Story No. 1
Smoking, Blowing Smoke Rings, Burning Down Parent's Bed, and
Not Calling My Aged Grandmother a Liar
written by Tom House, 1/19/2019
It all started with my idle curiosity at about age 6 or 7
and Dad leaving his cigarettes unattended. By then I was
well on my way to stealing and playing with his matches in
the orange grove that was near our Azusa home, back then,
before the community grew. However, playing with matches is
another story completely.
On this particular occasion, Dad had made it a habit to come
home from a hard day of driving, loading and unloading
trucks, and to empty his pockets on the nightstand in his
bedroom and take a long hot shower. This provided great
opportunity to begin stealing a few of his cigarettes, along
with my growing habit of stealing and playing with matches.
Stealing cigarettes gave me the chance to experiment with
smoking and I got so good at it that I could even blow smoke
rings, at will. That skill got me into serious trouble with
Mom, when she caught me and found out that I was smoking.
The trouble went well beyond the "don't you ever do that
again speeches" and included making me smoke and inhale
cigarette smoke while she watched and hoped I'd get sick and
learn my lesson.
All was going well for both her watching and me smoking,
including inhaling the smoke, right up to and until I
started blowing smoke rings. Boy did that make her mad, so mad that she
made me actually eat the cigarette. Lucky for me ingesting
the tobacco didn't kill me right then and there, but it
seems like Mom wanted to.
If you're interested, it seems that if you were to take a
cigarette out of its pack and eat it, filter and all, you’d
be ingesting about 20 milligrams of nicotine. That’s a fair
amount of nicotine (smoking a cigarette only delivers about
1.5 milligrams), so eating just one cigarette has the
potential to make you sick (and in the case of children,
very sick). If you routinely ingest tobacco, which happens
when one chews tobacco, it can lead to throat and stomach
ailments, cancers, and death.
Having survived that a while later I was bored and wanted to
smoke, but my older sisters were home and on Mom's side of
this question. That left me no choice but to hide under my
parent's bed and light up and to strike matches and watch
them burn.
Do you know how much space there is under your parent's bed?
Not much unless you're 6 or 7. The added problem is that the
bed is comprised of the mattress and a box spring. The
underside of the box spring is covered with a fine see
through mesh that collects dust, lots of dust.
Do you know what happens when that dust is heated by matches
being held just to watch them burn? Yep, the dust catches on
fire and smolders terribly. When the underside of that
mattress began catching on fire, I knew I needed help and
shouted for my sisters, who began getting pots and pans from
the kitchen and pouring water on top of the mattress.
Do you know what happens when you pour water on top of a
mattress that is burning on its underside along with the box
spring that under that? You guessed it, not much in the way
of dousing the fire or all the smoke that is now billowing
throughout the house. That is when either my sisters or a
neighbor called the fire department, who arrived and drug
the burning mattress and box springs out of the house and
onto the driveway in the front of the house.
After they put out the fire and opened doors and windows to
get rid of all the smoke in the house; that’s when the fire
department and police started asking lots of questions.
That’s also the exact time that Dad got home.
Boy oh boy was he mad and seemed to immediately know who was
at fault.
As he entered the house, he looked straight at me and
shouted something about “who did this”?
That’s the only time I ever saw my dear and aged grandmother
confront my dad. Though frail, and feeble from age, a
hunched and deformed back that caused her to walk with her
back nearly parallel to the ground, bladder problems, etc.;
Grandma got out of her favorite chair, went right up to my
dad. That, stopped his entry into the house. There, she
cocked her head so she could look him right in the eye and
said: “It was me. I was smoking under the bed in your room”.
Though it wasn’t true, I didn’t think it was my place to
call my aged and beloved grandmother a liar, so I said
nothing. I'm sure fear had something to do with that also.
I think my grandmother single handedly saved my life that
day.
I sure loved her before and ever since and she was always
there to listen to us after school and to just be there for
us.
I love you Grandma and thank you for saving me at age 6 or 7 and giving me the rest of my life. That episode seemed
to completely cure my growing habit of smoking.
Story No. 2 |
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