It Mocketh Me

I should be glad when reality spoofs my nightmares, right? But I do feel a little foolish...

A month or 2 ago I dreamed that our neighbors who smoke and hang out with their puppy on the stoop had taught my 6 year old son to smoke. There was my son, smoking away. So I went up to the neighbor, the same one who was arrested for having a box cutter in his pocket last year when shopping at Key Food, and told him "listen, you just can't do that!" I was incredibly earnest, but felt I wasn't really finding the words to express the breadth of folly that had occurred, and anyway some things are just so damn obvious they don't need saying!

The same neighbor came over to me (in reality) last week to tell me something my son had done. My boy and 2 older girls had been playing water bottle baby, and at some point my son ran out in front of the house and exhibited the water bottle above to the smoking man, exclaiming "look what smoking did to my baby," and then squirreling back into the house.

When my neighbor offered the anecdote I appreciated it, as I always appreciate the interesting stories they tell me about their lives and things that happen to them at school and at their crappy jobs. They ask me how I am as if they really want to know. When their cigarette smoke wafts in the window, it comforts me like a smoke signal telling me "it's ok, we've got your front." It even occurs to me that one day they'll move, or I'll move, and I'll miss their smoke and well chosen words.