I once tried cigarettes, it didn't agree with me, it wasn't my...idiom.
And you can't stop smoking the pipe?
Certainly, in fact there's nothing like a good, pricey cigar. Except a good clean pipe tobacco.
Why don't you quit, though?
I started when I was 17, see...
...and so you're hooked. That's...40 years of your life!
40 years and many more to come. It's not 'hooked' if you in-joy it.
Sure it is, you're addicted, you couldn't stop if you wanted to.
I wouldn't know, never wanted to.
I dare you to quit.
Don't dare!...I don't. But I have taken long hiatuses – or hiati...ever been to Haiti?
Make good cigars there?
Wouldn't know, never been. I have taken long breaks from smoking, never with the 'intention' of quitting however – or rather, of no-longer-smoking, I don't much like the word 'quitting' or 'giving up' – it sounds like capitulation to all the ex-smokers.
You're ruining your health. You're a ticking time bomb for heart failure or lung disease. Have you ever once thought of just quitting, just hanging it up?
Thank you. I won't mention your health, though I wish you much of it of course, but yes – for one tiny little moment - I'll tell you what happened when I was about...say, 53. I had just gotten off the 120 bus at Paracelsus-Bad, where Roedernallee crosses Lindauer Allee. It was winter, I had my winter jacket on and my pipe had slipped out of my pocket onto the seat. As I reached for it and found it missing I realized what had happened, hammered on the bus window before the driver took off. But he had just edged from the curb and they can't stop once they've done that. He did understand what I was hammering about but pulled out anyway, what could he do, he had rules to follow. And I had no pipe.
So? Dja go after 'im?
Without having done much in the way of 'exercise' at that particular time of my life, and wearing this jacket laden with gloves and other stuff, I stopped and considered for one long quarter of a second: what if it's really a sign, a message from the universe to let it go and never smoke again. I really gave that a thought.
-
Hell no, I took after the bus and chased it to the next stop. He got there about a quarter of a minute before me, and actually waited for me when he saw me tearing the sidewalk up in my big jacket. He couldn't legitimately wait all too long, but he did it and I think if he had had a stopwatch he'd have been timing this. As I got to the door of the bus, which he'd held open, I saw my pipe in the driver's hand, extended to me, and his smile was classic.
Did he say anything?
Yeah, 'Good work' and a nod. Not out of breath but excited and relieved, I thanked him of course. He drove on and I walked back with pipe lit, picking up my fallen gloves along the way. But of course, I was 53 after all.
So that makes it 'alright'...?
No, it means I was less in condition than now.
At 57?....Hright.
Well, if it were today I'd have been waiting for him at the next stop.
You're addicted.
My name's not Ted. And you're being a dick-head.
