I used to be a smoker.
When I was 10. At least
once a week, my bestie Suzanne and I would climb on our bikes and take the
mile-long ride across busy streets, sans helmet and without adult supervision
down to Ernie’s liquors (that’s right…a LIQUOR store) to buy a pack. We could hardly wait to get our fix and
we would’ve smoked ‘em right then and there if we weren’t so excited to scurry
back home to choreograph our latest music video in my front yard. We had things to do, and that sweet
feeling of the sleek stick between our lips helped us power through our
creative challenges and really freaked out the neighbors as we exhaled the smoke.
The CANDY smoke, of
course. They weren’t real. They were the product of a misguided
marketing scheme that somehow determined that giving faux cigarettes to small
children was acceptable. You could
never find such a bad idea on the shelves today. But we loved them then. We got a real kick out of them. And it wasn’t a secret. We were open and notorious with our habit. Mom saw us prancing around holding them
daintily between our middle and forefingers and pressing them to our lips like
a saucy, but irresistibly attractive protagonist in an edgy Hitchcock
film. She watched as we brazenly
relaxed on the front steps with our smokes and puffed the afternoon away
(before we would turn around and fully consume them).
And looking back on that, I can appreciate my mom's LIFE
LESSON #11
LETTING YOUR KIDS HAVE CANDY CIGARETTES DOES NOT MEAN THEY
WILL GROW UP TO BE SMOKERS. (also
known as Choose Your Battles Wisely)
I shudder to think how I might overreact should my kids
saunter home with candy cigarettes.
I would probably swipe them from their little misguided mouths and
launch into a tirade about the dangers of nicotine, the gateway effects of
smoking, and next thing we know, they will be cooking meth in our basement
should they keep marching down this perilous path to perdition (you see where
I’m going with this).
But I remember how mom would just laugh at us (though I am
quite certain that had those been actual Marlboros, there would’ve been nothing to
laugh at for a very long time).
She was secure in her righteous example. Sure that the lessons she lived everyday would act as my
guiding principles.
And so I have never been a smoker. Never has actual nicotine passed my virgin lips. I’ve never ventured down a dark alley
looking for a fix or headed to anybody’s mobile meth-lab to help mix up a
batch. I turned out pretty all
right despite my brief foray into candy-fueled rebellion. {I should add here that Suzanne could
say the same…she turned out pretty stellar herself}.
Most things are not worth freaking out over. You have to pick the important
stuff. I try to keep that in the
back of my head when I am convinced that my lack of parental oversight is ruining
my children. I think of my mother
laughing at our poor, albeit fake, smoking decisions when I let my four
year-old stay up way past midnight to play the Wii with her crazy cousins. I try to envision how she might have
even encouraged the fact that my sister and I trek to the convenience store at
10PM for fountain sodas in order fuel our kids for their late-night ‘Just
Dance’ parties. See evidence of
sugar crash HERE:
Caris & Chloe at 2 AM-ish.
We must choose our battles wisely (Mom said this to me more
times than I can remember). With
our kids. With our friends. With ourselves. We must pick the big things to really
lose our minds over. How is anyone
to discern what matters to us most if we can’t help them out with a little
restraint and a little laughter in lieu of loud voices?
I must work on this. I must strive to follow her example
today, just like I did back then when I chose health over cigs. So I try to let the little things
go. Freak out less. See the humor more. That's what Mom would do.
But so help me if my daughter comes home pretending to smoke
a cigarette…
