Sweetpea Bicycles

A long while back, Natalie and I thought it would be important to take up some bad habits to offset all the cycling, running, and multivitamins we take; so we decided to start smoking.  We now smoke a cigar together every six months or so.  At first, I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. . . that is, be a smoker.  What I found was that it wasn’t that hard to do, but it was hard to do casually.  The first couple of times we fumbled around with things, and I think we have the hang of it now.  But a couple of months ago, I was taking a slow draw off a cigar when something hit me.  It was the taste in my mouth and the smell in my nose.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as this the what the whole deal is about.  But what was so remarkable was that in a single moment I was instantly reminded of my grandfather.  He used to smoke cigars regularly, and as a kid when he would lean in and give me a kiss on the cheek, I would be able to taste the smell in my nose.  It was only when he leaned in close when that this would happen, and it was something I had not thought about in nearly twenty years.  And now, it reminds me of him and conveys a certain perspective: I don’t just remember him, I remember him when he was close.  So now when Nat and I cozy up to a big cigar, I can lean back and remember my grandfather.  And it’s nice.

I would have never been reminded of this had we not done something entirely new and completely out of character.  Which of course brings me to the subject of onions.  When I was growing up, I would look at my parents completely aghast as they consumed raw onions on things like sandwiches and salads.  This in my mind was tantamount to eating dynamite.  And I was recently reminded of the horror I felt in college when I saw a friend of mine who during a play had to eat an onion like an apple.  So imagine my surprise when at breakfast some raw onion made its way into my mouth accompanied with some bagel, cream cheese, capers, tomato, lettuce and lox.  Maybe it was the combination that made it possible, but I really liked it.  I think that the feeling I felt afterward is termed cognitive dissonance.  I guess I knew that tastes change as you get older, but what I didn’t realize was how those changes are connected to things that have been deep down a long time.