Thursday – Erica's Lucky Strikes
Dec. 3rd, 2009 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
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After writing about my 5-year-old son's use of the word damn yesterday, I found myself thinking about my experience with another 5 year old using the same word. This child belonged to someone else, and the incident is one that makes me laugh and feel ashamed of myself for laughing at the same time.
It's been awhile since I wrote about my old friend Patty, who I cut out of my life after my son was born for various reasons, first among them being that she was not the kind of adult I wanted my son associating with. I didn't always approve of her associating with her own children, for that matter.
Small children imitate the adults in their lives. If you ever watch and listen to them play, they are practicing very hard at pretending to be grownups. It's serious business for them. My other friend, The Cajun Queen, and I used to joke about our Po' White Trash friends. We each had one, and it was fun to compare notes. The Queen's friend was one of the girls she went to high school with who also moved to Houston to find more opportunity than she could find in Lake Charles. Her friend could at least hold a job and pass for normal until she opened her mouth and gave herself away. She actually aspired to rise about her socioeconomic roots. My friend, Patty, on the other hand, had been born to a middle-class family and attended good schools that she dropped out of. Her aspirations all pointed downward for some reason.
At the time Patty and her two children, who I call Erica and Chris here, lived in a small house owned by an old woman who took in human strays. Most of the strays paid rent to the old woman, and Patty did, too, when she was working. When she wasn't, she used her food stamps to buy groceries and called it good. When you drove up to the little house, there were always broken toys and garbage in the yard. Usually there were old Pizza boxes piled up on the front porch, sometimes soggy from the rain. Once in awhile someone would gather up the trash and haul it off in the dark of the night to put in a Dumpster owned by a local business, but a week later the place looked just as bad.
Inside was just as cluttered. The floor of the small, dark living room (the old woman did not care for windows and had put up siding on the outside to hide them, and dark wood paneling on the inside) was often so covered with toys and debris that you kind of had to kick your way over to the sagging couch if you wanted to sit down. On the night in question, Patty and I were going out some where and I had been waiting in the living room while she got dressed and gathered up her things. Five-year-old Erica was playing in the living room. She picked up an empty Lucky Strikes cigarette pack and showed it too me.
"These are my cigarettes," she told me.
"Really?" I asked, and opened the top of the pack to peak inside and make sure it was actually empty.
"Uh-huh. Where are your cigarettes?"
"I don't have any. I don't smoke."
Erica's little face looked as skeptical as if I had just told her that Santa Clause lived in the spare room of my house and that we rode to work every day on a unicorn. All the adults in her life smoked. All the teenagers, even the ones too young to legally buy tobacco, also smoked. She looked up at her mother, who had just walked into the room.
"She doesn't smoke, baby," Patty laughed, "Some grown ups are smart enough not to."
"Smoking is bad for you," her older brother Chris chimed in. "Nobody should do it." He'd picked this information up at school, not at home.
"Oh," Erica responded, still a bit in awe of the idea. She looked down at her Lucky Strikes pack and then started looking around the room.
"Now," she asked with mock irritation, "where's my damn lighter?"
I hid my face in my hands and laughed. As sad as it was, I also knew that this was a ritual every adult in her life acted out in front of her every day. First, they picked up their cigarettes and then they started looking around for their damn lighters, cursing under their breath until they located one amidst the clutter on in the house.
"That's the problem when you live with a bunch of pot heads," Jeff said when I told him the story, "You can never find your damn lighter when you want it."
For a lot of us, having children is one of the healthiest things we ever do for ourselves. It forces us to re-examine our lives and our habits and alter them. They are little mirrors that reflect back not so much how we look, but how we act and what we do. They are the perfect opportunity for self reflection and motivation to improve how we live our lives, at least for those of us who are willing to make the effort. Not everyone is.
"She's going to be our smoker," said Patty, who started smoking at the age of 11 by stealing cigarettes from her parents. "I don't think Chris will, but Erica? I can already tell."
Sadly, so could I.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
After writing about my 5-year-old son's use of the word damn yesterday, I found myself thinking about my experience with another 5 year old using the same word. This child belonged to someone else, and the incident is one that makes me laugh and feel ashamed of myself for laughing at the same time.
It's been awhile since I wrote about my old friend Patty, who I cut out of my life after my son was born for various reasons, first among them being that she was not the kind of adult I wanted my son associating with. I didn't always approve of her associating with her own children, for that matter.
Small children imitate the adults in their lives. If you ever watch and listen to them play, they are practicing very hard at pretending to be grownups. It's serious business for them. My other friend, The Cajun Queen, and I used to joke about our Po' White Trash friends. We each had one, and it was fun to compare notes. The Queen's friend was one of the girls she went to high school with who also moved to Houston to find more opportunity than she could find in Lake Charles. Her friend could at least hold a job and pass for normal until she opened her mouth and gave herself away. She actually aspired to rise about her socioeconomic roots. My friend, Patty, on the other hand, had been born to a middle-class family and attended good schools that she dropped out of. Her aspirations all pointed downward for some reason.
At the time Patty and her two children, who I call Erica and Chris here, lived in a small house owned by an old woman who took in human strays. Most of the strays paid rent to the old woman, and Patty did, too, when she was working. When she wasn't, she used her food stamps to buy groceries and called it good. When you drove up to the little house, there were always broken toys and garbage in the yard. Usually there were old Pizza boxes piled up on the front porch, sometimes soggy from the rain. Once in awhile someone would gather up the trash and haul it off in the dark of the night to put in a Dumpster owned by a local business, but a week later the place looked just as bad.
Inside was just as cluttered. The floor of the small, dark living room (the old woman did not care for windows and had put up siding on the outside to hide them, and dark wood paneling on the inside) was often so covered with toys and debris that you kind of had to kick your way over to the sagging couch if you wanted to sit down. On the night in question, Patty and I were going out some where and I had been waiting in the living room while she got dressed and gathered up her things. Five-year-old Erica was playing in the living room. She picked up an empty Lucky Strikes cigarette pack and showed it too me.
"These are my cigarettes," she told me.
"Really?" I asked, and opened the top of the pack to peak inside and make sure it was actually empty.
"Uh-huh. Where are your cigarettes?"
"I don't have any. I don't smoke."
Erica's little face looked as skeptical as if I had just told her that Santa Clause lived in the spare room of my house and that we rode to work every day on a unicorn. All the adults in her life smoked. All the teenagers, even the ones too young to legally buy tobacco, also smoked. She looked up at her mother, who had just walked into the room.
"She doesn't smoke, baby," Patty laughed, "Some grown ups are smart enough not to."
"Smoking is bad for you," her older brother Chris chimed in. "Nobody should do it." He'd picked this information up at school, not at home.
"Oh," Erica responded, still a bit in awe of the idea. She looked down at her Lucky Strikes pack and then started looking around the room.
"Now," she asked with mock irritation, "where's my damn lighter?"
I hid my face in my hands and laughed. As sad as it was, I also knew that this was a ritual every adult in her life acted out in front of her every day. First, they picked up their cigarettes and then they started looking around for their damn lighters, cursing under their breath until they located one amidst the clutter on in the house.
"That's the problem when you live with a bunch of pot heads," Jeff said when I told him the story, "You can never find your damn lighter when you want it."
For a lot of us, having children is one of the healthiest things we ever do for ourselves. It forces us to re-examine our lives and our habits and alter them. They are little mirrors that reflect back not so much how we look, but how we act and what we do. They are the perfect opportunity for self reflection and motivation to improve how we live our lives, at least for those of us who are willing to make the effort. Not everyone is.
"She's going to be our smoker," said Patty, who started smoking at the age of 11 by stealing cigarettes from her parents. "I don't think Chris will, but Erica? I can already tell."
Sadly, so could I.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 04:41 pm (UTC)hear, here!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 08:18 pm (UTC)Sweet Pea sees his father smoke outside in the garage (I'm allergic, so it's not allowed in the house) and we've discussed that it's a yucky habit. When he asks why his father smokes, Jeff tells him, "Because I'm addicted." That doesn't mean much to him now, but I think the meaning will dawn on him eventually. The adults around Erica mostly said things like "because I like to" or "because it relaxes me." Those are pro-smoking messages, even if the adults don't mean them to be.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 08:39 pm (UTC)Aside from the occasional cigar, the whole smoking is cool idea is lost on me. I hope Sweat Pea grows to understand that addiction is not a path to follow dear old dad.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 02:05 pm (UTC)Your story is too true though. My husband's sister had her 4th child without being married to the father. Both of her daughters have now had children without being married.
Actions speak so much louder than words.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 01:38 am (UTC)