Bob Murphy wrote: <<My friend, a 54 year old grandmother, was having a cigarette while we were saying good-bye. Suddenly, a four or five year old girl burst out of the coffee shop with her mother in tow and shouted, "Don't smoke!" (Excuse me? What ever happened to respect for elders?) This child's pinhead of a mother just stood proudly by as my friend, although embarrassed and somewhat put out by the incident, graciously muttered something about the child being right, and that smoking was bad. I was too shocked by the child's horrendous manners, and the mother's cheerful complicity, to say anything. But if anything like this ever happens to me again, I will be ready to tell child and parent exactly where to go and what to do when they get there! >>
Un-freaking-believable, Bob! As you know, I'm a non-smoker, but my main squeeze is a smoker, as are many of my friends. I've never known *any* of them to do anything as rude as the incident you describe (and I'm obviously not blaming the child), but I once lived under people who would scream and cry whenever anyone visiting lit one up ***outside*** the house, sometimes even calling the landlords, who were 3000 miles away. But at least they didn't send their fox terriers downstairs to complain for them! Sheesh, what a world. fondly, walt
