Smoking

I hate cigarette smoke as much as the next guy, maybe even more; GROSS! Here in Washington, you can’t smoke anywhere anymore. Not even in a bar or an adult video store. I bet you want to know how I know that, so I’ll tell you. Over the weekend, we went to an ice cream/beer/video game shop in a seedy suburb. It has a bad reputation, this town, but I drive through it pretty often because it is in between my sister’s house and one of the Goodwills I like. They vary, you know- the Goodwills. I have my favorites. Anyway, I have always defended the ratty place and when people criticize it, I call them snobs and tell them to go back to their McMansion and pick up a Starbucks on the way. I wasn’t concerned at all about going there to play Pac Man and eat ice cream. But the shop was down a street I don’t need to drive on to get to Goodwill, and I’d never seen it before. Just let me say WOW, and that it was the first time I wasn’t glad Weston could read. I had to explain what Payday loans and junk gold and diamonds were. Fortunately he didn’t ask what XXX means. Because I don’t know.

The strip is apparently popular- it was very crowded and we had to park quite a ways from the place, in back-in only angle parking. Who invented that? It’s the worst idea ever. I had to drive through a pot-holed parking lot and over a sidewalk to turn around and drive straight in head first. To get to the ice cream shop, we had to walk the gauntlet of drunks on the sidewalk in front of the dive bars having their smokes. Now, loud and cheerful hammered bikers don’t bother me, of course. Some of my best friends could make the Olympics in boat racing (the kind with beer, not actual boats, because that would be boring as hell). But Weston was terrified, never having encountered a drunken moron. Well, maybe one.

Once we got there, the shop was fun in a dingy sort of way and delicious ice cream and a good time was had by all. Unfortunately, we then had to retrace our steps, only this time it was more fun because Weston was clutching my legs while Shane ran on ahead as we picked our way through the throng of friendly pickled smokehounds spilling out of the various establishments. My favorite was the grinning toothless woman who informed us that she LOVED little boys; she had three of her own and adopted eight more. I told her how lucky she was and we continued on our merry trek. We barreled into the van as fast as we could, and it was then that I figured out that parking headfirst in back-in angled spot was not actually the greatest idea I had ever had. For the love of all that is holy, LET THE TOKERS SMOKE IN THE BARS! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!