“Mom, I quit smoking,” Porter announced to me during breakfast one morning. My response was something like, “Well, that’s good, because smoking isn’t good for you.” As a point of clarification, this was over breakfast, a time when my head is usually buried in the daily paper while I mechanically attend to my children’s needs (i.e. passing them a napkin, pouring a drink, etc…). And besides that, I wasn’t really expecting a statement of that caliber to come from Porter’s innocent mouth.
“Really mom, I quit smoking,” he insisted, obviously not happy with my less than stellar first reaction. “What did you say? You quit SMOKING? You don’t smoke. How do you quit doing something you don’t even do?” “But I do Mom, I have been smoking,” he insisted.
Long story short, he had indeed been “smoking.” Thank goodness it wasn’t real cigarettes, just the straw variety. We have a Costco size bag of drinking straws that I bought him for the perfectly benign purpose of creating art projects. Little did I know Porter had used his imagination in an unexpected way and turned those very straws into cancer sticks.
He demonstrated the process for me, and the whole while I was thinking, ‘I hope he didn’t “smoke” in front of other kids or worse, their parents.” Since I hadn’t heard anything from the neighbors, and we’re a tight bunch, I assumed that he was discrete in his habit, a habit that he lovingly learned from his Uncle Andrew, who was discrete around my kids, at least at first.
When Uncle Andrew first moved here a few months ago, he was careful about smoking away from and out of sight of my kids. This wasn’t something we asked him to do, in fact I didn’t really know he was smoking at all, until Porter told me. It was inevitable that Mr. Curiosity would find out eventually, more likely sooner than later, it’s in his nature. Porter ADORES his Uncle Andrew, so you’d expect him to want to be like his uncle. My dad was also a smoker, until his heart attack 4 years ago. Porter is aware of this also, so I used it to “celebrate” his smoking cessation. “I’m glad you quit Porter, because remember what smoking did to Grandpa? It hurt his heart.
He demonstrated the process for me, and the whole while I was thinking, ‘I hope he didn’t “smoke” in front of other kids or worse, their parents.” Since I hadn’t heard anything from the neighbors, and we’re a tight bunch, I assumed that he was discrete in his habit, a habit that he lovingly learned from his Uncle Andrew, who was discrete around my kids, at least at first.
When Uncle Andrew first moved here a few months ago, he was careful about smoking away from and out of sight of my kids. This wasn’t something we asked him to do, in fact I didn’t really know he was smoking at all, until Porter told me. It was inevitable that Mr. Curiosity would find out eventually, more likely sooner than later, it’s in his nature. Porter ADORES his Uncle Andrew, so you’d expect him to want to be like his uncle. My dad was also a smoker, until his heart attack 4 years ago. Porter is aware of this also, so I used it to “celebrate” his smoking cessation. “I’m glad you quit Porter, because remember what smoking did to Grandpa? It hurt his heart.
I caught him a couple days later, out on the deck with a straw, which he quickly hid behind his back when he saw me. Do they make a patch for that?
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