Why Isn’t She Normal?

We are spending this weekend in Minnesota to celebrate our first grand baby’s first birthday.  He is a joy beyond measure.

My mother always said, “If I’d had these grand babies first, I’d never had you girls!”

Now I understand.  Greyson is perfect, incredibly smart, and the happiest baby I’ve ever seen.  We can’t get enough of him.

I suppose my grandparents must have felt the same about the little curly-haired toddler I was.  I’m thankful things have changed so much from then to now and there aren’t cigarette ashtrays on every table, because although I’d be curious to know if my DNA runs deep in Greyson, I am hoping there will be other ways than this, to find out:

As I toddled around my grandmother’s living room, my cousin would carefully prepare an ashtray as if it was a savory plate of appetizers and she was Rachel Ray. Pushing cigarette butts to one side and sifting ashes to the other, she would call me over, a smile spreading across her five-year-old face, and say, “Eat this.” I happily obliged, licking a tiny finger, then eagerly plunging it into the smokers’ repository before I carried the delicacies to my lips. I continued, with her urging, until the glass bowl was spotless, and filters of L&M’s, Kent’s, and Kool’s were all that remained. She would move on to the next table with an ashtray, repeat the process, and wait patiently as I finished my hors d’oeuvres. This ritual went on for months, maybe years, before we were found out. The tell-tale grey ash lingering around the mouth of a two or three-year-old, the curiously clean ashtrays devoid of burned cigarette remains, and the carefully sorted filters eventually caught the attention of the adults.

This prompted yet another trip to my pediatrician to ask “Why isn’t she normal?”

The doctor suggested I was suffering from some sort of mineral deficiency, and if I was eating a well-balanced diet, I would be fine: he knew of no reason eating cigarette ashes would kill me. I didn’t know what all the fuss was about. My cousin wasn’t really coercing me into bizarre behavior; she was aiding and abetting my pre-established joy of eating those little carbon curly-q’s. I simply loved the taste. Fifty-some years later, I can still remember the tangy, sweet taste of the melt-in-your-mouth delights.

My mother told the doctor I also licked the oil off coal. Since I have no recollection of this whatsoever, I don’t believe it for a minute. Come on, why would anyone in their right mind lick the oil off chunks of coal?