I'll never smoke cigarettes

Foolishness

I'm a foolish man
though I'll never quit the pipe
cigs are a no go



WTF?!?



At this point in life ( Christmastime), we were used to Dad's routine: Get a job, brag about making 6 dollars an hour and tell us with a few months of hard work he might get hired on full time, getting fired 3 weeks later for stealing, tell us it was all the restaurant\ gas stations\ male pimp's fault, smoke his last check up, get kidnapped, get a job interview and get another job, ad infinitum. So we're riding along in the station wagon one day (this same station wagon would get shot up in a few weeks when he owed one of his dealers and tried to run from him) and it is one of the very few times it is just me, my brother and my dad. We are on our way to our grandmother's house, so he is somewhat clean for the day. My little brother is sitting in front, just fumbling around, and in the glove compartment he finds a pack of cigarettes.



My dad sees them and gets this embarrassed look on his face like we caught him screwing the dog (which, to my knowledge, he never did, though someone in our family did love the animals), and took them and put them under his seat. My little brother looked mildly interested, as with all of the things my dad put in his mouth why would he put up all that fuss over a cigarette?



"I swear to you, son, those aren't mine. Yerdaddy (he always said it in all one word, it sounds as gay as it does in your head) has done some things that he's not proud of, but I will NEVER smoke a cigarette. If you ever see me smoking a cigarette, I want you to run up to me and take that cigarette from me, tell me 'Daddy no!' and just hug me until I understand, I would never do that to you guys..."



Oooookaaaay. You will smoke crack, weed and God knows what else, selling off all of our things in order to attain even more crack, but you will never touch cigarettes because.....? And how gay is that? I am not going to run up and try to hug the bad out of my dad, no matter what. That's gay. There is nothing wrong with being gay, but there is something wrong with physical contact with a crackhead, unless you caught him after he stole your fucking lawnmower that you put on your damn porch and literally RAN to the back of the house to get the fucking gas tank and it's gone when you get back. How the hell did that guy do that?! There's no trees and nowhere to run since all of the houses had fences to keep out the gangs who shot each other up in the parking lot next to our house every Saturday night... but that's another story.

But back to the cigarette's, this also began what was to become a weekly thing after I left: The "Foolish Man" Tales. My dad would start off by looking at my little brother for about 5 minutes without speaking or anything, and then start off saying "Yerdaddy is a foolish, foolish man..." The only one I heard was the one in the car, maybe as a guest speaker I will get my brother to recount some of the tales...

More tomorrow.