Jake came down the other morning and one of those anti-smoking commercials was on. It was with the guy with the metal throaty thing singing ‘you don’t always die from tobacco’ on a city street. He’s been talking about it a lot. Not just the robotic voiced thing, but it’s clear that cigarettes, as a general topic, have come up a bit in school. There’s a lot of fake smoking on chilly foggy-breath days. It’s good, I think, that there’s so much anti-smoking propaganda because it surely doesn’t make things easier. Health issues aside, just try getting smoker life insurance has got to be a nightmare.

But Jake’s morbid fascination with the metal throaty thing is a little weird. I had to tell him about the time when I was in High School, working at Steinbach’s Department Store, and a guy with the tube came up and asked me a question. I could not understand a word, and it was a little scary. He barely moved his mouth, just sort of worked his throat a little, holding the tube thing up to his neck. I was bent over behind the counter and didn’t notice him walk up. I thought it was a car horn honking when I looked up. I was totally at a loss. He made an attempt or two to ask whatever he wanted to ask, and then just walked over in mid-honk, clearly pissed at me.

His wife or partner or girlfriend or whatever was looking at ladies pajamas in the back corner of the store and they got into an argument a few minutes later. She was telling him to take it easy and calm down and he kept honking. Eventually he stomped out and she followed a few minutes later.

Something like an hour later she came back, somewhat apologetically. I didn’t realize who she’d originally been with at first. She told be she was looking for a metal cylinder that they lost earlier, perhaps someone had turned on in. We looked around and couldn’t find it. I assured her there was no such object in the lost and found. She seems suspicious, like I was holding back on her – like I’d be playing with it after she left.

Oh yeah, and then my mother had a customer in her beauty shop many many years ago with a tracheotomy pipe. She used to hold a cigarette up to the pipe and smoke through her neck. Now that is freaky.