Feeling: Amused (as always, smiling as us little bewildereds as the planet goes round and round, nothing new under the sun).
I think about this story from time to time. Happened earlier this year. Finally decided to jot it down.
--
“Joe? Were you just now smoking in the bathroom?”
Flabbergasted. I don’t know what other word to use. Sitting at my computer, startled, jarred from that trance I go into when I’m balancing the sensibilities and expectations of a manufacturer, salesman, client and managing editor against each other on topics that, as an uneducated engineer, make me struggle.
But then angry. It started slow and then I felt it swelling through my chest and turning my face red hot. No one in this office needs to know my business. Smoking my pipe is my business. The busy body had just announced to everyone my business.
In an instant I had sorted through a number of responses, and rejected them for the tone they bore. I answered matter-of-factly, “Of course not.”
I am a very private man. She has never seen me smoke a pipe. No one here has. But ever since she first found out, even after saying she would never have guessed me to be a smoker, she boldly asserted she knew every single time that I had. Back then, I remember saying, “Oh? And how about now? Have I smoked anything today?” She had accepted the challenge, sniffed long and hard at me several times, hesitated, and then *asked*, “No?”
But I had. It’s just that I’m very conscientious about “wearing” my pipe hobby around others. I had probably woken about 4 a.m. that day, as usual, went for a run or puttered around the kitchen, showered, got ready for work and then performed a sort of morning prayer ritual, the way I start most days. I would have put on my smoking jacket and hat, sat at the umbrella table out back with my Folgers Black Silk coffee and then—ritualistically (probably why I like a pipe, the ritual it involves)—loaded a fresh, clean pipe with tobacco, packed it just so, drawn in the first sweet smoke, tamped it lightly and relit it until I was satisfied with the even red glow, and sank back facing east to wait for the same image to peer at me through the tree silhouettes. Maybe I watched a rabbit cautiously work its way past me in the predawn light, as often happens. Maybe I listened to the squirrels come out to chase each other to be the first lit by the newest part of new daylight. Maybe I just closed my eyes and let the coffee and Virginia embrace each other in the warmth of my palate.
At lunch sometimes, since we have an hour of personal time, and I’ve got nowhere else on the company’s rural estate to go (though there is a village a couple miles from here with a gas station and convenience store snacks), I’ll walk to the marsh to watch ducks—or, at this time of year, take my shotgun out and walk the ditches along the fields. Side point: it’s been a GREAT year for pheasants.
And as long as I’m out and about, I might have a smoke. Or I might not. Maybe I did that day.
I don’t remember how it ever came up, but ever since she first found out in conversation a couple months back that I *do* smoke (she still doesn’t know what—I never smoke cigarettes and only rarely cigars)—it has bugged the hell out of her.
So even though I had firmly said, “No, of course not,” she asked again, pretty certain I was lying: “I smell smoke in the bathroom. This is a smoke-free building. You were too smoking in there, weren’t you? You are not allowed to smoke anywhere in here.”
To me it was a crazy accusation. First, after all these years, suddenly one day I would smoke in the bathroom? And why she had come right to me instead of the one staff member who chain smokes cigarettes all day, that puzzled me. She’s just obsessed with “catching me at it,” even though I had never denied that I do smoke. I just never told her what or when or how often. I always figured it’s no one’s business.
Then it dawned on me, as the shock of the question and her accusation subsided, that she really was smelling smoke: “You know the guys are burning the tree pile today, right?”
Ah. She has such an intelligent nose. Can tell right away when someone’s been smoking trees in the bathroom. I wonder, does she suppose I roll my own trees or that I buy them by the carton at the store.
It did give me an idea, though, and I have used this since then. I don’t even need to have a smoking jacket—I just need to smoke around a campfire.
I think about this story from time to time. Happened earlier this year. Finally decided to jot it down.
--
“Joe? Were you just now smoking in the bathroom?”
Flabbergasted. I don’t know what other word to use. Sitting at my computer, startled, jarred from that trance I go into when I’m balancing the sensibilities and expectations of a manufacturer, salesman, client and managing editor against each other on topics that, as an uneducated engineer, make me struggle.
But then angry. It started slow and then I felt it swelling through my chest and turning my face red hot. No one in this office needs to know my business. Smoking my pipe is my business. The busy body had just announced to everyone my business.
In an instant I had sorted through a number of responses, and rejected them for the tone they bore. I answered matter-of-factly, “Of course not.”
I am a very private man. She has never seen me smoke a pipe. No one here has. But ever since she first found out, even after saying she would never have guessed me to be a smoker, she boldly asserted she knew every single time that I had. Back then, I remember saying, “Oh? And how about now? Have I smoked anything today?” She had accepted the challenge, sniffed long and hard at me several times, hesitated, and then *asked*, “No?”
But I had. It’s just that I’m very conscientious about “wearing” my pipe hobby around others. I had probably woken about 4 a.m. that day, as usual, went for a run or puttered around the kitchen, showered, got ready for work and then performed a sort of morning prayer ritual, the way I start most days. I would have put on my smoking jacket and hat, sat at the umbrella table out back with my Folgers Black Silk coffee and then—ritualistically (probably why I like a pipe, the ritual it involves)—loaded a fresh, clean pipe with tobacco, packed it just so, drawn in the first sweet smoke, tamped it lightly and relit it until I was satisfied with the even red glow, and sank back facing east to wait for the same image to peer at me through the tree silhouettes. Maybe I watched a rabbit cautiously work its way past me in the predawn light, as often happens. Maybe I listened to the squirrels come out to chase each other to be the first lit by the newest part of new daylight. Maybe I just closed my eyes and let the coffee and Virginia embrace each other in the warmth of my palate.
At lunch sometimes, since we have an hour of personal time, and I’ve got nowhere else on the company’s rural estate to go (though there is a village a couple miles from here with a gas station and convenience store snacks), I’ll walk to the marsh to watch ducks—or, at this time of year, take my shotgun out and walk the ditches along the fields. Side point: it’s been a GREAT year for pheasants.
And as long as I’m out and about, I might have a smoke. Or I might not. Maybe I did that day.
I don’t remember how it ever came up, but ever since she first found out in conversation a couple months back that I *do* smoke (she still doesn’t know what—I never smoke cigarettes and only rarely cigars)—it has bugged the hell out of her.
So even though I had firmly said, “No, of course not,” she asked again, pretty certain I was lying: “I smell smoke in the bathroom. This is a smoke-free building. You were too smoking in there, weren’t you? You are not allowed to smoke anywhere in here.”
To me it was a crazy accusation. First, after all these years, suddenly one day I would smoke in the bathroom? And why she had come right to me instead of the one staff member who chain smokes cigarettes all day, that puzzled me. She’s just obsessed with “catching me at it,” even though I had never denied that I do smoke. I just never told her what or when or how often. I always figured it’s no one’s business.
Then it dawned on me, as the shock of the question and her accusation subsided, that she really was smelling smoke: “You know the guys are burning the tree pile today, right?”
Ah. She has such an intelligent nose. Can tell right away when someone’s been smoking trees in the bathroom. I wonder, does she suppose I roll my own trees or that I buy them by the carton at the store.
It did give me an idea, though, and I have used this since then. I don’t even need to have a smoking jacket—I just need to smoke around a campfire.
