Nothing to do with words or with right and wrong.

Merely an observation.

A friend of mine, interesting fellow with whom I've lost contact for some years now, introduced me to a friend of his. We showed up at the third party's house and there was a General Lee looking car parked out front (not *that* uncommon) back in Louisville. We knock on the door and a man answers. We're about early twentyish and this man is in his fourties or perhaps fifties, so I assume (an assumption later confirmed) that he is the father of the person we are to meet. He's wearing a housecoat, which seems odd to me as it's only 6:30 and as he walks us downstairs to his son's room in the basement, he asks us both, "Do you boys smoke?" "Uh, no sir," we each respond. "Well, that's good, very good. Don't start! Don't ever start!" his smile seems not forced, but weary. "No, sir. We really don't like it at all." And then out of the blue "You know, I smoked for years and years and I lost one of my lungs to it." I don't recall our response to that, as I think we were both stunned that someone we had not known 60 seconds should give us this bit of unsolicited personal information.

As the basement door opens, the reek of cigarettes is overpowering and a fog of smoke is everywhere. We see the source of the smoke, a young man seemingly close to our age. This was the person we came to see, the one-lunged man's son. He had a cigarette in his mouth. His fingers were stained. There was a fog in the air. Very shortly, he lit another cigarette, without putting the other out - in fact, he left the last half inch burning. I looked around and I noticed there were at least two or three other butts still smoldering.

We went out to a bar that night, which I don't like anyway because I can never hear what people say (maybe that's part of why I didn't like Ulysses - too much like being in a noisy bar). But I was bothered that whole evening, not just by the thought of the one-lunged man, but the fact that his son was heading down the same path. He must have felt horrible guilt about his son's addiction. But not for long. He died within a few weeks.

k