My Drug of Choice

Something that I had been dreading finally happened. Last week was Red Ribbon Week at Bubba's school and the theme for the week was Drug Awareness.

On Friday evening, as Mr. Daddy reached for a beer, Bubba piped up, a sense of urgency in his voice, "Daddy! I know something that can help you! Mr. Counselor at school said that if you drink just one beer it can make you sick! Beer is bad for you, Daddy!"

Guh-reat. But at least we weren't in public when Bubba did this, like we were when I begged my mother, "Please don't get drunk, Mama! Please don't get drunk!"crying and hanging on her as she went into the liquor store to buy a bottle of Sangria. For the record, my mother was NOT a drunk. I can't probably count on one hand the number of drinks I saw her drink when I was a child. But I had a fear of drunk people (a long story) and I assumed that if you drank, you were going to get drunk.

"Bubba, you know, I'm not saying that Mr. Counselor is wrong, but it's okay for grown ups to drink beer. One beer is not going to make a grown up sick. Now if you drink too many, you might, but one is not going to hurt a grown up."

"Did you know that cigarettes are bad and that if you smoke a cigarette in a car it can kill you?" Bubba chimed in.

Having lived through several winters during which car rides were suffered through with the heat blasting, the windows rolled up, and both parents smoking, I felt like telling him that yes, it will kill you, or more correctly, will make you want to kill yourself. However, in the pursuit of absolulte truth I felt I had to correct him. We've told Bubba for years that cigarettes are YUCK (along with the Yankees), but we've never really discussed the health related issues.

"Well, Bubba, if you smoke one cigarette in a car, it won't really kill you. But if you smoke a lot of cigarettes it can make your lungs black and can give you cancer. And that might kill you."

"Why would anybody smoke?" Bubba asked incredulously.

We went into a long discussion about how addictive cigarettes are and how hard it is to quit and how people didn't really know at one time how bad they were for you. But Bubba seemed convinced that cigarette smokers are bad people. I reminded him that his Mimi and his Poppa both smoked at one time, but they had quit a long time ago. I think his position softened a little.

But last night, as we were waiting at the pharmacy for a prescription, I heard Bubba from the back seat "Mommy, look! Look at that man in that car cigarettin'!" revulsion in his voice.

Frankly, I don't care what he thinks about smokers. But don't be messin' with my beer.