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Perhaps it is true that age brings certain blessings.
While I may ache more through the workday, and find it
difficult to stay up for the late news unless I manage an
afternoon siesta (that's what we call it around here,
although I understand that in metropolitan areas, the
practice is known as an executive post-meridian
personal-energy recharge
), I can rejoice that my
children are off in college.
This means that I don't have to answer their questions about the tobacco legislation now under consideration in Washington. But I pity any father who's stuck with a curious child now:
Child: Dad, how did George Washington, our first president, make his living?
Father: He tried to get rich speculating in western lands, but mostly, he grew hemp and tobacco on his plantation at Mt. Vernon.
Child: What's hemp?
Father: It's a variety of the cannabis plant with long, strong fibers used to make rope and cloth.
Child: Cannabis? Like the evil marijuana plant the nice policeman told us about in D.A.R.E. class the other day?
Father: Well, they're the same species, I suppose, but the hemp variety doesn't have very much of the active chemical that makes marijuana what it is. It's sort of like dogs -- a chihauhau and a wolfhound are the same species, but they're different breeds or varieties.
Child: So those bumper stickers on some kids' parents'
pickups that say I'm a roper, not a doper
-- dope
and rope come from the same plant?
Father: Well, sort of.
Child: Our teacher told us that George Washington was a great leader and that he never told a lie.
Father: My teacher told me the same thing.
Child: So President Washington would be a good role model?
Father: Well, there aren't many good modern role models.
Child: So when I grow up, I could grow hemp and tobacco, and lead an army in a revolution against the government?
Father: I wouldn't really recommend that. These days, they really frown on leading revolutions against the government. You'd go to prison for that. And it's illegal to grow hemp, because they say it's too hard to tell the difference between hemp and marijuana.
Child: But that nice D.A.R.E. policeman that talked to our class was so smart. He seemed to know everything. You mean he's not smart enough to tell the difference between hemp and marijuana?
Father: Why don't we change the subject before I get arrested?
Child: But our teacher said that one of the things General Washington fought for was the right of free speech, so the government couldn't put people in prison just for what they said.
Father: Well, okay, but try not to repeat anything we talk about here.
Child: Our teacher said that in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, children were rewarded for tattling on their parents, and sometimes their parents went to prisons or concentration camps. But that would never happen in America.
Father: No, of course not. Any more questions about President Washington?
Child: If he grew tobacco, why are they holding all those hearings in our capital city of Washington to stop people from using tobacco?
Father: Because tobacco is bad for you.
Child: But if it's bad for you, why did President Washington grow it? Our teacher said he was a very honorable man, and how could he do something that would hurt people if he was a good man?
Father: George Washington lived a long time ago. It's been more than 200 years since he was president. Back then, perhaps they didn't know tobacco was bad for you.
Child: But our teacher said that people have known for a
long time that tobacco was bad. King James I in England
lived 200 years before President Washington, and he said
that tobacco was hateful to the nose, harmful to the
brain, dangerous to the lungs.
So President Washington
must have known better.
Father: Well, maybe he did.
Child: So why was he good, and why is Joe Camel bad? Aren't they in the same business?
Father: Do you want to go to an amusement park? A movie? Get some really violent video games?
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