . . But you know, 'My heart went boom', when she left Jen's womb, and I held her tiny hand in mine. . .
Rode 32 miles Sunday afternoon in absolutely hellacious wind - 18mph, gusting higher. As I approached the halfway point, I was starting to run out of gas from the exertion of pedalling 16 miles into the gale (note to would-be cyclists - it's always a good idea, when wind will be a factor in your ride, to go out into the wind, and let it push you home; I've done it the other way, and it's brutal). Once I turned the corner, though, the riding got much more pleasant. Over 300 miles for the season already; I'm typically hoping for 200 or so by the end of April (see what a mild winter, and 80-degree March weekends, can do?)
Jen and I saw 'October Baby' last weekend. Inspiring story. Check it out, if you're so inclined. . .
Birth-mom will be visiting for a week, arriving this Friday. It's always great to see her. Such a blessing, that we've built such a close relationship, and that she's fully integrated into our family. Birth-mother reunions don't often go quite as well as ours has. . .
So you'll understand if, from time to time [especially when I look at my wife and our marriage, or the family I was raised in, or the kids that are literally made from Jen and me, or the aforementioned birth-mother reunion, or the rich community life, and the friendships we've made over the years], I sorta shake my head and wonder how it is that I, of all people, have had so many rich, wonderful things in my life. Not that we haven't had any sorrows; we have. Oh, yes, we have. But, next to the blessings, they just look really small. . .
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(add, April 25)
In case anyone is interested. . .
Here is a 10-minute clip from a speech by the young woman (okay, she's 35) on whose story October Baby is loosely based. Try telling her that her life isn't worth living. . .
Please join me in wishing 6F a very happy 17th birthday today. Altho, I don't recall her ever asking my permission to be 17. . . You know what I mean? . . . And the way she looks is WAY beyond compare (considering who her mother is, how could it be otherwise?). . . But you know, 'My heart went boom', when she left Jen's womb, and I held her tiny hand in mine. . .
Rode 32 miles Sunday afternoon in absolutely hellacious wind - 18mph, gusting higher. As I approached the halfway point, I was starting to run out of gas from the exertion of pedalling 16 miles into the gale (note to would-be cyclists - it's always a good idea, when wind will be a factor in your ride, to go out into the wind, and let it push you home; I've done it the other way, and it's brutal). Once I turned the corner, though, the riding got much more pleasant. Over 300 miles for the season already; I'm typically hoping for 200 or so by the end of April (see what a mild winter, and 80-degree March weekends, can do?)
Jen and I saw 'October Baby' last weekend. Inspiring story. Check it out, if you're so inclined. . .
Birth-mom will be visiting for a week, arriving this Friday. It's always great to see her. Such a blessing, that we've built such a close relationship, and that she's fully integrated into our family. Birth-mother reunions don't often go quite as well as ours has. . .
So you'll understand if, from time to time [especially when I look at my wife and our marriage, or the family I was raised in, or the kids that are literally made from Jen and me, or the aforementioned birth-mother reunion, or the rich community life, and the friendships we've made over the years], I sorta shake my head and wonder how it is that I, of all people, have had so many rich, wonderful things in my life. Not that we haven't had any sorrows; we have. Oh, yes, we have. But, next to the blessings, they just look really small. . .
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(add, April 25)
In case anyone is interested. . .
Here is a 10-minute clip from a speech by the young woman (okay, she's 35) on whose story October Baby is loosely based. Try telling her that her life isn't worth living. . .
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Up In Smoke
I have never really been a smoker, of substances either legal or illegal. But I want to be utterly clear that I make no claim to any particular virtue of my own, for that particular transgressive lack in my Curriculum Vitae. Back in the days of the Clinton White House, I might have been the only US citizen (or heck, the only living person on earth, for all I know) who could give at least a partial nod of recognition to our erstwhile president's claim that, while he may have lit up a fatty or two back in the day, he didn't inhale. . .
Folks under 40 or so, who have lived their whole lives under the anti-smoking regime, really don't have any way to understand what it was like back in the '50s and early '60s (which were really just the latter part of the '50s; 'The 60s' of popular imagination really happened between about 1965-74; but that's another discussion for another time), when smoking was widely perceived to be hip, cool and sophisticated. Every talk-show host on TV had a cigarette in his hand, to lend an air of sophistication to the conversational art. Heck, there were even candy cigarettes for the kids (like after-dinner mints, rolled into a stick; they even had one end dyed red, so you could pretend that it was lit), so we could practice looking cool while holding a cigarette (the girls held them daintily between their fingertips, while the guys held them further down in the 'crotch' between their first two fingers).
My own extended family was a pretty smoky crew. I don't remember ever seeing either my grandmother or grandfather smoke, but two of my uncles were very dedicated cigar-smokers, and my dad also went through various periods during which he appreciated a good cigar (actually, as I think back on it, I don't think the cigar in question even had to be all that good. . .). One uncle in particular, was very fond of his cigars; so once, when our family took a trip to Mackinac Island, I bought one of those giant novelty cigars - a foot long and at least an inch in diameter - to give him as a Christmas gift (he told me that he actually lit it and took a few puffs from it, but that, even by his standards, it was pretty awful; but he appreciated the thought). And most of my aunts could often be found with a cigarette pinched between their fingertips. The holiday gatherings when the whole extended family got together were smoke-filled affairs, and no-one thought anything of it.
(As an aside, some years ago, I had to put a new furnace in one of my previous houses, and the old ductwork was wrapped in asbestos. So I did a bunch of research on just what risks I was exposing myself to with the asbestos, and how I should handle it, and one of the sources said that, even if the asbestos in question was 'friable' (ie, flaking off), the exposure from a small job like mine was roughly equivalent to spending a couple hours in a smoke-filled room. And I had spent many, many hours in smoke-filled rooms in my formative years, so I worried a lot less about the asbestos thing after that. But just to be clear, we still took the proper precautions - wetted down the surface, wrapped the ducts in plastic wrap, and wore masks.)
My parents were more ambivalent smokers than the rest of the extended family, I think. At least, they would quit from time to time. I think that my dad had essentially quit smoking for good by the time he married my stepmother (I feel it more-or-less necessary to be clear that I refer to her as my 'stepmother' just for purposes of clarity; I've never called her anything other than 'Mom'), although I do remember him going through one final cigar fling for a couple years when I was in high school.
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Dad's remarriage was the near occasion of my own first pass at smoking, around the time I was ten years old, or so. My step-brother (again, I've only ever called him my 'brother') was roughly the same age as me, and I would occasionally tag along with him, to play ball in the summertime, or whatever. It was after one of these summertime ball games that he and I huddled together in the shadow of the school whose ball field we had used, and he asked me if I wanted to learn how to smoke. I nodded, and he produced a pack of cigarettes and popped one out for me. He showed me how to hold it between my lips, then how to strike a match from the little book of matches (you don't find so many of those anymore, either), and puff on the cigarette while holding the match to it, to draw enough air to light the cigarette. I managed to actually get the thing lit, all by myself, without any help, which gave me a sense of satisfaction, that I was on my way to becoming a grown-up. Then I puffed on it a few times, actually burning the tobacco, and producing an ash on the end of the cigarette. Cool! This smoking thing was really pretty easy!
Then my brother, with an air of disdain, told me that what I was doing didn't really constitute 'smoking'; in order to actually smoke the cigarette, I needed to inhale the smoke. A silent 'uh-oh' passed through the far back corners of my brain. Something about inhaling smoke just didn't seem like it would be pleasant at all, and I kind-of looked at my cigarette warily, like, 'I don't think I'm gonna like this'. But, unpleasantness be damned! Sophisticated grown-up-hood was at stake here. So I bravely took a deep drag on my cigarette, and with smoke filling my mouth, I inhaled.
And at that point, either God's mercy, or my own tragically-flawed biochemistry (or, you know, both at the same time) kicked in. The smoke travelled roughly two centimeters down my windpipe, and caused acute irritation to my bronchial lining, producing an effect that could be roughly described as, "Get that shit the HELL outta here!" I coughed, I choked, I gagged, I broke a few thousand blood-vessels in my face, and damn-near gave myself a mild stroke, trying to clear my airway of the offending particles. I tried again, figuring that, like coffee (which was my other marker of 'grown-up-hood'), I just had to persevere until I figured out how to like it. But to no avail. I inhaled a second time, and a third, and probably a few more than that, but the result never changed - every introduction of smoke particles to my trachea was met with violent spasms of rejection from my body. Eventually, I figured that a ten-year-old like myself could only give himself so many mild strokes in a given day, and I gave up.
I tried again a month or so later, with the same result. And a couple more times in subsequent years, when I was 12 or 13, and I don't think that any actual smoke particles ever actually got into my actual lungs - every single attempt ended with me coughing and choking, and none of the smoke actually, you know, inside my body.
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Fast-forward to my high-school years. I was probably 15 or 16 when my brother and a few of my friends started talking about how cool it was to smoke weed, and the mellow buzz to be had thereby. Now, by the early '70s, we'd had ample exposure from our parents, schools and churches, to the idea that marijuana was a Very Bad Thing. But it is perhaps a measure of the perversity of the thought-processes of 15/16-year-olds that, when our parents, schools and churches said, 'Very Bad Thing', we processed that information as 'Unutterably Cool'; I mean, heck - the Beatles had all gotten high, and no-one was cooler than them. (It was of course, also possible that we processed some of the dire warnings from Those In Authority as 'Way Overblown'; on the other hand, we also thought that we were Freaking Invulnerable, so it is at least an open conversation as to who was In Touch With Reality to a greater/lesser degree).
So at one point, I decided that I at least wanted to check out the whole 'Weed' thing, just to see what was so doggone cool about it, after all. I gave my brother $5, and he brought me back a baggie full of chopped dried herbs. He gave me one of his rolling papers, and showed me how to roll a joint, which was kind-of exotically cool - rolling your own, and all that. Then he told me it was just like smoking a cigarette. And the same 'Oh shit' voice that I'd heard five years before, went rattling around the back of my brain again. I took a couple of tentative puffs, and my brother impatiently explained to me that, look, if you want to get the buzz, you have to inhale. And just to drive the point home, he explained that, to maximize the buzz, you wanted to draw more air, making a hissing sound as you took a pull on the joint, and then hold your breath, to let the smoke swirl around your lungs for as long as possible (which, I have to admit, did provide me with good training for use of an Albuterol inhaler, years down the road). Now I had a sinking feeling that this was another Marker of Hipness that was just gonna go by the wayside for me, but, you know, I was at least gonna go down swinging, so I took a deep draw on my homespun little doobie, and strove mightily to induct the smoke into my lungs.
But alas, my 15-year-old lungs were no more tolerant of marijuana smoke particles than my 10-year-old lungs had been of tobacco smoke particles. I coughed, I choked, I gagged, and darn-near puked, so violently did my lungs reject the smoke. My shoulders sagged, and I knew that I'd been defeated, betrayed by my own biochemistry (and, you know, God's mercy; although I had really been hoping to have a different kind of 'Cosmic Experience', if only God had been agreeable). I made a few more half-hearted attempts to experience the elusive Buzz, but I could never manage to actually ingest smoke into my lungs. Probably the closest I came was during my first year or so of college (in the early 70s, 'The Sixties' were just winding down), when, on Friday nights, the dope smoke hung like a cloud in the hall, somewhere around eye-level; it's possible I inadvertently experienced a 'second-hand high', but it wasn't sufficiently 'cosmic' for me to actually, you know, notice it. . .
So yeah - I'm definitely down with the whole, 'Yeah, but I didn't inhale' thing. Me and Bill, we understand each other. . .
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In my college years, and into my very-early-married years, I made a couple more passes at smoking, but in ways that didn't bring inhaling into play. In college, a few of my friends took up cigar-smoking; and, as fate would have it, there was a very good little tobacco shop in our college town. So, every so often, for whatever occasion we deemed suitably 'special' (a buddy's wedding, or something of that order), we'd pop into the smoke shop and pick up one or two $3 cigars to enjoy with our beer (and I will admit that there is something very cool and mellow about conversation over beer and cigars). But cigar-smoking was always a 'special-occasion' kind of thing for us, and never remotely rose to the level of a 'habit'. And I didn't have to inhale.
When Jen and I were still pretty newly-married, I picked up The Lord of the Rings for the first time, and I'm sure that I remarked to her on more than one occasion that Tolkien portrayed pipe-smoking in a very cool, mellow, almost romantic, way. And so Jen, eager as she was to please her young husband, gave me my first pipe as a gift (I don't recall if it was a birthday gift, or what; but she gave me my first pipe, a really nice briar, with a pearlescent mouthpiece), along with a bag of very nicely-aromatic vanilla-blend tobacco from the smoke shop. And so, for a couple of years, I was a very occasional pipe smoker - once or twice a week, at the very most (and of course, you don't inhale pipe smoke, either, so it was perfect).
I enjoyed several things about smoking a pipe - the smell of the (unburned) tobacco; the smoke swirling around my head (somehow, cigar and cigarette smoke doesn't swirl around one's head; or at least, it doesn't conjure up those images in quite the same way pipe smoke does), like something out of The Night Before Christmas; even the little 'Pipe Culture' bits, like tamping the bowl, and cleaning it afterwards. But I could never really tolerate the taste in my mouth the morning after a night of smoking - someone has likened it to the Russian Army marching through your mouth, and I can't really quibble with that simile. So, after a couple years, once the 'romance' of pipe-smoking had worn off sufficiently, I decided that the charred/ashy aftertaste just wasn't worth it anymore. And, for all intents and purposes, I've never smoked since. Oh, if someone offers me a cigar on a Special Occasion, I'll smoke it with him, for comradeship and the honoring of the occasion. But I'm not any kind of Smoker; and I've never been any more than a failed Toker. I'll happily cop to 'Joker', though. . .
And you know. . . I don't really feel like I've missed all that much. . .
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I posted another telling of parts of this story, on a somewhat different spin, a couple years ago, on my old blog. So, you can check it out (and maybe get some extra texture) (Hey, is that another ex-Beatle reference?)
Folks under 40 or so, who have lived their whole lives under the anti-smoking regime, really don't have any way to understand what it was like back in the '50s and early '60s (which were really just the latter part of the '50s; 'The 60s' of popular imagination really happened between about 1965-74; but that's another discussion for another time), when smoking was widely perceived to be hip, cool and sophisticated. Every talk-show host on TV had a cigarette in his hand, to lend an air of sophistication to the conversational art. Heck, there were even candy cigarettes for the kids (like after-dinner mints, rolled into a stick; they even had one end dyed red, so you could pretend that it was lit), so we could practice looking cool while holding a cigarette (the girls held them daintily between their fingertips, while the guys held them further down in the 'crotch' between their first two fingers).
My own extended family was a pretty smoky crew. I don't remember ever seeing either my grandmother or grandfather smoke, but two of my uncles were very dedicated cigar-smokers, and my dad also went through various periods during which he appreciated a good cigar (actually, as I think back on it, I don't think the cigar in question even had to be all that good. . .). One uncle in particular, was very fond of his cigars; so once, when our family took a trip to Mackinac Island, I bought one of those giant novelty cigars - a foot long and at least an inch in diameter - to give him as a Christmas gift (he told me that he actually lit it and took a few puffs from it, but that, even by his standards, it was pretty awful; but he appreciated the thought). And most of my aunts could often be found with a cigarette pinched between their fingertips. The holiday gatherings when the whole extended family got together were smoke-filled affairs, and no-one thought anything of it.
(As an aside, some years ago, I had to put a new furnace in one of my previous houses, and the old ductwork was wrapped in asbestos. So I did a bunch of research on just what risks I was exposing myself to with the asbestos, and how I should handle it, and one of the sources said that, even if the asbestos in question was 'friable' (ie, flaking off), the exposure from a small job like mine was roughly equivalent to spending a couple hours in a smoke-filled room. And I had spent many, many hours in smoke-filled rooms in my formative years, so I worried a lot less about the asbestos thing after that. But just to be clear, we still took the proper precautions - wetted down the surface, wrapped the ducts in plastic wrap, and wore masks.)
My parents were more ambivalent smokers than the rest of the extended family, I think. At least, they would quit from time to time. I think that my dad had essentially quit smoking for good by the time he married my stepmother (I feel it more-or-less necessary to be clear that I refer to her as my 'stepmother' just for purposes of clarity; I've never called her anything other than 'Mom'), although I do remember him going through one final cigar fling for a couple years when I was in high school.
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Dad's remarriage was the near occasion of my own first pass at smoking, around the time I was ten years old, or so. My step-brother (again, I've only ever called him my 'brother') was roughly the same age as me, and I would occasionally tag along with him, to play ball in the summertime, or whatever. It was after one of these summertime ball games that he and I huddled together in the shadow of the school whose ball field we had used, and he asked me if I wanted to learn how to smoke. I nodded, and he produced a pack of cigarettes and popped one out for me. He showed me how to hold it between my lips, then how to strike a match from the little book of matches (you don't find so many of those anymore, either), and puff on the cigarette while holding the match to it, to draw enough air to light the cigarette. I managed to actually get the thing lit, all by myself, without any help, which gave me a sense of satisfaction, that I was on my way to becoming a grown-up. Then I puffed on it a few times, actually burning the tobacco, and producing an ash on the end of the cigarette. Cool! This smoking thing was really pretty easy!
Then my brother, with an air of disdain, told me that what I was doing didn't really constitute 'smoking'; in order to actually smoke the cigarette, I needed to inhale the smoke. A silent 'uh-oh' passed through the far back corners of my brain. Something about inhaling smoke just didn't seem like it would be pleasant at all, and I kind-of looked at my cigarette warily, like, 'I don't think I'm gonna like this'. But, unpleasantness be damned! Sophisticated grown-up-hood was at stake here. So I bravely took a deep drag on my cigarette, and with smoke filling my mouth, I inhaled.
And at that point, either God's mercy, or my own tragically-flawed biochemistry (or, you know, both at the same time) kicked in. The smoke travelled roughly two centimeters down my windpipe, and caused acute irritation to my bronchial lining, producing an effect that could be roughly described as, "Get that shit the HELL outta here!" I coughed, I choked, I gagged, I broke a few thousand blood-vessels in my face, and damn-near gave myself a mild stroke, trying to clear my airway of the offending particles. I tried again, figuring that, like coffee (which was my other marker of 'grown-up-hood'), I just had to persevere until I figured out how to like it. But to no avail. I inhaled a second time, and a third, and probably a few more than that, but the result never changed - every introduction of smoke particles to my trachea was met with violent spasms of rejection from my body. Eventually, I figured that a ten-year-old like myself could only give himself so many mild strokes in a given day, and I gave up.
I tried again a month or so later, with the same result. And a couple more times in subsequent years, when I was 12 or 13, and I don't think that any actual smoke particles ever actually got into my actual lungs - every single attempt ended with me coughing and choking, and none of the smoke actually, you know, inside my body.
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Fast-forward to my high-school years. I was probably 15 or 16 when my brother and a few of my friends started talking about how cool it was to smoke weed, and the mellow buzz to be had thereby. Now, by the early '70s, we'd had ample exposure from our parents, schools and churches, to the idea that marijuana was a Very Bad Thing. But it is perhaps a measure of the perversity of the thought-processes of 15/16-year-olds that, when our parents, schools and churches said, 'Very Bad Thing', we processed that information as 'Unutterably Cool'; I mean, heck - the Beatles had all gotten high, and no-one was cooler than them. (It was of course, also possible that we processed some of the dire warnings from Those In Authority as 'Way Overblown'; on the other hand, we also thought that we were Freaking Invulnerable, so it is at least an open conversation as to who was In Touch With Reality to a greater/lesser degree).
So at one point, I decided that I at least wanted to check out the whole 'Weed' thing, just to see what was so doggone cool about it, after all. I gave my brother $5, and he brought me back a baggie full of chopped dried herbs. He gave me one of his rolling papers, and showed me how to roll a joint, which was kind-of exotically cool - rolling your own, and all that. Then he told me it was just like smoking a cigarette. And the same 'Oh shit' voice that I'd heard five years before, went rattling around the back of my brain again. I took a couple of tentative puffs, and my brother impatiently explained to me that, look, if you want to get the buzz, you have to inhale. And just to drive the point home, he explained that, to maximize the buzz, you wanted to draw more air, making a hissing sound as you took a pull on the joint, and then hold your breath, to let the smoke swirl around your lungs for as long as possible (which, I have to admit, did provide me with good training for use of an Albuterol inhaler, years down the road). Now I had a sinking feeling that this was another Marker of Hipness that was just gonna go by the wayside for me, but, you know, I was at least gonna go down swinging, so I took a deep draw on my homespun little doobie, and strove mightily to induct the smoke into my lungs.
But alas, my 15-year-old lungs were no more tolerant of marijuana smoke particles than my 10-year-old lungs had been of tobacco smoke particles. I coughed, I choked, I gagged, and darn-near puked, so violently did my lungs reject the smoke. My shoulders sagged, and I knew that I'd been defeated, betrayed by my own biochemistry (and, you know, God's mercy; although I had really been hoping to have a different kind of 'Cosmic Experience', if only God had been agreeable). I made a few more half-hearted attempts to experience the elusive Buzz, but I could never manage to actually ingest smoke into my lungs. Probably the closest I came was during my first year or so of college (in the early 70s, 'The Sixties' were just winding down), when, on Friday nights, the dope smoke hung like a cloud in the hall, somewhere around eye-level; it's possible I inadvertently experienced a 'second-hand high', but it wasn't sufficiently 'cosmic' for me to actually, you know, notice it. . .
So yeah - I'm definitely down with the whole, 'Yeah, but I didn't inhale' thing. Me and Bill, we understand each other. . .
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In my college years, and into my very-early-married years, I made a couple more passes at smoking, but in ways that didn't bring inhaling into play. In college, a few of my friends took up cigar-smoking; and, as fate would have it, there was a very good little tobacco shop in our college town. So, every so often, for whatever occasion we deemed suitably 'special' (a buddy's wedding, or something of that order), we'd pop into the smoke shop and pick up one or two $3 cigars to enjoy with our beer (and I will admit that there is something very cool and mellow about conversation over beer and cigars). But cigar-smoking was always a 'special-occasion' kind of thing for us, and never remotely rose to the level of a 'habit'. And I didn't have to inhale.
When Jen and I were still pretty newly-married, I picked up The Lord of the Rings for the first time, and I'm sure that I remarked to her on more than one occasion that Tolkien portrayed pipe-smoking in a very cool, mellow, almost romantic, way. And so Jen, eager as she was to please her young husband, gave me my first pipe as a gift (I don't recall if it was a birthday gift, or what; but she gave me my first pipe, a really nice briar, with a pearlescent mouthpiece), along with a bag of very nicely-aromatic vanilla-blend tobacco from the smoke shop. And so, for a couple of years, I was a very occasional pipe smoker - once or twice a week, at the very most (and of course, you don't inhale pipe smoke, either, so it was perfect).
I enjoyed several things about smoking a pipe - the smell of the (unburned) tobacco; the smoke swirling around my head (somehow, cigar and cigarette smoke doesn't swirl around one's head; or at least, it doesn't conjure up those images in quite the same way pipe smoke does), like something out of The Night Before Christmas; even the little 'Pipe Culture' bits, like tamping the bowl, and cleaning it afterwards. But I could never really tolerate the taste in my mouth the morning after a night of smoking - someone has likened it to the Russian Army marching through your mouth, and I can't really quibble with that simile. So, after a couple years, once the 'romance' of pipe-smoking had worn off sufficiently, I decided that the charred/ashy aftertaste just wasn't worth it anymore. And, for all intents and purposes, I've never smoked since. Oh, if someone offers me a cigar on a Special Occasion, I'll smoke it with him, for comradeship and the honoring of the occasion. But I'm not any kind of Smoker; and I've never been any more than a failed Toker. I'll happily cop to 'Joker', though. . .
And you know. . . I don't really feel like I've missed all that much. . .
-------------------------
I posted another telling of parts of this story, on a somewhat different spin, a couple years ago, on my old blog. So, you can check it out (and maybe get some extra texture) (Hey, is that another ex-Beatle reference?)
Sunday, April 8, 2012
The Whole Point. . .
"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are, of all men, most to be pitied. . .
"For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the Resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. . . Christ, the firstfruits; then, when He comes, those who belong to him. . .
"Lo, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. . . For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. . . As it is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? . . . Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
- from the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 15
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The Resurrection is the central, defining event of Christianity, its sine qua non. . . No Resurrection, no Christianity; it is that simple. But given the Resurrection, we have all of it. . .
Now, we "groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23); but "then we shall see Him face to face" (I John 3:2). . .
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I wish to all my readers and blog-friends, a happy and richly blessed Feast of the Resurrection!
"For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the Resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. . . Christ, the firstfruits; then, when He comes, those who belong to him. . .
"Lo, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. . . For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. . . As it is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? . . . Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
- from the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 15
-------------------------
The Resurrection is the central, defining event of Christianity, its sine qua non. . . No Resurrection, no Christianity; it is that simple. But given the Resurrection, we have all of it. . .
Now, we "groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23); but "then we shall see Him face to face" (I John 3:2). . .
-------------------------
I wish to all my readers and blog-friends, a happy and richly blessed Feast of the Resurrection!
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Quotes for the Day
"The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it is that they know so much that isn't so. . ."
-- Mark Twain
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. . ."
-- Josh Billings (American humorist, 1818-85)
-- Mark Twain
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. . ."
-- Josh Billings (American humorist, 1818-85)
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