Half-Pint

from: Christian (c.graham5157@hotmail.com)
to: cj@thiscrazytrain.com
date: Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:56 PM
subject: Your problem with smokers

Hello C.J.
So a colleague stumbled onto your blog when actually looking up where people were allowed to smoke at GO stations when he pointed out one of your posts to me. We both believe you really feel you are justified and entitled as much as the smokers you hate when you declared you'd be willing to shove a bullhorn in their ears and scare them with your no smoking announcements. We all work in law here where I am and I can tell you without a doubt that is harrassment, especially if you were to damage the hearing of one of these people. Oh, we read ALL about your asthma and other health issues and you may think a smoker is risking your health but not so much as you shouting at 50 Dbs in their ear. You are OUTSIDE and you can move away from cigarette smoke. The platforms are large enough. Better yet, how about you stand or wait in the parking lot? The bottom line is smoking was the norm for well over 100 years before the governments decided that people could no longer think for themselves. Not everyone who smokes, gets cancer. My grandparents, all four of them, smoked from teenagers to their 80s and 90s and all died from old age. People know the risks. They don't need Big Brother. It's gone so far that no one can enjoy a cigarette with dinner in a restaurant, yet, we have to put up with people like you, with your disease, coughing into our food. Germs are just as bad as toxins. Look at SARS and H1N1. Smokers weren't to blame.
The government can legislate all they want, the only way to make anything smoke-free is to ban cigarettes entirely. And may I point out that the pollutants generated by the bus, train and cars are far more toxic to you than cigarette smoke.

from: Cj Smith
to: c.graham5157@hotmail.com
date: Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 8:56 AM
subject: Re: Your problem with smokers

Dear Christian,

When I was 9, I was given a book, the first in a series, called Little House on the Prairie. I imagined how amazing it must have been to live 100 years ago and have a "Ma" and "Pa" and go to school in a one-room schoolhouse and roam wide open fields with my arms spread wide and sleep in a dress and hat. I even asked my dad if he would call me "Half Pint". I told all my friends to call me Half-Pint. Only one ever did and that was Alex. Alex loved Little House on the Prairie as much as I did and he decided I was to call him Albert. So we would walk down to Bloor Street calling each other Albert and Half-Pint and talk about Mr. Edwards and Nellie Olsen. Not that you're probably familiar with the books, but I think I'm going to call you Willie from now on. If you write me back, be sure to call me Half-Pint or else we're done here.

Seriously, though, were you high when you wrote this email? Remember, Half-Pint or no deal.