As a kid, I spent what seemed to be a large portion of the winter months in the car with my mother, headed to and from the pediatrician's office in downtown Atlanta for throat, ear, and (mostly) lung infections. I was, no doubt, a poster child for for the producers of penicillin.Those injections always hurt! "Bronchitis" was one of the first words I learned. I couldn't imagine what asthma sufferers must have felt like, until I had a child with asthma.
I was gratified to learn that penicillin now came in oral doses. And I learned how to operate and care for the latest technology, an in-house nebulizer. Albuterol became a household hoarding staple, like bread and milk in Georgia just before the threat of snow. It always angered me, therefore, if I were out with my children and suddenly some RUDE person meandered nearby and blew their exhaust toward us. Grrrrrrrrr!!! (YES. 3 exclamation points.)
One afternoon the girls and I were enjoying a fresh air stroll through a local public park, when a short, bald, portly man puffing on a rather large cigar meandered nearby. At first he would take a draw, tilt his head toward the heavens and blow straight up. By and by he practiced the fine art of forming smoke rings. Then he began to blow smaller rings through the larger ones. He was quite talented.
Soon he began to make a sound much like a chocolatier might make after biting into fine Belgium cocoa bombs. “Mmmmmmmm.” Well, that raised my eyebrow. The better he formed rings, the more he began to gag and cough the smoke out. Mixed with that "Mmmmmmm" it was weird. It became a sickening choke-cough-gag. Why not just put the cigar out?
Fortunately the three of us were positioned such that the breeze was flowing away from us. But every now and then, I still caught a whiff of that stale pungent vapor. The girls had become interested in some nearby flowers, bees on the clover, and a few butterflies. As I was about to move us still further out of range, our cigar aficionado suddenly stood up and walked around the corner behind some trees.
Presently, I saw the gray plumes rising above the thicket and heard the now intensified cough. Again, I was motivated to survey the grounds for a more suitable atmosphere for us lung-challenged people, when something caught my eye. It was another short, portly man brandishing a cigar—who sat in the very spot the other man was before him. Curiosity demanded that I stay and watch a moment.
After every puff, this man cleared his throat several times. It was intensely irritating to listen to. The breeze had stopped, so the smoke smell began to intensify. As I stood to gather the children, I heard the man say in a loud voice, “YOU.” Startled, I turned to see the man pointing at a smoke ring. When he did it again, I quickly gathered the girls and left.
I’ve no idea what was in that cigar smoke, but I’m thinking bronchitis and asthma are small potatoes compared to it. And I suspect neither penicillin nor its replacements will fix it. I’m glad I got out of there in time. Before I could drive away, you won't believe what happened.
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