Wading in the Velvet Sea

I remember being the prototypical snotty-ass kid. Which is easy to imagine, I suppose, having largely maintained the snotty-ass veneer to this day. As legend goes (and by �legend� I mean �my mother�s consistent retelling to any girl I bring home�), at the age of four I came down for Saturday morning breakfast. Had my Pac-Man PJs on, you know, the ones with the feet that guaranteed you a zero coefficient of friction if Mom�s just waxed the kitchen floor. Groggy-eyed, I just wanted to tune in to see what mischief Gargamel could cause those blue rapscallions this week.

Anywho, Mom asks me if I want an English muffin with my cereal. Not content to simply appreciate the maternal gesture, I rolled my eyes and whined, �Moooooom�.muffins.�

�Excuse me?� she says.

�When you cute the muffin in half, it�s now two muffins.�

Pretty much at that moment, my mother decided boarding school would be the best option for me.

Part and parcel of this snottiness revolved around my parents� smoking. I never let an opportunity pass where I could make my parents feel bad about filling not only their lungs with poison, but my sweet, impressionable lungs as well. I�ll give them credit�they tried to stop on many occasions. My parents would bribe me into academic or athletic achievement on many an occasion. �OK, Ryan, if you get all A�s this year, I�ll quit smoking.� �If you score 20 goals this season, I�ll stop smoking.� Luckily, I was inherently an over-achiever, so these goals weren�t too hard to achieve.

Each time, my parents did in fact quit. For a week. Or less, I can�t be sure, but they at least his their smoking for a week before the game would eventually be up.

Despondent, I wept. How could authority figures lie to me? How could my parents not be perfect? How could the Warren Commission expect us to believe there was only one shooter? Are we really living in The Matrix? It was a rough time. Many questions. The prescription drugs helped, though.

By the time I hit college, I could handle people snorting cocaine. Could understand people who dropped LSD. You wanna do hits off a six-foot gravity bong? Rock on, brother. But dude, don�t light up your Camel Light in my common room. You insane, amigo?

Truth be told: I�d love to say that I don�t smoke because my parents� examples were so vivid. The coughing, the hacking, my friends� non-desire to get into our car because of the stench, but really, at $5.50 a pack, that�s just too damn expensive a habit. Knowing the way I pop Altoids, I�d be four packs a day within a week if I started smoking. Yes, I would be incredibly cool, good-looking, and popular if I smoked, but sadly, as per usual, I can�t afford to be cool.

Oh well.