Smoke This!

My morning routine is go out for coffee, read the paper and smoke a cigarette. This morning I go to a place around the corner, it's cold but I sit outside and start reading about the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team. Then it happens, five women and one man arrive with eight children, all in those huge four wheel drive pusher things. They block up the entire street and it takes them ten minutes to arrange themselves around the table next to mine. My coffee arrives, I light a cigarette and it only takes two puffs before the mothers send the only man in the group over. He asks in an extremely polite way, if I would mind moving to the table on the other side of them, downwind. I pick up my stuff but I don't say anything. I don't say, 'Sit outside and expect to be smoked on. If you don't want smoke near your children, take them inside. You people have driven us outside and now you want to follow us out here'. I also refrain from asking him if he had his balls removed when he joined the mother's group. 

I go and sit at the other table and now the unsolvable world conflicts seem easier to comprehend, people just don't get along. Pakistan and India, just can't get along. Israel and Palestine, just can't get along. Smokers and parents, you get the idea. Soon enough another lone smoker asks if he can join me, he's also been moved along by the baby nazis. We roll our eyes and blow smoke in their direction, maybe they'll take the kids somewhere else tomorrow. Or maybe they'll sit inside next time, leaving all the fresh air for us. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate children, I hate their parents.