Caught Smoking

     This is just a little story that popped into my head as Joyce and I were talking today. It is a true story. I was 10-years old when I was caught for smoking. That afternoon my mother only said, “You will have to talk to your father when he gets home tonight.”

     I was upstairs looking through my father’s old army footlocker when he got home. He came upstairs as I was looking at his good conduct medal. I asked him what it was for. He said it was for good conduct and you don’t get one of those for smoking when you are not supposed to do that.

     My father was buried in a national cemetery 48 years later, my mother commented that they put a tech rating on his tombstone and that was higher than what he was discharged with when World War Two was over. I asked her how that was possible. She told me that when dad was drafted and in training before going overseas his mother was gravely ill and he was allowed to return home for a few days to be with her. Dad stopped and picked up mom on his way to see his mother; they were dating at that time. They walked into his mother’s residence and the first thing his mother said was, “I didn’t bring you home so you could run around with her!” Dad’s leave ended and he should have returned to training, but he spent an extra two days with mom. He was busted to private because of that and even with his time in France and Germany he never advanced again.

     It just struck me as funny with him giving me a lecture on good conduct 48 years earlier, knowing he had gone AWOL. Perhaps that is why he let me off the hook so easily. As an aside note, my mother, the day after I was caught smoking at such an early age, told me I could only smoke when I got a job and could afford to buy them. The day I drew my first paycheck, I walked into the house and lit up my first cigarette in front of her. She never said a word because she remembered, as I did, exactly what she had told me.