Stinky Explanations

When I picked up the kids from school my son said,

“Dad, you never sing along with the radio you must be in a good mood!”

He’s right – I don’t sing or listen to music. In college I was known as “the guy who hates music.”

I was in a good mood. That afternoon I had treated myself - sitting in the backyard drinking coffee, smoking a cigar and reading about bureaucratic politics. (To each their own – I don’t like music but I do like to read Morton Halperin.)

When my daughter went to wrestle me (that’s how the Goof clan celebrates), she yelled, “Daddy you smell like the La Brea Tar Pits.”

Then she came back for another whiff and declared, “You smell like the inside of a shofar.”

“I smoked a cigar this afternoon,” I explained.

GoofGirl’s eyes got huge (GoofBoy was uninterested, we’d had this discussion before). The hours of anti-smoking propaganda she has absorbed went to work, “Daddy, you are going to die. Only bad people who don’t love their children smoke.”

“Sweetheart,” I explained, “I smoke a cigar every few months. That won’t make me sick. If I did it every day, then there might be a problem – don’t worry.”

“But why Daddy, it stinks.”

“But it is kind of nice when you are smoking them.”

“Like scotch?”

“Well, not exactly – but they go well together.”

Suddenly, the conversation took a very different turn - I saw a flash in her eyes, as the anti-smoking propaganda dissolved like cotton candy in a downpour.

“Daddy, where do you keep your cigars?”

“Nowhere, I smoked the only one I had.”

“But where did you keep it? In your office? In your nightstand?”

“Why are you so interested? Cigars aren’t for children.”

“I just am. You better tell me, or I’ll tell mommy you smoked and she’ll find them and throw them out.”