I know my mummy loves me. She dresses me up in nice clothes. She feeds me on the things that are good for me. She buys me lots of things. She reads books about how to take car of me. She sits up with me when I don’t feel good. She will do most anything for me; but I wish she didn’t smoke!
I’ve never had a clean kiss in all my life. Sometimes her breath is awful bad; and when she kisses me just after she has been smoking, it almost makes me sick.
she was fixing my oatmeal the other morning and smoking, and she got ashes in it. Course she didn’t’ see it, but I had to eat it.
I get so tired living in smoke all the time. It hurts my eyes and I rub them hard and she doesn’t know what’s the matter.
The worst thing is when she lays a cigarette down and the blue smoke gets into my eyes and nose and stings and stings. she doesn’t know why I fuss so much, and sometimes she shakes me for being bad.
Sometimes my lungs hurt from so much smoke and I cry and mummy gets cross and I don’t know how to tell her. Then we both get fussy and mummy tells my daddy that I have been “just awful all day.”
Maybe I’ll get used to it, but it’s awful hard on a little fellow like me. I like fresh air and clean things. I feel so good when I get outdoors and away from my mummy’s smoke.
Sometimes mummy has company in the afternoon and when all the “girls” begin to smoke and there aren’t any windows open, it gets terrible and I get cross and mummy says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with that child today. Why can’t he be good when there’s company in the house?”
Once, when she was holding me and smoking, I got some ashes in my eye and it hurry awful and I screamed and screamed and that night she told Daddy I had a temper tantrum. I don’t know what a temper tantrum is, but it sure hurts.
It’s awful hard growing up with grown-ups. And now, grandma’s started smoking, too! I wish mummy didn’t smoke.
The Christian Advocate
