White Asparagus. D. R. Belz

close on by “What kind of hollow-point ammo does your handgun take?”

      Cell phones and call waiting have made interrupting someone in mid-sentence a required social skill for the new century. Learn to practice this artfully by yelling “Whoop, there it is!” when, at the symphony, your phone starts playing Beethoven’s Fifth in the middle of Brahms’s Third. And when someone is explaining the details of her marital breakup, mutter quickly: “Uh-huh, uh-huh. uh-huh, uh-huh.” When a friend tries to convince you that cell, web and net are all words for things that imprison us, respond with a slow, sarcastic clapping.

      Tell everyone who will listen that you are very “green,” but remember to raise your children without limits to their wants. If they don’t wish to, your children should not be made to go to school, since this might traumatize them and make them think you don’t love them enough or want to be their friend. Teach them to be independent and self-reliant, which experience shows consists largely of being rude and obtuse to others.

      Teach them that no man is an island, but if you can manage to be a peninsula, you’re three-quarters of the way there. Encourage them to harshly criticize people who believe everything they need to know they learned in kindergarten. In the spirit of nurturing their First Amendment rights, teach them a variety of curses while you tailgate people down the highway trying to be first at the next red light.

      Marry not wisely or well, but often, which experts agree will become the quickest route to self-actualization, without having to claim it on tax forms. Remember that the reason married people live longer than single people is that misery loves company.

      Live so that your grandchildren will recount the story of your life and spouses, ending it: “And so they lived happily ever after, for awhile.”

      Build an outrageously large, ostentatious house that will show people how good you are at wheeling and dealing, looking out for number one, being your own best friend, going for it all, and picking out wallpaper with ducks all over it. This will also show people that you know what “ostentatious” means, making them feel shallow and small.

      Have a suitable guesthouse built out back for them: just under five feet tall at the eaves and about three and a half feet wide. Supply no guest parking, and don’t let them wash their car at your house, either. Or maybe let them, but don’t supply a hose or nozzle.

      Dress so that people can see that all of your taste is in your mouth. Accomplishing this will require the purchase of clothing emblazoned with animal fetishes as trademarks, as well as the names of various foreign designers. It should all seem rather weird under the surface, and, speaking of under the surface, buy all of your underwear from stores that run large expensive advertisements of people posed nearly naked with empty champagne glasses trying to appear as if they are expecting dinner guests.

      Strive to make your life a study in extravagance. Because simplicity is the soul of elegance, simply flaunt your lifestyle to everyone you come in contact with. To soothe your guilt at living so histrionically, join a volunteer peace and justice league, but don’t invite them over for cocktails.

      Your hobbies should include artificial rock-climbing, closed-pen spear fishing, alpine paintball-skiing, motocross racing (desert only), and reading thick annual reports at the beach.

      Your analyst’s patient files should read like the social register.

      Keep yourself lean and hungry by regular exercise at an exorbitantly priced health club with overtly sadistic personal trainers. Your investment portfolio should read like an antitrust case. Dabble in futures, doodle in margins, shoot the moon on suspect security-backed investment instruments, and generally make a planetary nuisance of yourself by investing in corporations involved in rapacious enterprises in the Third World.

      Finally, take consolation in that, while your friends won’t really like you, only diamonds are forever.

      Addicted to a Naughty Habit

      I’m thinking of having a card made up to carry around in my wallet, somewhat like the medical emergency cards, which will read:

      “I am a cigarette addict. If you give me a cigarette, I will smoke it. If you smoke a cigarette in front of me, I will watch you smoke it. As I would like to live to a ripe old age and have lots of great grandchildren, please don’t give me a cigarette or smoke nearby. Failing that, please blow some my way.”

      Cigarettes in movies these days aren’t cool. In fact, I’m not sure they ever were. In the intrigue thriller “Winterset” made in 1936 (that was when you could still buy a $15 suit and H.L. Mencken still wrote for The Evening Sun) an evil character says with great aplomb, “Give me another coffin nail.” He means a cigarette, and everybody in the audience shivers at that point. In “Body Heat,” William Hurt jogs and smokes simultaneously, one of the best bits of character development in years. And look what happens to him.

      The only people in movies who smoked and got any real respect were Garbo and Bogart, and we all know how their characters were movie paradoxes, heroes who never seemed quite wholesome or completely heroic.

      Cigarettes, let’s face it, are naughty. We’re told that right from the beginning until we’re old enough to know better, and then we’re old enough to choose to be naughty. Cigarettes, unfortunately, and ironically, are a link most people have with their carefree and rebellious halcyon days. Fast cars, provocative clothes, late hours, and a pack of butts. Or, if a person never went through the rebellious stage, smoking later vicariously fulfills the need to be naughty.

      I remember my first cigarette as other people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. In the woods, a bunch of friends and I smoked a cigarette, the kind with the mysterious chambered filter. We puffed and puffed and then waited for the police. When they didn’t come, we wandered off to play wiffleball, thinking we knew something we weren’t supposed to, but couldn’t quite figure out what.

      We were warned, though. One of Perry Mason’s adversaries, Hamilton Berger, played by real-life smoker William Talman, did a TV spot for the American Cancer Society that stated, “I’m dying of lung cancer . . .” We shivered, sure it was because he never agreed with Perry.

      The president of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is on record as having said that the tobacco industry doesn’t have much time left in this country. I believe this is probably because the decline in people’s smoking is linked to the realization that smoking past a certain age ceases to be a glamorous, rebellious lifestyle and begins to be a rebellion against life. If you can feel a chill lighting up, it may well be the icy hand of death upon your shoulder.

      You will note the signals if you and your friends are getting ready to quit. You begin by using each other as scapegoats. “I only smoke around you.” “You’re corrupting me.” “I can’t believe you still smoke those things – give me one will you – and don’t tell.” Now, we’re naughty again, sneaking smokes on the back porch at parties. Trouble is, there are a lot of us on that porch. But we were warned.

      They tell me that people stricken with catastrophic illness frequently ask the question “Why me?” If the TV and movie stimuli that induce people to smoke by example have been removed, and the link to heart disease and cancer is a strong one, why do people continue to smoke? Print the skull and crossbones on the pack with a big label in red stating “Poison!” and I’ll wager people will still light up.

      Filmmakers don’t use cigarettes as a symbol of being cool or sexy or glamorous anymore. I’m not sure they ever did, really. But I can still see Rod Serling introducing the early episodes of “The Twilight Zone” ominously smoking a Chesterfield. We were warned. Why do we do it? There’s a signpost up ahead.

      Next stop . . .

      Smoke

      “… experts now have identified a related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke. That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long