When our three boys were little, they were fascinated with their grandmother’s cigarette smoke. They stood and watched as the cloud swirled around her head.

“What are you doing?” one of the boys asked.

“I know! It’s going to kill me!” Grandma said, gruffly. Her answer didn’t dissuade the boys’ interest.

When she put the cigarette in an ash tray it was still smoking. My wife said, “Don’t touch that, it’s hot!”

From that moment on, cigarettes were known as “hots.”

I took the boys with me to a driving range so I could practice slicing golf balls into the weeds. I put the three of them on a sidewalk a safe distance from where I was flailing away.

Just as I was about to fail again, I heard Jon say, “Hey dad! I got a hot!” He had a cigarette butt in the corner of his mouth and talked like he was James Cagney about to rob a bank.

“Jon!!” I said, laughing, “get that out of your mouth!”

I was a para-pro at a middle school for a few months where I helped sixth graders with reading and math. There was a little blond-haired boy who had the “-th” for “s” lisp. He was sharp as a tack, just not so much in math.

I was going over several math problems with him. “This one is right!” I said. He beamed.

“There is a mistake with this one,” I said. “Three times seven is not twenty-six.”

“It ith today!” he said with a grin.

All I could do was laugh until I cried.