There’s a teacher at my school who I sometimes chat with between classes while she has a smoke in the parking lot. I normally avoid people while they’re smoking because I’m a long-ago reformed smoker whose father recently died of lung cancer and it’s just bad for me all around. But she apologizes and I stand away so we make it work. She’s much younger than me and I got a lot out of her class last semester as well as liking her as a person.
It’s hard to like someone and know they have young children and not tell them they’re setting the stage for tragedy by sucking in smoke but it isn’t like they don’t already know that. Smoking is the most insidious of addictions. Calling it a habit is subconsciously trivializing it like maybe it could be confused with misplacing your keys all the time or saying ‘you know’ at the end of every sentence. But no one ever had to get chemo for losing their keys, you know?
Husband successfully stopped smoking earlier this year after many sincere and gut-wrenching efforts and it feels like a huge cloud has been lifted from over our heads. He had tried everything from the patch to the lozenge to gum to herbal cigarettes and so forth and I would tell you what actually worked if I could but it’s a secret. It’s not my secret because I would tell you if I knew. I just don’t know. He’s not talking. He said it might not work if he talked about it so it’s his secret and I can’t even tell Caryn who I tell everything but that’s never been a problem because she and I are very good with secrets.
If you don’t have one friend you tell everything to you have my sympathy. If you go to Confession that’s probably just as good so raise your hand if you go to Confession. I thought so. I doubt any priest is going to tell you what your best friend will — that the person you retaliated against had it coming. That you are the true caped crusader of goodness and to reward your cosmic sense of justice they are sending you this hilarious forward:
This has no relevance to wonderful Husband but that does not diminish its hilarity. Marital humor is timeless and need not apply to real life. Also, I wish I had those shoes. If you are female, the person you spill your guts to is also the person you buy shoes with. This is as trusted a position as keeper of secrets because no woman wants to hear she has too many black sandals. Caryn is very busy and cannot go shoe shopping with you but if you need to release the darkness from your soul to a trusted listener I will give you her number. And after she tells me, your secret is safe.