“I don’t want to, but I have to,” that was the exact quote my father used, when responding to people asking him why he smoked cigarettes. He used that quote until he had his first heart attack. His doctor, told my dad,”Howard, no more cigarettes ever, you never know which puff will be your last.” The day he left the hospital my father took a pack of Camels the ones with no filters placed it in his shirt pocket. Before doing so, he did a show and tell for his family, demonstrating just how pristinely packed in plastic the pack looked, even with that little red tie string on top for easy access in opening the cancer filled product, and then said the following, “I know if I want to I can, but that doesn’t mean I have to.” Until my father was fully retired, until he stopped wearing shirts that had a pocket on the chest he carried that same pack of Camel cigarettes each and every day, and never once opened them or another pack of cigarettes. I never smoked so I thought it must not be so difficult to give up something so terrible for your health, I mean come on you either live or die, what kind of difficult choice could that possibly be?!?!
Part of my ritual, once again (I say once again, because after Putin stole the 2016 election from Hillary and America, I had to stop watching any kind of news), is to first look at my phone, hoping World War Three had not started, or that Martial Law had not been declared, or that hopefully the idea of ‘checks and balances’ had been re-established; then off to the kitchen, clicking on MSNBC, knowing that my already empty stomach may churn a bit more. If Joe is still in the house he will ask me “WHY”, I do this to myself and way back in my head a hear a little knock as if it is the door leading to the past and as the door knocks i hear my fathers voice saying, “I don’t want to, but I have to.”
We all know, those of us who actually give one shit about democracy that Putin has a whole lot of EVERYTHING, blackmail wise on Trump. The silly dance this nation is doing pretending that Trump is just a victim of circumstance, is a terrible injustice to what is right and what is wrong, but if you are a Republican politician or donor, YOU understand the only way of your survival is to pretend a Fascist puppet and Party are not in power. Today’s Trump tidbits included, an invitation to Putin to sit in the White House, a stab in the back of the Kurdish rebels, our ally’s, a demonstration of a lack of knowledge let alone moral decency toward the dreamers and the DACA program, and an appreciation for a Conservative monopoly called Sinclair Broadcasting to act as a local FOX News and provide fake news as factual news. I sat there and stared blankly into the television set, scaring Joe a bit, who aside from his usual statement of “I don’t why you watch this stuff it just makes you sick”added honey ARE you okay? ” And then, once again, instead of a tiny knock at the back of my head, there was a pounding, it was my fathers voice, this time booming. But it was a different quote, this quote was, “This IS gonna kill you” And then I realized, it, ever since Trump and Putin and McConnell took away our Constitution I have been getting sicker and sicker, but somehow I can’t stop. I never smoked, but now I understand the difficulty in giving up a habit that is so life threatening!
