A Strange Sequence of Events
It was January 1941, and I was about to be born in Los Angeles, California. Both my parents were heavy cigarette smokers without any thought as to whether it might cause any harm to an infant child. At that time, smoking was common behavior, including around babies, children, and ill people. The world seemed not to know or care. The cigarette industry was a heavy investor in the movie industry, especially, Southern California from the beginning of the twentieth century.
My parents observed that infant child me, Peter, had difficulty beathing, and I seemed to want to wriggle into a corner of my infant crib in a repeated attempt, I now believe, to escape my parents’ cigarette smoke. To this day, my head has a dent in the rear region of my skull that dates back, I believe, to my attempts to escape my parents’ cigarette smoke.
My grandparents were non-smokers, and when I was at their house, my beathing seemed nearly normal. My parents believed that the air quality at the ranch was far better than in LA. Such reasoning was correct but for the wrong reason. I was lucky to visit and stay with my grandparents a lot. (Pete did this story for Ariele’s Greenwood Senior Center ZOOM class on Thursdays. The assignment was “Tell a story about a smell. If you have a good short story about a smell you like or didn’t like, send it to Ariele at ariele@comcast.net.)
Pete MacDoran is a Washington resident and author of The Old Men Will Die First: A True Story of Cold War Espionage. Here’s the Amazon link to the book. Take a “free peek” into his exciting life with the “look inside” function. https://www.amazon.com/Old-Men-Will-Die-First/dp/1530749042
SHARING STORIES is a weekly column for and about the 50 plus crowd living in the Puget Sound region. Send your stories and photos to ariele@comcast.net. Tell local or personal stories; discuss concerns around aging and other issues; share solutions, good luck, and reasons to celebrate; poems are fine too. Pieces may be edited or excerpted. We reserve the right to select among pieces. Photos are always a plus and a one-sentence bio is requested (where you live, maybe age or career, retired status, etc.).
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