"That is *awesome*!"

Fly the flag!

Always nice to get some positive feedback for a change.
A young lady in a drive-through recently told me that my pipe was "way cool". 8)

While waiting in my car, passing the wait with my handy car Peterson for mum to pick up some sundry items at the store, a lady traversing the lot called out to the air, "Awh loovve that pipe smoke!" Made my day.

The way smokers are worshipped, idolized even, by society these days... sometimes it's just too much to bare. The "We Love Smokers" t-shirts, the "Smoking is wicked cool" bumper stickers, families hiring smokers for children's birthday parties.... I miss the days of smoking alone in anonymity, hiding it from family members. Things were so much simpler back then... heavy sigh

I used to bring my pipe to the softball field, last year. I was playing in a Senior league.

Smoking of the odd cigar was tolerated, and one or two guys would stand off between innings and pull on their coffin nails, but I was the only one with a pipe.

I always got conversation going as a result.

One guy would always come over and intentionally get a whiff of my smoke and smile and tell me he loved it.

Another, would cringe and turn away just at the sight of the pipe. He got over it eventually.

I did my best to proselytize, and even shared some tobacco with a former pipe smoker who gave it another shot and brought in his pipe to show me.

When I mentioned the forums and that one of the guys had sent me a really nice Savenelli Autograph Freehand, one of the softball players I barely knew flippantly asked me if the benefactor was gay. ( why else, he reasoned, would one man be so generous to another?)

The implication, of course, was that perhaps I batted for the other team.

I was only visiting, and hadn't been playing for about 6 months, and this particular guy was 'new' to me and me to him.

It's amazing how that made me angry inside.

But, I am a pretty confident fellow, and quickly adjusted my thoughts to his motivations and attained a less emotional perspective.

My face is fairly expressive of my thoughts, and I know that he realized he was out of bounds with me, even joking like that.

My spoken response was more measured and neutral, yet enough for him to get the idea that his schoolboy locker room latency was readily apparent, and childish to me.

Yeah, pipe smoking involves oral gratification. We are born with the need to gratify ourselves orally.

We usually grow out if it as the milk drys up.

Thank god for pipes and tobacco.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that..."

- Seinfeld

right up there with: 'some of my best friends are ____________'

New you shoulda grabbed him and gave him a hot kiss. :rofl:

Write the date on a calendar.

Where I live there are no other pipe smokers. Kids and teenagers will stare at me as they walk by. They have never seen a pipe before except in maybe pictures. The other day a young boy while staring at me smoking my pipe tripped and almost fell on the uneven foot path. I got a laugh out of that. There are ZERO pipes & pipe tobacco sold in this country.

I was driving in a Safeway parking lot and a couple were walking in front of my truck and the man actually grabbed the woman's arm to point out that I was smoking a pipe. They both looked so shocked but smiling so I took it as a win. Lol