Public Service Announcement

For whatever reason, the boys love "chicken on the bone." And when we don't have it "on the bone," but have a boneless chicken breast they like to have a toothpick to pick it up and eat it. We're pretty exotic in our eating habits, over here at Casa Llena.

Anyway, we weren't even eating chicken last night, but beef tacos, and Charlie wanted a toothpick to pick up his meat. All of a sudden he was using his toothpick as a cigarette.

I decided to take this time to do what a PSA taught me to do when I saw on a television commercial before I even had kids. Do you remember the one where I mother is in the kitchen talking to some unseen child about the dangers of smoking, and later the camera pans to the kid who is actually a baby sitting in a high chair. The message is: it's never too early to starting talking to your kids.

We have friends and family that smoke cigarettes and I'm by no means trying to build up a posse to stop the world from smoking, just addressing the issue with my kids. So I approach the subject, completely unrehearsed and not thought about until this moment:

Have you guys seen cigarettes anywhere?

What's a cigarette?

What Charlie was doing--pretending like he was smoking his toothpick! (I couldn't believe that they could pretend to smoke and not know what it's called!)

Oh.

So if a friend comes up to you and says, "Hey Lou, do you want to come smoke a cigarette with me?" You can say, "That's OK man, I don't smoke."


The room got completely silent. I noticed that Kevin was staring at my with his mouth open. Then I get this:


"You're crackin' me up, Mom!" Ben says enthusiastically, slapping his knee in the process.

Kevin burst out laughing, along with the rest of the crowd and I realized that I really need to practice this stuff before I pull it out of left field. But it gets better:

While Kevin's asking me where this came from (I tell him about the PSA commercial), Lou says to Benny:

Louie: Hey Ben, let's take turns saying it!
Benny: All right!
L: You ask me to blow smoke, OK?!
B: No! You ask me!
L: OK, "Hey Ben, do you want to go blow smoke with me?!"
B: "No way, DUDE! I don't do that!"

Kevin turns to me and says that I should probably get the number at the end of the commercial where they say to call if you need help talking to your kids. And Ben and Lou go back and forth like that for the next ten minutes. Kevin is belly-laughing, I'm turning red, and then I start laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole situation. I should probably have a video camera going constantly in my kitchen because one of these days I'm going to win America's Funniest Home Video.

P.S. I should probably mention, if I haven't already, that the boys have a new-found fondness for the Teenage-Mutant Ninja Turtles--the '80s television version. Their little sponge brains have absorbed all the cheesy one-liners and find ways to inject them into their conversations. Constant comedy at our house, yes sir-ee-bob.